Today, members of the Student Worker Alliance, together with Occupy AU and other campus groups, staged two flashmobs in the School of International Service building at 10:10 and in front of the Mary Graydon Center on the main quad at 1:00. After the 1:00 action, around 35 students marched to the provost’s office to deliver a letter and petition with over 250 signatures.

Adjuncts at American University are organizing into a union in order to protect their rights on campus. Right now, they earn as low as $2000 per three-credit course they teach, receive little to no benefits and are not treated respectfully. They have no offices and are not included in university governance structures.

However, the University has taken steps in order to stop the adjuncts from exercising their democratic rights and forming a union. They have spent hundreds of thousands of student tuition dollars to hire a notorious anti-union law firm and have been sending anti-union memoranda and flyers to adjuncts on campus and at their homes. While they claim that the faculty senate can be adapted to include the adjuncts, we know that the issues that adjuncts are facing can only be solved with a collective bargaining agreement between their union and the university.

Last Tuesday, students delivered a letter and copies of the student petition to every department head and the deans of the 5 schools. We want to send a strong message to the university that we are not okay with them using our tuition money to stifle the democratic right to organize and to continue to violate our professor’s human rights.

All your support paid off. Remember in November when I sent out an email about six Haitian garment workers making college apparel for Gildan and Hanes who had been blatantly fired after going public as leaders in a newly recognized union? Well, just earlier this month, the WRC issued a report announcing that all the fired union leaders from Gildan’s contractor, Genesis S.A., have been rehired. In Haiti, which has some of the poorest working standards and least regard for worker rights found anywhere in the world, this is quite remarkable. This is the first time workers victim to anti-union retaliation in Haiti have ever been reinstated. 

USASers even went all the way to Montreal to Gildan’s headquarters, where we met with Peter Iliopoulus, Senior Vice President at Gildan. We told the company that we expected to see all 4 of the fired leaders in Genesis S.A. immediately rehired, and that we would report back to our national network at the upcoming conference if we did not see rapid progress.

Better Work, however—a program of the International Labour Organization and the International Finance Corporation—announced it was going to do its own report and encouraged the brands to hold off any action. As the fired workers languished for weeks without their jobs or justice, Better Work took their own sweet time, finally coming out with a report after Thanksgiving, in which they concluded the same thing as the WRC. Finally, the companies for which the factories had been producing, namely Gildan and Hanesbrands, were forced into action.The issue is not fully resolved, however, as one worker leader remains to be rehired in a separate non-college plant called One World, and those who have been rehired have not yet been guaranteed backpay for the time they were without work.

Nevertheless, this is very good news, and a true testament to the power and strength that USAS has built up over the last fifteen years, forcing brands to take students and workers seriously!

In Solidarity,

Ian Trupin
Worker Rights Consortium Board Representative
United Students Against Sweatshops

Want to help us keep winning? Donate to USAS and join the Alumni & Allies Association

A Message from Ian Trupin, November 11, 2011…

Tell Gildan and Hanes: Re-hire SOTA union leaders immediately!

Can you believe it? Workers in Haiti sewing our college-logo apparel for Gildan and Hanes are being fired for speaking out against sweatshop conditions. It’s now or never for us to support workers who are fighting for their rights in the poorest country in the Western Hemipshere - will you tell Gildan and Hanes that they must immediately rehire fired garment worker leaders? Within days of announcing their union, six of seven Haitian union leaders in Port-au-Prince were fired or forced to retire from their factory jobs.This is illegal, yes, but the brands whose products they sew- Gildan and Hanes – think that they are above the law and get away with such inhumane behavior.

And they will! – unless we join together with their workers and tell Gildan and Hanes that they must immediately reinstate union leaders.

When Johnny Joseph went to work, to sew our college gear for Gildan at the Genesis S.A., on Friday, September 23rd, he had only been out as a leader of the newly recognized sector-wide Haitian garment workers’ union, SOTA, for a week. One day at work, he began to feel ill, and asked his boss for permission to go home. His boss refused, so Mr. Joseph kept working, though he felt steadily worse throughout the day. His boss told him that he had to work overtime, and that if he left, he would have to give up his employee badge and quit. When Mr. Joseph couldn’t endure the pain any longer, he signed his resignation paper and went home.

