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The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is an American consumer organization. The National Consumers League is a private, nonprofit advocacy group representing consumers on marketplace and workplace issues. The NCL provides government, businesses, and other organizations with the consumer's perspective on concerns including child labor, privacy, food safety, and medication information.
The organization was chartered in 1899 by social reformers Jane Addams and Josephine Lowell. Its first general secretary was Florence Kelley. Under Kelley's direction, the League's early focus was to oppose the harsh, unregulated working conditions many Americans were forced to endure. The founding principles of the NCL are: "That the working conditions we accept for our fellow citizens should be reflected by our purchases, and that consumers should demand safety and reliability from the goods and services they buy." The league's focus continues to be to promote a fair marketplace for workers and consumers. [1]
The NCL based their organization on the ideals of consumer citizenship, in which it is a citizens duty to advocate for government legislation and use their individual purchasing power to shape a more ethical consumer market. The league used tools such as investigating and educating to promote change. League members would often do thorough investigations in order to study the relevant social problems within their community. They would then create a report and present it to other women and community members often through public events, women's talk clubs, or fairs. [2] In its early years it would award a company or producer with a "White Label" which signified that the league was in approval of their ethicality and it would be recognized by other informed consumers. [3] As they progressed they turned their attention more toward implementing legislation that would provide protection to exploited workers and consumers. In the 1970s they shifted their focus onto the well being of consumers as individuals rather than the focus on working conditions. [2]
Florence Kelley was the general secretary of the National Consumers League from its founding in 1899 to her death in 1931. [4]
In founding the National Consumers League in 1899, one of Kelley's primary concerns was that the league oppose sweatshop labor. Kelley also worked to establish a work-day limited to eight hours. She worked in support of unionization to further protect workers. In 1907 she participated in the Supreme Court case Muller v. Oregon , which sought to overturn limits to the hours female workers could work in non-hazardous professions. [3] Kelley helped to file the Brandeis Brief, which included sociological and medical evidence of the hazards of working long hours, and set the precedent of the Supreme Court's recognition of sociological evidence, which was used to great effect later in the case Brown v. Board of Education . In addition, Kelley assisted in organizing the National Association For Advancement of Colored People. [3]
Esther Peterson's involvement in the NCL played an important role in consumer politics and worked within government office as well as the consumer market itself. She was a long time member of the NCL having worked with them as early as 1944 and served as the organizations president from 1974-1976. Peterson worked with the White House as a Special Assistant on Consumer Affairs from 1964-70 during Lyndon B.Johnson's presidency. She carried on her position as director of the Office of Consumer Affairs until 1981. Peterson was also a consumer advisor for the supermarket chain, Giant, from 1970-1976. Peterson also worked closely with president Jimmy Carter's office to represent consumers in policy making. Peterson dedicated her work to consumer protections like accurate food labeling and advocated for protections regarding class, race, and gender in the workforce and consumer market. Peterson made efforts to improve the market in ways that would benefit both business and consumer. [5]
In the 1920s and 1930's the NCL focus was set on lobbying for a gendered-minimum wage. As the U.S. entered the depression they began to lobby for both male and female working conditions and contributed to the passing of the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 which is one of their first legislative achievements that set a standard for working conditions and outlawed child labor. [2] In addition they fought for the use of the codes for fair competition through pressuring the National Recovery Administration. The NCL experienced some opposition through the New Deal Era from the National Women's Party over differing beliefs of gendered-wages. [6]
Sally Greenberg, formerly a senior attorney at Consumers Union (CU), is the executive director of the National Consumers League. Greenberg has worked with members of Congress, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, other federal agencies, the media and consumer safety organizations to shape policy on such issues as product safety, auto safety, and legal and liability reform. [7]
LifeSmarts (www.LifeSmarts.org) is a free program designed to teach teenagers consumer rights and responsibilities as they pertain to health, finance, technology, and the environment. [8]
Fraud.org is a reporting platform through which the National Consumers League collects information about scams, extracts trends from data, and forwards reports to law enforcement. [9]
The Child Labor Coalition (www.StopChildLabor.org) was formed in 1989 to combat child labor and protect teen workers from health and safety hazards. It is co-chaired by the National Consumers League and the American Federation of Teachers. [10]
