#Manufacturing manufacturing news

[sayruq]

If you, for some reason, still have a subscription to the Atlantic, cancel it

[pangur-and-grim]

lads, the scheming......the scheming never stops....

[ir-dr]

⭐ S Q U I S H ⭐ 

Squishy plush badges with Wooacry! They have a fun website where you can preview your merch realtime; I had a pretty good time making these!

[mythrilthread]

These past months I’ve not been dead, but rather multitasking (making author’s copies of books I’ve bound previously to send a box of them to the US, experiencing a severe depressive episode, and also, working on this!). And now: Behold, the best fucking thing I’ve made in my life so far! ✨

These two books are basically step-fanfiction, or maybe fanfiction times two, seeing as it's the story (co-athored by my darling spouse and I) featuring NPCs from our long and passionate TTRPG campaign (played in the setting of Tessa Gratton’s United States of Asgard). Do not be fooled by the books’ papery appearance, they are primarily made from my heart’s blood and tears.

🌟 The story takes place in 6 (ish) locations over the course of a year (and that year is 2000, which is why people are still into paper maps), with one of the protagonists being very fond of various maps and the other keeping his notes in a Pigpen-style cypher, which informed a lot of design decisions. The constellation (featured on the cover and on the title page) is formed of all the mentioned locations as marked on the road map (which I stitched from two pictures and painstakingly edited all the state names, some borders etc etc to replace the actual US names with the ones Tessa mentioned in her books and some that we came up with as the need arose). Every chapter starts with an additional map, marking the location and date, and with coded (and decoded) prompts from the Star-Crossed TTRPG that we used for inspiration.

🌟 It’s a bit of a tradition that spouse and I use different fonts when writing together, with their usual font being Arial and mine (surprising absolutely no one) Georgia, but for this I wanted a more matching pair of sans/serif fonts, so the body text fonts are DejaVu Condensed.

🌟 The title page illustration is by the fantastic @erebus0dora (my request was basically that I wanted it to look like one of the Bridgerton promo posters but less glossy, and oh, they delivered! The Major & I (referencing, of course, The Duke & I) is a joke name for the hypothetical crack version of this book where every chapter ends with “And then they fucked.”) When we finish the definitive edition (with many deleted scenes and other bonus content), it is also going to be on the dust jacket.

🌟 All additional illustrations are ephemera that I made for the story, added as extra-illustrations in my copy, and as scanned images in the spouse’s copy.

🌟 The bookmark charms are actual (plot relevant, of course) apricot pits, sanded, polished and waxed by hand.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

This photo was taken in 1955, but similar activity could be seen in the Garment District into the 1980s. Dresses made in the factories are being wheeled to—a department store? (Macy's is in the vicinity, as were Gimbel's, Saks 34th St., Ohrbach's, and others.) Or a truck to carry them further afield?

Photo: Sabine Weiss via The Guardian

[izzyspussy]

the fact that they made it illegal to make ads louder than programs on tv in 2010 but haven't updated it to apply the same regulation to streaming. who do i have to call.

[reasonsforhope]

"Nasir Mansoor has spent 40 years fighting for Pakistan’s workers. Whether demanding compensation on behalf of the hundreds of people who died in a devastating 2012 factory fire in Karachi or demonstrating against Pakistani suppliers to global fashion brands violating minimum wage rules, he’s battled many of the country’s widespread labor injustices.

Yet so far, little has improved, said Mansoor, who heads Pakistan’s National Trade Union Federation in Karachi... Regulations and trade protocols look good on paper, but they rarely trickle down to the factory level. “Nobody cares,” Mansoor said. “Not the government who makes commitments, not the brands, and not the suppliers. The workers are suffering.”

Change on the Horizon

But change might finally be on the horizon after Germany’s new Supply Chain Act came into force last year. As Europe’s largest economy and importer of clothing, Germany now requires certain companies to put risk-management systems in place to prevent, minimize, and eliminate human rights violations for workers across their entire global value chains. Signed into law by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in January 2023, the law covers issues such as forced labor, union-busting, and inadequate wages, for the first time giving legal power to protections that were previously based on voluntary commitments. Companies that violate the rules face fines of up to 8 million euros ($8.7 million)...

...As governments come to realize that a purely voluntary regimen produces limited results, there is now a growing global movement to ensure that companies are legally required to protect the people working at all stages of their supply chains.

The German law is just the latest example of these new due diligence rules—and it’s the one with the highest impact, given the size of the country’s market. A number of other Western countries have also adopted similar legislation in recent years, including France and Norway. A landmark European Union law that would mandate all member states to implement similar regulation is in the final stages of being greenlighted.

Although the United States has legislation to prevent forced labor in its global supply chains, such as the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, there are no federal laws that protect workers in other countries from abuses that fall short of forced labor. That said, a proposed New York state bill, the Fashion Act, would legally require most major U.S. and international brands to identify, prevent, and remediate human rights violations in their supply chain if passed, with noncompliance subject to fines. Since major fashion brands could hardly avoid selling their products in New York, the law would effectively put the United States on a similar legal level as Germany and France...