Mr. Joseph was only the first victim to such blatant union-busting. In the following days, three other union leaders at his factory were also fired, along with their fellow union leaders at the Multiwear Factory producing for Hanes, sending a chilling message to the workers making our college gear: If you stand up against sweatshop conditions, you’ll lose your job.

Six weeks is far too long. Stand with Haitian workers and tell Gildan and Hanes that silencing workers who speak out against sweatshop abuse and poverty wages is unacceptable.

In Solidarity,

Ian Trupin
Student Labor Alliance
Brown University

USAS has been fighting steadily for workers’ rights even when the issue wasn’t front-page news–and they’re helping spearhead a new movement for economic justice.

In Madison, Wisconsin nearly a year ago, the first sparks of a movement against austerity and in support of worker power were lit. For many, it was the rebirth of something that seemed dead in the U.S.–a conversation about the hits working people have taken over the past few decades, a discussion not just about the decline of unions but about a the rise of a corporate-controlled economic agenda that relies on a desperate labor force and constant downward pressure on wages and benefits.

At the heart of the fight in Madison — the occupation of the state capitol and the sustained campaigns against governor Scott Walker and his cronies in the legislature — were teachers and students, many from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. One of the groups leading the charge was the Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC), an affiliate of United Students Against Sweatshops. Decrying Walker’s attempt to turn Wisconsin into a “sweatshop state,” the students planned actions and helped organize solidarity protests around the country.

This year, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) will return to Madison for their fifteenth anniversary conference, marking the anniversary of the capitol occupation on February 17th with a gathering of current and former organizers and a celebration of the sustained movement for student and worker power on and off campus. Teresa Cheng, a national organizer with USAS, told AlterNet, “This conference is really our chance to come together to coordinate nationally, how we can actually transform our economy, which in a way sets the economic agenda for the entire world.”

Born out of the anti-globalization movement in the mid-1990s, USAS began with college campaigns in places like the University of Wisconsin at Madison (Cheng said that USAS jokingly calls the SLAC “USAS Local #1”) organizing in support of workers on campuses, and spread to over 150 campus affiliates around the country. As manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas and workers in the US began to feel the squeeze, organizers realized that they had to move beyond a local or even a US-based analysis and really look at global capitalism and find ways to bring the fight to the multinational corporations that were consolidating their hold on politics as well as business.

“We had to globalize our movement to have an impact on these corporations who were spearheading the offshoring of jobs,” Cheng said.

Jacob Remes, assistant professor of public affairs and history at SUNY Empire State College and former Yale Students Against Sweatshops activist, told AlterNet, “USAS trained a generation of activists to think about the connections between international human rights, international development, and American labor, and to think about it in a really thoughtful and nuanced way.”

From underpaid food service and custodial workers on college campuses to tuition hikes, from struggles against the apparel manufacturers who provide college-logo clothing to support for groups like the Coalition of Immokalee Workers fighting awful working conditions for tomato pickers and other food-industry workers, USAS called for college students to think beyond the relatively comfortable conditions of their own lives and really consider the people whose labor helps them live in that comfort.

“I think USAS in its original iteration was really good at making people think about their own roles as consumers and as students,” Remes said.

One of the major accomplishments of USAS—and one of the anniversaries being celebrated in Madison this year—was the founding ten years ago of the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent labor monitoring organization that investigates and reports on working conditions in factories worldwide. Cheng pointed out that it’s the only sweatshop monitor that doesn’t take any corporate money, and Remes noted that it’s been very quietly successful. Over 180 colleges and universities are affiliated with the WRC, which means that they have adopted a code of conduct for manufacturing of university apparel and logo products and allow the WRC to investigate all factories involved in that manufacturing.

It’s no surprise that USAS is getting attention again as the Occupy movement brings economic justice to the forefront of America’s political consciousness once again. Like much of the anti-globalization fight, the campaign against sweatshops faded from the forefront of the progressive conversation during the Bush years, only to resurface now as Occupy shifts attention to the banks that crashed the economy and the corporations that control our politics.

Yet USAS has been fighting steadily for workers’ rights even when the issue wasn’t front-page news. Stephen Lerner, veteran organizer with Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Justice for Janitors campaign, told AlterNet, “By connecting students to the struggles of campus workers and supporting workers globally who manufacture college apparel, USAS has helped win victories that have improved the lives of tens of thousands of workers while activating, training and radicalizing a new generation of organizers.” He continued, “It is a testimony to USAS’s work that so many young labor, political and progressive organizers got their start in USAS.”