Script Your Future (www.ScriptYourFuture.org) is a public awareness initiative which teaches patients undergoing long-term prescription therapy the importance of communicating with healthcare professionals and following regimens carefully. [11]
NCL has faced criticism from progressive groups and labor unions for receiving funding from corporations with a financial stake in the industries where NCL offers policy recommendations. In 1998, Mother Jones argued that NCL "has been saturated in recent years with financial contributions from major U.S. corporations to the point where it can no longer be considered a legitimate independent consumer or public interest group." [12]
In 2021, union leaders at Communications Workers of America, United Food and Commercial Workers, and United Auto Workers resigned from NCL's board over NCL's involvement with and financial support from Amazon. [13]
A sweatshop or sweat factory is a crowded workplace with very poor or illegal working conditions, including little to no breaks, inadequate work space, insufficient lighting and ventilation, or uncomfortably or dangerously high or low temperatures. The work may be difficult, tiresome, dangerous, climatically challenging, or underpaid. Employees in sweatshops may work long hours with unfair wages, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage; child labor laws may also be violated. Women make up 85 to 90% of sweatshop workers and may be forced by employers to take birth control and routine pregnancy tests to avoid supporting maternity leave or providing health benefits.
Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412 (1908), was a landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court. Women were permitted by state mandate fewer working hours than those allotted to men. The posed question was whether women's liberty to negotiate a contract with an employer should be equal to a man's. The law did not recognize sex-based discrimination in 1908; it was unrecognized until the case of Reed v. Reed in 1971; here, the test was not under the equal protections clause, but a test based on the general police powers of the state to protect the welfare of women when it infringed on her fundamental right to negotiate contracts; inequality was not a deciding factor because the sexes were inherently different in their particular conditions and had completely different functions; usage of labor laws that were made to nurture women's welfare and for the "benefit of all" people was decided to be not a violation of the Constitution's Contract Clause.
Child labor laws in the United States address issues related to the employment and welfare of working children in the United States. The most sweeping federal law that restricts the employment and abuse of child workers is the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA), which came into force during the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. Child labor provisions under FLSA are designed to protect the educational opportunities of youth and prohibit their employment in jobs that are detrimental to their health and safety. FLSA restricts the hours that youth under 16 years of age can work and lists hazardous occupations too dangerous for young workers to perform.
Ethical consumerism is a type of consumer activism based on the concept of dollar voting. People practice it by buying ethically made products that support small-scale manufacturers or local artisans and protect animals and the environment, while boycotting products that exploit children as workers, are tested on animals, or damage the environment.
Mary Williams Dewson (1874–1962) was an American feminist and political activist. After graduating from Wellesley College in 1897, she worked for the Women's Educational and Industrial Union. She became an active member of the National Consumers League (NCL) and received mentorship from Florence Kelley, a famous advocate for social justice feminism and General Secretary of the NCL. Dewson's later role as civic secretary of the Women's City Club of New York (WCCNY) led to her meeting Eleanor Roosevelt, who later convinced Dewson to be more politically active in the Democratic Party. Dewson went on to take over Roosevelt's role as head of the Women's Division of the Democratic National Campaign Committee. Dewson's "Reporter Plan" mobilized thousands of women to spread information about the New Deal legislation and garner support for it. In connection with the Reporter Plan, the Women's Division held regional conferences for women. This movement led to a historically high level of female political participation.
Labor rights or workers' rights are both legal rights and human rights relating to labor relations between workers and employers. These rights are codified in national and international labor and employment law. In general, these rights influence working conditions in the relations of employment. One of the most prominent is the right to freedom of association, otherwise known as the right to organize. Workers organized in trade unions exercise the right to collective bargaining to improve working conditions.
The National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) was a private, non-profit organization in the United States that served as a leading proponent for the national child labor reform movement. Its mission was to promote "the rights, awareness, dignity, well-being and education of children and youth as they relate to work and working."
Florence Moltrop Kelley was a social and political reformer and the pioneer of the term wage abolitionism. Her work against sweatshops and for the minimum wage, eight-hour workdays, and children's rights is widely regarded today.
