worker Archives

Children as young as eight living in the ‘Nizip’ refugee camp located in the Gaziantep province in Turkey were subjected to sexual harassment and rape at the hands of a Turkish camp worker. Sputnik’s correspondent got acquainted with some of the testimonies of these young victims.

According to information provided, about 30 Syrian boys aged 10 to 14 years experienced sexual violence and abuse for four months in the Nizip camp. Incidentally, it is the same Turkish asylum center which was hailed a huge success by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her visit on April 23.

The news about the sexual abuse in this camp first appeared in the local newspaper BirGün.

In their testimonies, the children talk openly about the sexual harassment that they went through and in exchange for their silence they were offered money.

According to information received by Sputnik, only 8 out of 30 children who were sexually harassed by the 27-year-old Turk, a camp cleaner named E.E., told their parents about their sexual abuse.

Many of the affected children after being raped were in need of psychological support. As it turned out, some of them following the incident left the camp with their parents.

It is reported that the accused cleaner E.E abused children in the camp from June to September 2015. He was detained by law enforcement agencies back on September 5, but the blatant incident has become known to the public only now. The case has been transferred to the Criminal District Court of Nizip.

The detainee is currently in prison in Gaziantep and according to the Turkish law he could face up to 230 years in prison on charges of sexual harassment and numerous cases of raping of minors. In his testimony, the sexual offender, E.E, admitted to abusing the children, but he said that he did not know five out of the eight victims who filed a case against him.

Furthermore, he accused one of the child victims of inviting him to the restroom to join in sexual intercourse for money.

Meanwhile, in his testimony at the prosecutor’s office and in court the 12-year-old victim A.D. told a different story.

“He beckoned me and took me to the bathroom and offered me [$o.5o] to have sex with him. I refused. Then he hastily pulled my pants down and raped me. It wasn’t too painful. In several days, he called me over again but I ran away. However, the next day he grabbed me dragged me into the bathroom and did it all over again.”

Another victim, a 12-year-old M.H., described what he experienced. “During the month of Ramadan E.E. called me into the shower and said that he would give me 5 lira ($ 1.5) so I went after him. First he stroked me in different places, then he began to touch my genitals, but there was no rape. 15 days after Ramadan, he took me to an empty room in the camp and did the same thing.”

During a testimony another young boy, H.E., said that “E.E called him to the toilet and said that he wants to have some fun with me and promised to give me 10 lira ($ 3).”

“Then he said that he needs to bring something and left. At this point, I ran away. I went to my father and told him everything. Then we went with his father to the police station and told them about what had happened.”

The victim, M.I., recalling the incident said, “E.E. from time to time called me and my friends to the toilet. He offered me 5 lira for intimacy with him, but I refused and ran away. Later I told this to my uncle’s son H.E. and to the other guys. They confirmed that the same thing had happened to them as well.”

Source:sputniknews.com

by Scott Klinger,

(Infographic: Center for Effective Government)

While Walmart’s announcement is a step in the right direction, the company can and should do far more. (Infographic: Center for Effective Government)

Over the last three years, strikes and pickets by Walmart’s low-wage employees have steadily expanded. Last Black Friday, protests were staged at more than 1,000 Walmart stores across the U.S. Dozens of employees were arrested. report commondreams

Late last month, the nation’s largest private employer finally responded by agreeing to raise its workers’ pay to $9 an hour by April and $10 an hour by next February. The announcement means half a million Walmart employees – almost 40 percent of the company’s U.S. workforce – will be getting a raise, including 6,000 who currently make the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

After the raise, the lowest paid full-time Walmart worker will be making $20,080 a year; the typical 28-hour per week part-time employee, $14,560. The poverty line for a family of three is $20,090.

Walmart’s exceedingly low-wage structure has forced many of its employees onto public assistance programs to supplement their earnings. Public nutrition, health care, and housing assistance provided to Walmart workers cost U.S. taxpayers $6.2 billion a year, according to a 2014 study by Americans for Tax Fairness. Walmart’s recent announcement will lower, but not eliminate, the subsidies the American people pay to Walmart.

Walmart’s retired CEO makes $1,070 an hour, even while he sleeps.

By contrast, Walmart’s former CEO, Mike Duke, earned $44 million in his last three years at the company’s helm – $4,751 an hour assuming a 60-hour workweek – and left with a retirement package valued at $140 million. If Mr. Duke converted his golden nest egg to an annuity, he would receive a monthly check for $770,000 – $1,070 per hour around the clock, even while he is sleeping.

But wait, it gets even more unfair: the Walton heirs “earned” $445,776 an hour on the increase in the value of the stocks they inherited – in just the last five years.

Together, Walton’s daughter-in-law, Christy, and children Alice, Jim, and Rob Walton own half the company’s stock and had a combined net worth of $157.5 billion last year, an amount equal to the combined net worth of 42 percent of America’s families. They occupy slots six through nine on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans.

While low-income Americans struggled through the Great Recession, the Waltons have seen their combined wealth more than double since 2009 (when it was just $79.4 billion). If their wealth gain over the last five years was converted to an hourly wage, each of the four would have “earned,” on average, $445,776 each and every hour for the last five years.

The good news: the race to raise the wage floor in the retail sector is on.

Walmart was not the first retailer to significantly increase pay for workers at the bottom of the pay ladder. Furniture retailer IKEA announced it would increase the average minimum wage of its U.S. workforce to $10.76 an hour – with workers in low cost-of-living areas getting a boost to $8.69 an hour, and workers in highest cost-of-living regions seeing their paychecks bump to at least $13.22 an hour.

GAP also joined the wage-raising party last year, raising their workers’ pay to $9 an hour in 2014, and $10 this year. Last month, health insurer Aetna raised the minimum pay for its lowest-wage workers to $16 an hour, which boosted pay for 12 percent of the company’s workforce.

Costco, a direct competitor of Walmart’s Sam’s Club wholesale stores, uses a business model that stresses paying hourly workers well in order to keep turnover low. Costco pays its hourly workers an average of $20 an hour, far higher than the $11.39 an hour average for retail workers. Fewer than five percent of its workers leave each year.

Wal-Mart could do a lot more.

While Walmart’s announcement is a step in the right direction, the company can and should do far more.

Today, Walmart generates pre-tax profits of $13,866 per employee in its U.S. operations. (Pre-tax profits are what remains after all of the expenses of the business – salaries, costs of merchandise, utilities, except taxes, are paid). Walmart’s profits per employee are near the top of the retail industry. Moreover, Walmart’s profits per employee have been trending higher over the last five years, having grown more than 10 percent since 2010.

Syrian children as young as eight sexual harassment and rape at the hands of Turkish camp worker at Refugee Camp

Walmart Workers to Earn $10 an Hour; Walmart Heirs “Earn” $445,776 an Hour