The tactics being used now by Occupy are old hat to USAS activists who won campaigns for workers’ rights with their willingness to use building occupations and other direct action tactics to gain attention on campuses. Just last month, after multiple university building occupations by USAS-affiliated activists, the University of Washington ended its 25-year relationship with Sodexho, one of the “big three” providers of university food services, over its union-busting and poverty wages.

As the Occupy movement spreads to university campuses around the country, Cheng noted that USAS’s long commitment to the idea of the campus as a site of struggle and a nexus of corporate relationships has helped student organizers move beyond university officials to targeting corporate power on campus. She pointed out that the economic crisis, started by Wall Street banks, then led to the slashing of state education budgets, which in turn leads to the tuition hikes that USAS has been helping fight as well as attacks on the rights of the workers on campus.

“It’s refreshing to have a conversation, not just about bad Republicans or bad politicians, but specifically about the corporations that crashed the economy, that are helping create this right-wing legislation and funding these right-wing candidates,” Cheng said.

While planning for the national conference and working on student issues with Occupy, USAS is currently focusing on a campaign against the Dallas Cowboys, who have created a spinoff company called Silver Star Merchandising to try to get in on the campus apparel and logo gear business. “Because they’re the new kids on the block they have no respect for workers rights and have sort of stated that publicly,” Cheng said. But so far, a contract with The Ohio State University has been stalled by protests organized by the USAS affiliate, and the struggle has been featured on ESPN.com and in the New York Times.

The El Salvador factories used by the Cowboys’ company has been accused of threatening union organizers, forcing workers to work long overtime hours, and providing contaminated water for workers to drink—this after an Indonesian factory they used shut down suddenly, leaving its employees owed a collective $3 million in severance pay.

Remes pointed out one of the strengths of USAS is that it emphasizes solidarity, with the student activists standing with sweatshop workers rather than speaking for them. The organization took its motto from aboriginal activist Lilla Watson, who said: “If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”  The focus on solidarity rather than charity presents a different model that perhaps prefigured the “We Are the 99%” rallying cry of Occupy Wall Street.

“One of the important insights gained by the student activists is that poor workers are not just victims of corporate abuse; they are active agents trying to find ways to improve their own circumstances,” wrote Michael D. Yates at Monthly Review, in a review of Liza Featherstone’s book about USAS, Students Against Sweatshops. Through USAS’s organizing, students learned to think of their interests as connected with those of the global working class rather than think of themselves as 1%-ers in training.

Cheng said, “It’s really exciting today because what we’re seeing is this renewed movement challenging corporate greed and global austerity. We’re seeing a renewed anger and fightback and have been stepping up to meet that challenge, and also encountering a whole new generation of really pissed off and politicized students.”

Did you see us on ESPN exposing the Dallas Cowboys’ sweatshops in Cambodia? Sadly, my university continues to entertain a bid from the Cowboys to provide all of our college apparel. A company that abuses workers rights, violates our code of conduct, and lies about sweatshop use is not welcome at my university! Take action now to demand Ohio State President Gordon Gee stop moving forward on a 10-year deal with the Cowboys! 

As a proud member of Buckeye Nation at the Ohio State University, I’m fighting our University’s corrupt bidding process which they’ve rigged in an attempt to hand over our multi-million dollar apparel program to the Cowboys. Independent labor rights groups have reported several cases of sweatshop abuse in Cowboys supplier factories, and we won’t stand for it. Just yesterday, ESPN even aired a documentary on our campaign. If you missed it, watch it online here.

Stand with us and tell OSU President Gee that we don’t want OSU further tainted with scandal, and to end the bidding process immediately. 

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, our group revealed disturbing collusion between the Cowboys and our University to completely restructure our licensing program and to give the Cowboys exclusive rights to make Buckeye gear, cutting off ties with dozens of local Ohio businesses. For months, we have been pleading with our university administration to restart this unethical process, yet they refuse to. How can OSU continue to entertain a rigged deal with a company that abuses workers’ rights and conspires to obtain backdoor deals?

Take action in solidarity with OSU students and workers, e-mail President Gee and tell him to end the bidding process to stop the Cowboys deal; then call him at (614) 292-2424 to make sure he gets the message!

