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Garment Worker Solidarity

USAS is committed to organizing in solidarity with garment workers to fight sweatshop conditions such as poverty wages, forced overtime, sexual harassment, union busting, and health and safety violations in the global apparel industry

From the beginning, USAS has identified the reckless business practices of apparel brands as the root cause of sweatshops. We also know that the only way to beat the brands and end sweatshop conditions is to help build a global labor movement that could take on the real bosses of the apparel industry on a transnational scale.

Using our unique leverage as students attending universities with multimillion-dollar apparel programs, USAS has run campaigns on campuses across the country to force apparel brands to respect workers rights. First, we demanded that our universities tell brands to disclose the locations of the factories producing collegiate apparel; then we pushed universities to adopt labor codes of conduct that set minimum standards for collegiate apparel production; then we compelled our schools to affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium, the only independent apparel monitoring organization; and most recently we have campaigned for our universities to adopt a comprehensive sweat-free solution, called the Designated Suppliers Program.

Using all of these tools, USAS has waged strategic struggles alongside garment worker unions in the global South to demand that brands respect workers’ rights to living wages and safe working conditions, as well as the right to form democratic unions. Through international solidarity, USAS and workers have been able to achieve some of the anti-sweatshop movement’s landmark victories.

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