Josephine Clara Goldmark was an advocate of labor law reform in the United States during the early 20th century. Her work against child labor and for wages-and-hours legislation was influential in the passage of the Keating–Owen Act in 1916 and the later Fair Labor Standards Act of 1937.
The United States Women's Bureau (WB) is an agency of the United States government within the United States Department of Labor. The Women's Bureau works to create parity for women in the labor force by conducting research and policy analysis, to inform and promote policy change, and to increase public awareness and education.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) is a worker-based human rights organization focusing on social responsibility in corporate supply chains, human trafficking, gender-based violence at work and occupational health and safety.
The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) is a nonprofit advocacy organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., U.S., that describes itself as "an advocate for and with the working poor around the world." ILRF, formerly the "International Labor Rights Education & Research Fund", was founded in 1986, and the organization's mission statement reads: "ILRF believes that all workers have the right to a safe working environment where they are treated with dignity and respect, and where they can organize freely to defend and promote their rights and interests. ILRF works to develop practical and effective tools to assist workers in winning enforcement of protections for their basic rights, and hold labor rights violators accountable."
Anti-sweatshop movement refers to campaigns to improve the conditions of workers in sweatshops, i.e. manufacturing places characterized by low wages, poor working conditions and often child labor. It started in the 19th century in industrialized countries such as the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom to improve the conditions of workers in those countries. These campaigns are meant to improve the working conditions through advocacy for higher wages, safer conditions, unionization and other protections. While they are meant to undermine the reputation of companies using sweatshop labor, they are not statistically significant as intended.
Lucy Randolph Mason was an American labor activist and suffragist. She was involved in the union movement, the consumer movement and the civil rights movement in the mid-20th century.
Nike, Inc. has been accused of using sweatshops and worker abuse to produce footwear and apparel in East Asia. After rising prices and the increasing cost of labor in Korean and Taiwanese factories, Nike began contracting in countries elsewhere in Asia, which includes parts of India, Pakistan, and Indonesia. It sub-contracted factories without reviewing the conditions, based on the lowest bid. Nike's usage of sweatshops originates to the 1970's. However, it wasn't until 1991, when a report by Jeff Ballinger was published detailing their insufficient payment of workers and the poor conditions in their Indonesian factories, that these sweatshops came under the media and human rights scrutiny that continues to today.
The consumer movement is an effort to promote consumer protection through an organized social movement, which is in many places led by consumer organizations. It advocates for the rights of consumers, especially when those rights are actively breached by the actions of corporations, governments, and other organizations that provide products and services to consumers. Consumer movements also commonly advocate for increased health and safety standards, honest information about products in advertising, and consumer representation in political bodies.
Clothing industry or garment industry summarizes the types of trade and industry along the production and value chain of clothing and garments, starting with the textile industry, embellishment using embroidery, via the fashion industry to apparel retailers up to trade with second-hand clothes and textile recycling. The producing sectors build upon a wealth of clothing technology some of which, like the loom, the cotton gin, and the sewing machine heralded industrialization not only of the previous textile manufacturing practices. Clothing industries are also known as allied industries, fashion industries, garment industries, or soft goods industries.
Mabel Costigan was an American community and church leader and advocate for labor laws for children and foreign-born individuals. Among her many social and political endeavors, she served on the advisory council of the National Child Labor Committee and was vice president of the National Consumers League.
Mary Clare de Graffenried was an American labor researcher and writer, who worked as an investigator for the U.S. Department of Labor beginning in 1888. She wrote a number of influential articles on the conditions of working-class people, particularly women and children, including the controversial 1891 essay "The Georgia Cracker in the Cotton Mill." Her work is notable for its early inclusion of scientific data as a basis for rhetorical argument in discussions of the American working class.
Farmworkers in the United States have unique demographics, wages, working conditions, organizing, and environmental aspects. According to The National Institute for Occupational Safety & Health in Agricultural Safety, approximately 2,112,626 full-time workers were employed in production agriculture in the US in 2019 and approximately 1.4 to 2.1 million hired crop workers are employed annually on crop farms in the US. A study by the USDA found the average age of a farmworker to be 33. In 2017, the Department of Labor and Statistics found the median wage to be $23,730 a year, or $11.42 per hour.