Here’s a sample phone script:

Hello, my name is _____ . I am calling you because I saw the ESPN documentary yesterday on Dallas Cowboys’ sweatshop abuse, and I’m extremely concerned that OSU might sign a ten-year deal with this notorious company. I’ve also learned that the bidding process for this contract was entirely rigged. By signing a contract with the Dallas Cowboys, you will send the message that Ohio State supports sweatshops—a message I refuse to support. Thanks for your time. 

We’re going to keep fighting to make sure Ohio State upholds our Code of Conduct and ensures that every worker who sews Buckeye apparel has the right to join a union and be paid living wages!

Thanks for all of your support,

Rob Battista
Ohio State USAS

Originally Posted on ESPN.com: “The Unseen Faces of Sports Apparel”  by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Justine Gubar (January 8, 2012)

The unseen faces of sports apparel

Dallas Cowboys’ dip into apparel business comes with allegations of sweatshop labor

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — It was eight years ago when Kol Malay, all of 20 and toting along no more than a seventh-grade education, set off for the big city. She rode for three days in an oxen cart, traversing the 70 miles from her home province of Svay Rieng to the garment district of the country’s capital.

Kol Malay and her colleagues log regular, 60-hour work weeks, sewing 10 hours a day, six days a week to earn about $100 a month -- about the cost of a Dallas Cowboys jacket.

Malay is one of 10 children, and like most families from Cambodia’s outlying areas, hers survives through farming, primarily producing rice. Eight in 10 Cambodians rely on agriculture to live, and rice is one of the nation’s primary exports.

But with her family struggling, Malay followed the path of many other young women in Cambodia — leaving the provinces and heading for Phnom Penh to find work producing her country’s most critical export: clothing.

Eight years later, life is no simpler for Malay. She and her colleagues work harder than perhaps most people you know, logging regular 60-hour work weeks, sewing 10 hours a day, six days a week. They fear the wrath of their supervisors if they talk to a co-worker sitting next to them or take too long at the bathroom. They say they are essentially forced to work overtime daily and describe a hostile work environment in which supervisors yell and insult them. They work while sick because either they can’t afford to go to the doctor or fear they will be fired if they miss work. They rent small rooms with sometimes as many as three other workers, eat substandard food and have irregular water and electricity.

All of this to make the clothes on your back, which just might include the Dallas Cowboys Sideline Kickoff Midweight Jacket you scored for Christmas, the one that sells for $100 — or about what Malay will earn in one month.

Indeed, not just for America’s Team but for nearly every sports team in America, virtually all of the jackets, jerseys, hats, pants and, yes, even bathrobes bearing your favorite team’s insignia are made in factories abroad. Kol Malay, then, is the unseen face of a multibillion-dollar industry: The laborer who earns the minimum wage — in Malay’s case, 29 cents an hour — who lives below the poverty level, who wouldn’t know a Dallas Cowboy from a Dallas Maverick, and who has no real hopes of emerging from the cycle.

With the two hours of “voluntary” overtime she works daily, Malay brings home about $100 a month, which, according to one watchdog group is at least a third of what’s required for a “living wage” in Phnom Penh.

“I can sew as many as 1,000 or 1,100 to 1,200 depending on the types of shirt,” Malay says through an interpreter of the daily quota of parts of a shirt she completes. “To make so little money out of so many shirts made is an insult. I make thousands [of shirts], and they can sell each shirt for $70 to $80.”

Thousands of apparel workers leave the factories after a day's work in Cambodia.

The issue is hardly isolated to the Cowboys, who, like most other major brands such as Nike and adidas, contract with independently owned factories around the world to get their merchandise made.

“The norm across the global apparel industry is your typical sweatshop, where workers are paid poverty wages,” says Teresa Cheng, the international campaigns coordinator for United Students Against Sweatshops. “There’s rampant sexual harassment. A lot of times there’s even physical abuse.

“A couple decades ago, we first heard about all these sensational scandals about Nike sweatshops, and I would say, two decades later, not much has changed.”

“Outside the Lines” traveled to Cambodia as part of an investigation into the use of sweatshop labor to produce sports merchandise, with particular focus on the Dallas Cowboys and recent criticism the team has drawn as it expands its reach into producing college apparel.