The Results So Far

As of January, Germany’s new law applies to any company with at least 1,000 employees in the country, which covers many of the world’s best-known fast fashion retailers, such as Zara and Primark. Since last January [Jan 2023], German authorities say they have received 71 complaints or notices of violations and conducted 650 of their own assessments, including evaluating companies’ risk management.

In Pakistan, the very existence of the German law was enough to spark action. Last year, Mansoor and other union representatives reached out to fashion brands that sourced some of their clothing in Pakistan to raise concerns about severe labor violations in garment factories. Just four months later, he and his colleagues found themselves in face-to-face meetings with several of those brands—a first in his 40-year career. “This is a big achievement,” he said. “Otherwise, [the brands] never sit with us. Even when the workers died in the factory fire, the brand never sat with us.” ...

-via The Fuller Project, April 2, 2024. Article headers added by me.

Article continues below, with more action-based results, including one factory that "complied, agreeing to respect minimum wages and provide contract letters, training on labor laws, and—for the first time—worker bonuses"

With the help of Mansoor and Zehra Khan, the general secretary of the Home-Based Women Workers Federation, interviews with more than 350 garment workers revealed the severity of long-known issues.

Nearly all workers interviewed were paid less than a living wage, which was 67,200 Pakistan rupees (roughly $243) per month in 2022, according to the Asia Floor Wage Alliance. Nearly 30 percent were even paid below the legal minimum wage of 25,000 Pakistani rupees per month (roughly $90) for unskilled workers. Almost 100 percent had not been given a written employment contract, while more than three-quarters were either not registered with the social security system—a legal requirement—or didn’t know if they were.

When Mansoor, Khan, and some of the organizations raised the violations with seven global fashion brands implicated, they were pleasantly surprised. One German retailer reacted swiftly, asking its supplier where the violations had occurred to sign a 14-point memorandum of understanding to address the issues. (We’re unable to name the companies involved because negotiations are ongoing.) The factory complied, agreeing to respect minimum wages and provide contract letters, training on labor laws, and—for the first time—worker bonuses.

In February [2024], the factory registered an additional 400 workers with the social security system (up from roughly 100) and will continue to enroll more, according to Khan. “That is a huge number for us,” she said.

It’s had a knock-on effect, too. Four of the German brand’s other Pakistani suppliers are also willing to sign the memorandum, Khan noted, which could impact another 2,000 workers or so. “The law is opening up space for [the unions] to negotiate, to be heard, and to be taken seriously,” said Miriam Saage-Maass, the legal director at ECCHR.

Looking Forward with the EU

...Last month [in March 2024], EU member states finally approved a due diligence directive after long delays, during which the original draft was watered down. As it moves to the next stage—a vote in the European Parliament—before taking effect, critics argue that the rules are now too diluted and cover too few companies to be truly effective. Still, the fact that the EU is acting at all has been described as an important moment, and unionists such as Mansoor and Khan wait thousands of miles away with bated breath for the final outcome.

Solidarity from Europe is important, Khan said, and could change the lives of Pakistan’s workers. “The eyes and the ears of the people are looking to [the brands],” Mansoor said. “And they are being made accountable for their mistakes.”"

-via The Fuller Project, April 2, 2024. Article headers added by me.

[omnificent-orion]

This is just me throwing spaghetti at the wall, but are there any Kingdom Hearts artists that would be interested in doing something like a sticker rally to raise funds for aid work in Palestine?

I don't have any first-hand experience with physical goods, but I was thinking stickers are low-cost enough that they'd been the most efficient thing to offer and designs could be continually added over time from many different contributors. I've been trying to come up with something I could do with what little time and resources I have, and now the idea is at a point where I simply have to shout it into the void to see if anything echoes back.

[antisocialxconstruct]

Hey folks! As I mentioned a while back, I turned up some forgotten B grades of one of my old enamel pin designs, and I've put them up in my shops for anyone interested 👍 And of course, a shameless extra plug to remind everyone that the RoboPets are complete and available now, and cross stitch patterns are Also There.

KO-FI for US shipping

ETSY for international shipping

[pennumbra]

Guess what finally arrived! 🌙✨

Our (@xannerz and I) Cass pin is finally in-hand and we're so excited! I'll be looking through them, grading (standard and flawed), and taking more photos in better lighting, and then we'll officially open up for business- hopefully this Friday (9/27) so I'll be able to pack and ship out orders over the weekend.

We don't really have enough stock to warrant a storefront anywhere, so sales will be done directly through DMs and PayPal goods & services.

Standard grades will be $35! She's 2.5", hard enamel.

Shipping = $5 USA; Please DM me for International (CAN, AUS, UK) orders! (We want to make international shipping as accessible as possible!)

Keep an eye out for the official sales announcement soon, and feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

[sayruq]

This is the important part

We're going to see A LOT of pro Israel propaganda in the media in late June. More than usual I mean.

We need to be prepared to combat it all especially with the current invasion of Rafah killing and displacing thousands

[cavalierzee]

End Racist Pro-Israel Media Coverage

[autisticgayplushie]

mango the queer pride puppy!!! :D

[thoughtportal]

Ohio train derailment and corporate media

[yami-yomiel]

I can hear her accent all the way over here /silly

[dvrknessabides]

Dreamers and Dogs

The Rail Yards, Albuquerque