| "Another World in Production: Garments Workers Speak
Out" will be on tour this February, accompanied by representatives
of USAS and CLR. Garment workers will share their stories about
producing for university brands such as NIKE, Reebok, Adidas,
as well as Walmart. The garment industry is one of the most globalized
industries and is characterized by excessive working hours, low
wages, sexual harassment and discrimination, hazardous conditions,
and violations of freedom of association.
United Students Against Sweatshops recently launched a new Sweat
Free Campus Campaign, endorsed by Campaign for Labor Rights, known
as the Designated Suppliers Program. Since then, the industry-dominated
Fair Labor Association has critiqued the USAS campaign and the
DSP for self-serving reasons. To learn more about the FLA's worries
about changing the garment industry model, and to read USAS' response,
visit the new FLA
Watch website. Click here
to read why CLR continues to support this important campaign.
Beginning on September 28, 2005, students on nearly 50 campuses
began to demand that in order to produce collegiate apparel, brands
must produce a significant percentage of that collegiate apparel
in good factories -- those factories in which workers have democratic
representation and are paid a living wage. In order to ensure
that workers are able to earn a living wage, brands must increase
the price they pay per good to each factory in which they produce.
Four campuses - Georgetown University, Santa Clara University,
University of Maine-Farmington, and University of Wisconsin at
Madison - have already publicly pledged support for the Designated
Suppliers Program.
With growing momentum, we expect that a significant number of
other colleges and universities will adopt this policy during
the spring of 2006. In order to facilitate these victories, United
Students Against Sweatshops, Campaign for Labor Rights, UNITE-HERE,
and the Cornell Organization for Labor Action are organizing a
series of worker tours throughout the month of February. The tour
will include workers from Thailand, Kenya, Indonesia, El Salvador,
Mexico, and the Dominican Republic. All of the workers have been
involved in successful organizing drives in garment factories
in their countries, and will be telling the stories of their struggle.
Workers will be telling the stories of their heroic struggles
for human rights, as well as the struggles they are currently
facing - particularly the urgent need for brands to put orders
into their factories and pay decent prices so that they may continue
to produce while respecting the rights of their workers.
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