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Wage Theft

In the aftermath of Hurricane's Katrina and Ike federal money was set aside for the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast. What you may not know is that the Bush administration, at the same time, suspended regulations guaranteeing that federal employees receive a minimum wage. According to Kim Bobo, the author of Wage Theft in America, billions of dollars are stolen from workers every year, not only in times of crisis. And there are few incentives for employers to obey the law.
Roughly 2 million American workers are not paid a minimum wage. And some 3 million are mis-classified as independent contractors instead of employees and millions more are illegally denied overtime pay. As the recession deepens and the government pledges to create jobs will they be jobs that pay a livable wage?
GRITtv speaks to Kim Bobo, Cathy Ruckelshaus, Litigation Director for the National Employment Law Project, Terri Gerstein, Deputy Commissioner for Wages and Immigrants at the New York State Department of Labor, and Deborah Axt of Make the Road New York.

The F Word: Caterpillar And Obama

President Barack Obama, campaigning for his economic plan in East Peoria, Illinois, visited machinery giant Caterpillar Inc. where he said laid-off workers would be re-hired if Congress approved a sweeping stimulus bill.
The President visited Caterpillar's plant Thursday on the very same day that Hampshire College in Amherst, MA, became the first US college or university to divest from Caterpillar, along with five other companies involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Caterpillar provides the Israeli military with bulldozers that have been used to demolish thousands of Palestinian homes and orchards and build settlements and roads, and what Israelis call a Security Fence, but Palestinians call the apartheid Wall.
For years, international activists have called for a boycott of Caterpillar products, which include heavy equipment but also jackets and shoes. And one US family has brought a suit against the company charging them with complicity in human rights crimes. On March 16, 2003, US activist Rachel Corrie was crushed under bulldozer supplied by Caterpillar, as she tried to block its path towards a Palestinian home in Gaza...Rachel's father Craig Corrie joined us earlier today with this message to the president:

War Profiteering

Even as congress denies billions in assistance to states, there is little if any talk of cutting US defense spending. Since the end of the Second World War, when Dwight Eisenhower warned of the ever expanding military industrial complex, military spending has been linked to the nation's economic well-being. In times of prosperity and economic distress, defense spending is pushed as economic stimulus. And it's a bipartisan affliction. But who benefits and what is their interest in maintaining a war time economy?
On GRITtv Pratap Chatterjee, the author of Halliburton's Army and Managing Editor of Corpwatch, Eugene Jarecki, documentary filmmaker and director of the acclaimed Why We Fight, and Scott Ritter the author of Target Iran examine the business of war and why stimulus and star wars are so hard to separate.