In May, after earlier creating an ancillary company called Silver Star Merchandising, the Cowboys struck a 10-year deal with USC to become the primary licensee of Trojans apparel. The team has its sights set on signing a handful of top-flight college programs.

“I think that we will definitely sign new schools in the future,” says Bill Priakos, who runs the Cowboys’ merchandising operation. “… I think that this model kind of maxes out around 10. … And that’s really it, because really, you have to stay focused. You have to — we’ve got a real passion for this, and we want to make sure that we’re speaking to the … alumni, the current student, the future student. And there’s a real passion that’s about that, and I only have so much of that passion.”

The Cowboys, though, have run into a buzz saw of passion since they embarked on their collegiate plan, exposing themselves to scrutiny from labor rights organizations who believe the team has failed to adequately address reported violations against workers at factories they use.

Priakos has been in talks with Ohio State for more than a year, trying to convince the Buckeyes to sign on, but those efforts have been muddied by student protests and media attention on the Cowboys’ practices.

In June, Ohio State Students Against Sweatshops — a branch of the national organization Cheng serves – wrote to OSU president Gordon Gee, suggesting a deal with the Cowboys would be “a huge step backwards in the university’s efforts to end sweatshop abuse in our college gear supply chain.” The students described the Cowboys as “a company with no track record of social responsibility” and pointed to at least one reported violation at a factory used by the team.

When Rick Van Brimmer, OSU’s director of trademark and licensing, forwarded the letter to Priakos, the Cowboys exec responded via email, “Good grief. How would you like me to respond?”

Van Brimmer, who some OSU students have suggested developed a far too cozy relationship with Priakos, wrote back, “maybe you could shed some light on the allegations that I could share with the administration/evaluation committee.”

Priakos did not help himself when he provided a detailed response that included the claim that, “Upon review, you will see that we have had very stringent conduct rules in place for 10 years, with NOT ONE violation of workers rights during that time. Not one.” OTL obtained these emails through public records requests to Ohio State.

The response was ridiculed publicly and privately to “Outside the Lines” as naïve, at best, and arrogant, at worst. From labor rights organizations to representatives of other major brands, from licensing directors at big-time colleges to academics who have studied this issue for years, the message was the same: Violations are everywhere, it’s the reality of the business, and no one has denied that for years.

“I feel like we’re going back in time 15, 20 years,” says Penn State assistant professor Mark Anner, who is the coordinator of the school’s Project for Global Workers’ Rights. “I’ve been researching, examining, looking at this industry for close to 20 years now, and I would have to say that’s impossible. I’ve looked at auditing reports where I’ve seen, perhaps on average, 18 violations per factory. So problems, violations are extremely common. This is one of the most hypercompetitive industries in the global economy.”

Priakos says the email is taken out of context from “extensive discussions” the Cowboys have had with Ohio State over the year and a half the organizations have been talking.

The Cowboys have been trying to win a contract with Ohio State for more than a year, a possibility that has drawn protests over how the Cowboys' merchandising program is operated.

“If they feel like we don’t do the right thing, then they should protest,” Priakos told OTL, adding that he invited some students to travel with him to a factory in Guatemala, but they declined. “You know, I think, once they learn about us and they know that we’re interested in the stakeholders. … We really do want something they can be proud of.”

Regardless, Priakos says the team takes the issue very seriously and wants to be on the side of change.

“We’re a small company trying — I don’t have the resources that Nike does,” Priakos says. “But we’ve spoken to Nike, and we’re trying to learn from them. And we’ve spoken with adidas, and we’re trying to learn from them. We’re trying to learn from everybody. We’re humble like that. We think, we know we can do better.”

At the core of the discussion, then, are women such as Malay and the thousands of others who work alongside her at the Bright Sky factory in the garment district of Phnom Penh. More than 300,000 Cambodians toil away producing everything from sports gear to baby wear.

Through interviews with Malay and a half-dozen other women who worked at one of two factories used here by the Cowboys, a clear and bleak picture emerged: forced overtime, harassment by supervisors, fear of reprisal if they complain about working conditions and a life of general squalor.

Typically, the workers live in complexes called “dormitories,” which are 10-by-10-foot, windowless rooms shared with at least one other person to offset costs. Malay’s room is at the end of a long path of rooms, in buildings sandwiched between fields that are littered with piles of reeking garbage.

