Solidarity Campaigns

No Sweatshop Pizza On Campus

USAS supports the Palermo Workers Union and their effort to win a union at Milwaukee-based Palermo Villa Inc, a major manufacturer of frozen pizza. The company has engaged in a vicious anti-union campaign against the workers, prompting the AFL-CIO to call a national boycott of Palermo products, including Kirkland frozen pizza sold at Costco stores. Several university campuses, including the University of Wisconsin and the University of Iowa, hold lucrative licensing and sponsorship contracts with the company, obligating those institutions to promote sweatshop pizza on campus.

• Tell UW-Madison Chancellor: End Your Contract with Palermo’s Pizza
  

  Workers at Palermo’s Pizza have been on strike for more than six months fighting for a voice on the job.

• Students Picket to Support Boycott of Palermo’s Pizza
  “We don’t want no sweatshop pizza!” chanted over 70 students as they picketed in front of a DC-area Costco. USAS members from 33 campuses across the country and USAS Alumni & Allies Association supporters converged on the store to protest...

HEI Hotel Worker Solidarity

HEI Hotels & Resorts is the 7th largest hotel management company in the US. It’s also one of the fastest growing. The company, which owns more than forty hotels, has reached this size in just nine years. HEI buys hotels in order to turn them around and sell them again at a profit, using university endowment dollars to finance its cutthroat union-busting business model. USAS calls on our universities to divest from HEI, and to pledge not to make any investments in the company.

• Hotel Workers and University Students - The Fight Against the Corporate University
  Whether it’s a Motel 6 or the Hyatt, hotels are places for a good night’s rest and at the very least you don’t have to tidy up after yourself before heading out. But what about those who do have to...
• Eleven victories in 2011: Celebrate an incredible year for the student movement!
  You already know that 2011 has been an incredible year. But we think you’ll be blown away by this list of 11 incredible victories that USAS activists won alongside workers this year. Each of these 11 victories builds the power...

Walmart

We support Walmart workers’ efforts to form unions, from subcontracted warehouse workers and seafood suppliers to retail store employees around the country.

• Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart)
• Making Change at Walmart
• Warehouse Workers United
• Warehouse Workers for Justice

• A Day of Mourning for Murdered Garment Workers
  

  “I jumped to save my body, not my life.” Those were the words of Sumi Abedin, a Bangladeshi garment worker and survivor of the Tazreen factory fire…

• Stop Walmart’s Sweatshop Deathtraps
  

  Because of Walmart, over 100 workers at Tazreen are dead. When the Bangladesh factory burned down last month, Walmart denied any responsibility for the blaze, despite clear evidence…