Current Campaigns

The Wal-Mart Model
The Wal-Mart model is business based on sweatshop labor and a lowering of labor standards. This is what makes their low prices possible, while still maximizing their profits. And, as the biggest company in the world, Wal-Mart sets the standards for the whole industry, affecting millions of people world-wide. Campaign for Labor Rights is part of the growing movement against Wal-Mart and other companies that don't respect human and worker rights.

Coca Cola and Anti-Union Violence
Coca-Cola workers and union leaders in Colombia and Guatemala are under attack. In Colombia, labor leaders have been threatened, kidnapped, beaten, and even killed. In Guatemala, unionized Coke workers face intimidation tactics including illegal reductions of salary, wage suspensions, and neglect of machinery maintenance that creates an unsafe working environment.

SweatFree Communities
The SweatFree Communities Campaign is an initiative of the Campaign for Labor Rights with other national and local anti-sweatshop groups to promote local sweatfree purchasing campaigns and to link them with efforts against local and global sweatshops. SweatFree Communities buy sweatfree and are sweatfree.

Corporate Globalization/FTAA
Representatives from 34 countries have been working to expand the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to Central America, South America and the Caribbean. The Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) is another example of the free-market fundamentalism that has created a global race-to-the-bottom that threatens workers' rights, the environment, families' livelihoods, human rights, and democracy.

Past Campaigns

Boycott Taco Bell
Farmworkers picking tomatoes for Taco Bell's supplier, Six L's, Packing, Co., Inc., are paid 40 cents for every 32-pound bucket they pick. That is the same per bucket rate, or "piece rate", paid in 1978. At that rate, workers must pick and haul 2 TONS of tomatoes to make $50 in a day.

Union Busting at Alcoa
Alcoa, Inc. is the world's largest producer of aluminum. Workers in Alcoa's at Macoelmex, Alcoa’s subsidiary in Piedras Negras, face physical intimidation, firings, and violence after they electing officers for an independent union.

Violence Against Banana Workers
Banana workers in Ecuador who have been organizing for their basic rights and a decent wage faced violent attacks on two different occasions on the night of May 15 and evening of May 16th by men who identified themselves as hired by the Noboa Corporation.

May 2003 was the Global Month Against Sweatshops
Between May 1 (Labour Day) and May 31, thousands of people will be spending one hour each week handing out leaflets outside their local sports store. We want Nike to contribute to the severance pay of 7,000 Indonesian women and men who lost their jobs seven months ago. We want all sportswear brands to make sure that workers' legal and human rights are respected.

Victory! Light House Workers Win Reinstatement
On September 16, 24 workers won a long fight and returned to their jobs at the Light House plant in Thailand, a sub-contractor of the U.S. luggage giant, Samsonite. Their reinstatement is part of a settlement reached on September 13, which provided assurances that the company will not "interfere with trade union activities."

CLR Archives