U.S. Department of Labor
toggle caption U.S. Department of Labor
Thea Lee was named head of the Labor Department s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, which enforces trade commitments and investigates forced labor and child labor around the world. U.S. Department of Labor
In 2014, when Thea Lee was a top official with the AFL-CIO, she posed a provocative question at an economics conference about what America s trade objectives should be. Was the point to lower barriers and increase the level of trade, or was it to use American leverage to create good jobs and protect worker rights?
Lee went on to call for a shake-up of the status quo, telling the crowd, We need to turn the whole concept of how we think about trade policy and globalization upside down, because the people who are in charge of this policy have done a crappy job.
US Labor Dept. Awards $5 Million Grant to Address Child Labor and Gender Inequality in Ethiopia
Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown.
The United States Department of Labor is awarding a $5 million cooperative agreement with the multinational Atlanta-based nonprofit CARE for a project designed to reduce child labor and improve gender equality in the Ethiopian coffee sector.
Specifically, the grant is part of the 50-month She Thrives project funded by the U.S. Bureau of International Labor Affairs (ILAB), which is focused on work to strengthen the coffee sector in Ethiopia through a gender-focused approach.
ILAB says the project will provide direct services to 10,300 people in 10 districts within the geographic regions of Gedeo and Oromia, where the majority of Ethiopian coffee is produced.
Toggle open close
The International Labor Organization (ILO) is one of the oldest multilateral organizations in the United Nations system. The primary products of the organization are nearly 200 conventions to codify labor standards on a variety of topics, promulgating those standards, and assisting countries in improving work conditions.
The United States generally supports the mission and goals of the ILO, but membership is not directly aligned to U.S. domestic interests, which is reflected in the rareness of U.S. ratification of ILO conventions. Where the ILO does contribute to U.S. values and priorities is helping improve labor standards and conditions abroad and promoting standards to combat labor-related abuses like child labor, human trafficking, and forced labor. The United States should focus the ILO on these activities, broaden representation of its workers and employers in the organization to reflect their increasingly diverse roles in the modern economy, and defend the
US government and EU announce separate major funding for cocoa sustainability in West Africa By Anthony Myers Following reports of serious issues in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana’s cocoa supply chains, the EU and the US Labor Department have both announced financial aid to help the two countries.
The independent research organisation, affiliated with the University of Chicago, revealed that child labour in the two countries remains a significant problem, in the study which was also co-funded by the Department of Labor.
Save the Children and Winrock International will each be awarded $4m grants for cooperative agreements to implement technical assistance projects. Both organisations will work to reduce child labour in these countries’ cocoa supply chains by enhancing cocoa cooperatives’ capacity to monitor child labour and provide greater support to households with children at risk of child labour.
02/25/2021 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 02/25/2021 14:38
US Department of Labor awards $5M grant to reduce child labor in Ethiopiaâs coffee fields using a gender-focused approach
WASHINGTON, DC - A young Ethiopian girl dreamt of finishing school to become a health worker in her village. She was 13 when her father died, forcing her to leave school and enter the fields to pick coffee to help her family. During long days of work, she harvests, washes and sorts coffee cherries - exposed to sharp objects, pesticides and other hazardous chemicals - with her health and her future at risk.
To help combat child labor and make Ethiopian families less vulnerable to economic instability, the U.S. Department of Labor today announced the award of a $5 million cooperative agreement to Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere Inc.CARE is a non-profit organization based in Atlanta that works to reduce poverty in about 85 countries by helping communities in areas such as