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Fight to Veto 'Dirty Dozen' Pesticides
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An international campaign has been launched yesterday to ban the use and sale of the “dirty dozen”, a list of pesticide chemicals that have been linked with cancer, birth defects and poisonings.
Friends of the Earth have joined forces with other environmental groups in Britain and abroad to have the 12 pesticide active ingredients banned worldwide.
“Many of the chemicals are already banned in several countries but the British government continues to give official clearance to them for use in agriculture, the home and garden,” a spokesman said.
The campaign is being supported by groups in 25 countries taking simultaneous action.
“Manufacture, import and export trade is allowed in all 12 of the 'dirty dozen' pesticides, even though there is worldwide evidence of their bad effects.
“Some of the chemicals have been linked with cancer and birth defects, while Parathion is a nerve-poison pesticide so acutely toxic that a teaspoonful splashed on the skin is fatal.
“Paraquat is also so poisonous that it has been responsible for many deaths in both humans and animals.”
“These pesticides should be immediately suspended by the British government, pending a full and public review procedure, in which the evidence against them can be heard,” said FE pesticides campaigner. “They must be assumed guilty until proven innocent. Thousands of people have suffered and environments have been ruined. The case against the 'dirty dozen' is overwhelming, and the government must explain why it insists on letting this irresponsible trade go on.”
Jobless Youth
Liverpool – Until several years ago, the West European labor movement, as well as governments and business communities, did not even recognize youth unemployment as a major problem, or one that should be dealt with separately from adult joblessness.
But there are now over 10 million residents of the European Union without jobs, and people under 25, most of them with little or no employment experience, account for more than 40 per cent of their ranks.
In France, Britain, and the Netherlands, youths are three times as likely to be without jobs as adults are. In Italy, youth unemployment rates are a startling seven times those for adults. Among the EU countries only Germany, perhaps because of a combination of strong apprenticeship programs and low wages for teen-agers, has brought youth unemployment down to adult levels of joblessness.
As the problem of jobless youth has moved to center stage – through international conferences, demonstrations, or riots like those that recently exploded in Liverpool and other British cities – the trade union movement has been under almost as much scrutiny and criticism as government officials and employers.
Labor leaders have been forced to concede that the economic crisis is often pitting the interests of older workers, struggling to hold on to their jobs, against those of younger people seeking employment for the first time. Businessmen and government officials, who once whispered their reservations, are now loudly proclaiming that past trade union successes in raising wage levels, social benefits and job security have priced young people out of the labor market.
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Only belatedly have labor leaders recognized that their impressively organized unions are not particularly endowed to help people leaving school and applying for their first jobs.
A sign of growing labor concern in Britain, where youth unemployment is among the worst in Europe, was the decision of the Trades Union Congress to launch a campaign with the country's main youth organizations to mobilize public concern over the young jobless.
Labeling youth unemployment “the most serious crisis since World War II”, the TUC general secretary warned that more violence would erupt in British cities unless action is taken on jobs.
In Liverpool, whose total unemployment rate is at twice the national level and has reached 40 per cent among young people, trade unions have only recently considered establishing centers to advise school leavers where to seek job training and how to claim unemployment benefits.
“It doesn't sound like much, and we're not at all certain we can take on such costs,” a division officer for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, said a few weeks before the upheavals in Liverpool. “A lot of us still feel we are talking about something that should be government's job. But the situation is appalling. Just a few days ago, there were 69 applicants for one secretary job in these offices – all of them 18- to 20-year-olds who never worked in their lives.” That ratio is not much worse than elsewhere in the city:
The Liverpool Employment Offices recently listed 51,000 job seekers for 1,000 vacancies.
In a now-famous speech, the Prime Minister suggested some time ago that people should be prepared to move away from their communities in search of jobs.
But with few jobs available anywhere in the country, moving offers no solution to Liverpool's unemployed youth.
7. “The Right Product at Right Time”
Tokyo – Less than a generation ago, the Japanese automobile was little known, and less respected, around the world. Even Japanese consumers were convinced that, could they afford it, the longer, plusher, gas-guzzling models of the United States, or the more bizarrely sporty autos of Europe, were preferable to their own modest products.
But times have changed. Last year, Japanese industry exported 5,966,961 vehicles (including trucks), or fully 54 per cent of its entire production. Most of those were directed to markets in the United States and Europe where, for a variety of reasons, Japanese cars have become the rage.
Japanese manufacturers claim they were as surprised as anyone by the surging demand for their product. “We just happened to have the right product at the right time,” says one automobile executive.
As they tell it, the rising popularity of Japanese automobiles in the American market was due much more to the sudden increase in the price of oil than to any “blitz” or economic offensive on their part. When prices at the local pump doubled in less than a year, and American auto manufacturers were unable to supply a sufficient number of fuel-efficient cars, Japanese auto dealers moved in to fill the gap. In Detroit it is widely presumed that the ills of the American auto industry are largely caused by the Japanese “assault”. Had the Japanese restrained themselves, and not taken advantage of the situation, the 30 per cent unemployment figure for U.S. auto workers would not have arisen, claim the U.S. auto makers.
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The Japanese are convinced that their success in the United States is not the primary factor behind the financial and marketing failure of the U.S. companies. They argue that it was American auto mismanagement rather than Japanese “offensives” that resulted in the deficits.
But fuel efficiency must be only part of the problem, especially if the success of Japanese makers in the European countries is considered. There, the high quality of Japanese goods, their comparatively low price, and the excellent after-sales network are sales points, as in Europe the Japanese are competing against local producers well-stocked in fuel-efficient cars.
Despite their success, Japanese auto makers and observers of the auto scene are increasingly uneasy about the future. On the one hand, they face the prospect of a tide of protection in the United States as well as in Europe.
On the other hand, the Japanese auto makers are caught on the horns of a domestic dilemma. With the Japanese auto market also stagnating – sales and registration at home are slack, and many dealerships are in deficit – they are under increasing pressure to export.
One highly touted, long-range solution to Japan's embarrassment of auto riches is the internationalization of Japan's auto industry. Already, there are clear signs that Japanese auto makers are moving to produce a large number of their vehicles overseas, no matter what the consequences for Japanese employment.
Given the fate of other auto makers, the Japanese should consider themselves quite fortunate. With most of the world's big car producers in deficit, the worst the big Japanese makers have to report is a slight decline in profits.
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