There are no kitchens to speak of, electricity comes and goes, as does water, which runs from faucets outside the dorms and is shared with others. Malay lives with her husband (a bike messenger from the provinces). Rent is $30 a month; electricity and water $5 a month, sometimes more; if they spend $2.50 a day on food, that’s another $75; toss in clothes and other necessities, and there’s not much breathing room.

“I haven’t been sending money home,” says Malay, who says she sometimes has to borrow money through the factory or others in the loan business — at the typical rate of 20 percent interest. “I’ve never gone anywhere. … Ever since I got here, I went to work, to the market to buy some food and then go back home. I bought a nice set of clothes for the holidays, and that’s it.

“I want to go to school, but I don’t have time to go.”

Mark Fainaru-Wada is an investigative reporter with ESPN’s enterprise unit, and Justine Gubar is a producer with the unit. Fainaru-Wada can be reached at email hidden; JavaScript is required, Gubar atemail hidden; JavaScript is required

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 of workers’ unions and students. Next year, as we celebrate USAS’s 15th anniversary, we need to keep building students’ and workers’ power to defeat the challenges that corporations and the 1% pose to our democracy, our jobs and our education. Make it happen by contributing to USAS on the right-hand side of this page. Then share this page on Facebook. Happy holidays!

1.		Food service workers won unions on 11 campuses as students kicked out Sodexo for union-busting. The “Big 3″ outsourcing giants control the business of feeding students: Sodexo, Aramark and Compass. In 2011, Big 3 workers on at least 11 campuses won struggles to form unions, the crucial first step towards ending sweatshop conditions in our dining halls (see: list of campuses where workers won unions). Some joined UNITE HERE and others joined SEIU. Meanwhile, students organized 6 major sit-ins in Spring 2011 protesting Sodexo’s union-busting (especially in the Dominican Republic), part of the wave of 13 occupations that led to 76 arrests of USAS activists. This month, the University of Washington ended its 25-year relationship with Sodexo in response to protests of its union-busting in the D.R., the fifth college to sever ties with Sodexo amidst protest this year. We proved students can terminate colleges’ multi-million dollar contracts with the outsourcing giants to bolster workers’ struggle for justice, a key step towards reversing the race-to-the-bottom created by lowest-bidder corporate outsourcing of campus jobs.
2.		Honduran workers sewing college apparel won a ground-breaking Collective Bargaining Agreement. This May, the workers of Fruit of the Loom’s Jerzees Nuevo Día and their union, SitraJerzees, won an unheard-of 26.5% wage increase and safer machinery in their first-ever collective bargaining agreement after 9 months of negotiations. Fruit of the Loom, Honduras’ largest private employer, opened Jerzees Nuevo Día in 2009 after USAS and SitraJerzees ran the largest collegiate boycott of a single company ever to reverse Fruit’s shuttering a 1,200-worker factory in retaliation for union organizing. During the Rein-In Russell campaign, over 100 colleges and the retailer Sport Authority severed ties with Fruit’s Russell Athletic brand. The campaign achieved a first-of-its-kind national union neutrality agreement between Fruit and SitraJerzees. Today, garment workers are continuing the struggle to organize in all of Fruit’s factories across Honduras.
3.		Rutgers USAS won NJ’s lowest tuition hike in 2 decades. After Rutgers USAS built a coalition that organized a 600-student walkout and a 2-day sit-in that grabbed NY Times headlines, New Jersey’s state university approved the lowest tuition hikes in two decades (1.6 percent for in-state students). Rutgers’ board rejected the proposed tuition hike from university president Richard McCormick, who resigned shortly afterwards. This is a crucial victory as the right to affordable, quality higher education is under attack for all students and especially undocumented students across the nation.
4.		Universities commit to stop investing in HEI’s sweatshop hotels as hotel workers ramp up the fight for fairness. HEI Hotels workers across the country are fighting for fair treatment at work. Because HEI depends on investments from university endowments, since early 2009 students have campaigned to end their school’s investment in “sweatshop hotels”. In a huge step forward this year, Brown University’s USAS affiliate (Brown SLA) won its multi-year campaign when Brown committed to stop investing in HEI. Then UPenn’s USAS affiliate (UPenn SLAP), had a major victory when UPenn responded to students’ campaign by announcing it has no current plans to invest in HEI. Most recently Yale committed to make no further investment, and Cornell and Harvard have responded to student campaigns, too. As we continue the nation-wide student non-reinvestment campaign, the hospitality workers’ union UNITE HERE has placed four HEI-owned hotels under boycott. Plus, HEI has now settled or been held liable on 32 wage and hour complaints for a total of $99,999 at the Embassy Suites Irvine.
