“I want to say to the brands like Nike that they should do everything that they can to keep this factory open. In this moment, we the people of this community, we need this factory here. We should not be blamed, and we should not be punished with the loss of our jobs just because we tried to organize a union to protect ourselves.”
-Sebastian Garcia, former employee of BJ&B
Alta Gracia is a strong union factory that pays living wages in the Dominican Republic, no thanks to the FLA. Alta Gracia employs the same activists who fought for union recognition at BJ&B. This is one
of the few factories in the global apparel industry that was not a sweatshop, because of a 2003 victory won by the FEDOTRAZONAS union and USAS after a campaign which forced Nike to recognize the union and pay higher wages. BJ&B produced university baseball caps for Nike and Adidas/Reebok until February 2007, when the brands pulled out all of its orders without warning, leading to the closure of the factory and devastation of the entire community of Villa Altagracia. This closure was enabled by the fact that the FLA decided to collude with Nike to convince our universities to do nothing.
During the crisis in 2007, FEDOTRAZONAS issued numerous requests to Nike and the factory to remain open, and they also decried bad faith by BJ&B management, who forced workers to sign illegal agreements that they would not negotiate severance pay. In response, Nike and the FLA colluded to conceal the truth of illegal and unethical behavior. In the midst of this growing crisis, Nike and the FLA engaged in a concerted effort to conceal the truth of illegal and unethical behavior on the part of the factory, and the FLA published an official report concluding that BJ&B had fulfilled all of its legal obligations and that the workers’ rights had been respected throughout the process. To conduct their report they hired Milton Ray Guevara, a notoriously anti- union lawyer representing apparel factories in the Dominican Republic. As a result, the FLA confused the public and gave our universities an excuse to do nothing, allowing one of the few non-sweatshop factories left to shut down.
“I want to say to the brands like Nike that they should do everything that they can to keep this factory open. In this moment, we the people of this community, we need this factory here. We should not be blamed, and we should not be punished with the loss of our jobs just because we tried to organize a union to protect ourselves.”
-Sebastian Garcia, former employee of BJ&B
Alta Gracia is a strong union factory that pays living wages in the Dominican Republic, no thanks to the FLA. Alta Gracia employs the same activists who fought for union recognition at BJ&B. This is one of the few factories in the global appare
l industry that was not formerly a sweatshop, because of a 2003 victory won by the FEDOTRAZONAS union and USAS after a campaign which forced Nike to recognize the union and pay higher wages. BJ&B produced university baseball caps for Nike and Reebok until February 2007, when the brands pulled out all of its orders without warning, leading to the closure of the factory and devastation of the entire community of Villa Altagracia. This closure was enabled by the fact that the FLA decided to collude with Nike to convince our universities to do nothing.
l industry that was not formerly a sweatshop, because of a 2003 victory won by the FEDOTRAZONAS union and USAS after a campaign which forced Nike to recognize the union and pay higher wages. BJ&B produced university baseball caps for Nike and Reebok until February 2007, when the brands pulled out all of its orders without warning, leading to the closure of the factory and devastation of the entire community of Villa Altagracia. This closure was enabled by the fact that the FLA decided to collude with Nike to convince our universities to do nothing.During the crisis in 2007, FEDOTRAZONAS issued numerous requests to Nike and the factory to remain open, and they also decried bad faith by BJ&B management, who forced workers to sign illegal agreements that they would not negotiate severance pay. In response, Nike and the FLA colluded to conceal the truth of illegal and unethical behavior. In the midst of this growing crisis, Nike and the FLA engaged in a concerted effort to conceal the truth of illegal and unethical behavior on the part of the factory, and the FLA published an official report concluding that BJ&B had fulfilled all of its legal obligations and that the workers’ rights had been respected throughout the process. To conduct their report they hired Milton Ray Guevara, a notoriously anti- union lawyer representing apparel factories in the Dominican Republic. As a result, the FLA confused the public and gave our universities an excuse to do nothing, allowing one of the few non-sweatshop factories left to shut down.