5.		College bookstores doubled their orders for the only union-made, living wage college apparel. This year was a crucial test for Alta Gracia, the Dominican Republic factory where long-time union activists are sewing college apparel, and students rose to the challenge. We urged our college bookstores to support this important project. Orders for Alta Gracia doubled this year, with over 400 college bookstores now carrying products sewn by Sitralpro union members — the same workers who spent a decade together with USAS fighting Nike’s sweatshop abuses at the BJ&B factory in Villa Altagracia.
6.		We beat attacks on Ohio workers’ union rights and won a pro-worker majority in Wisconsin. In 2011, we fought back against bold attacks by corporate-funded politicians on workers’ basic right to collective bargaining. When Wisconsin governor Scott Walker launched his attack on public employees’ right to bargain, USAS’s oldest affiliate mobilized thousands of University of Wisconsin-Madison undergrads and joined forces with campus workers’ unions to begin the occupation of the state capitol that inspired labor activists worldwide. While Walker’s bill is still in effect, Wisconsites kicked out enough anti-worker state legislators in this year’s elections so that now a majority of the legislature opposes Walker’s bill! Meanwhile, to defeat Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 (a.k.a. Issue 2), Ohio State USAS found time between organizing a sit-in and fighting a backdoor deal with the Dallas Cowboys to join the statewide effort that collected 1.3 million signatures to repeal SB5 and overwhelmingly won the referendum to kill the bill in November.
7.		Rite Aid warehouse workers won a five-year struggle to stop sweatshop conditions after students took the campaign nation-wide. After USAS members voted to create a Rapid Response system in 2009, the first test of this system was our campaign in solidarity with Rite Aid warehouse workers in Lancaster, CA, and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. USAS-coordinated days of action expanded the West Coast union’s impact directly to the doorstep of Rite Aid stores nation-wide. Finally, this May, the workers finally won a strong union contract that gives workers control over the often dangerous pace of work. Workers also beat back dramatic healthcare cutbacks the company had demanded.
8.		More universities affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium as our colleges’ labor rights monitor completes its 10th year. It’s been a decade since USAS activists did the unthinkable and forced our universities to create an anti-sweatshop monitor that students dreamed up. Today, the Worker Rights Consortium is the premiere labor rights monitoring organization, boasting over 180 affiliated colleges and universities. The WRC remains unique in its absolute independence from corporate funding, in stark contrast to a certain corporate-controlled monitor (hint: see #9). This year, not only did U.S. universities including Emory and Xavier newly affiliate with the WRC, but the movement went international in a huge way. In the United Kingdom, where students’ unions control most university apparel purchasing, the National Union of Students voted to affiliate NUS Services, the purchasing consortium for 84 U.K. universities, with the WRC! But in 2012 students will be campaigning to finally affiliate some of the most stubborn major sports schools, including UTSAS at the University of Texas, Austin — the nation’s largest licensor of college apparel.
9.		Santa Clara dropped the corporate-controlled “Fair” Labor Association. Just as USAS activists compel more colleges to join the legitimate WRC, we’re also beating back the corporations’ sham “Fair” Labor Association, notorious for whitewashing the sweatshop abuses of companies that pay their bills and sit on their board, like Nike and Adidas. Finally, just days ago Santa Clara’s USAS affiliate won its “Don’t Pay the FLA” campaign. Students and Cornell, Penn State and Rutgers USAS affiliates have been escalating campaigns around the same demand for over a year, so the heat is on! In another important blow to corporate whitewashing, greenwashing and “fairwashing”, United Students for Fair Trade rocked the “ethical consumption” world when they joined USAS in publicly condemning Fair Trade USA (formerly TransFair), including its widely-criticized “fair trade” apparel program.
10.		First-ever collegiate boycott in solidarity with tobacco farmworkers hit RJ Reynolds where it hurts. Last week, Rutgers USAS made a major first step in stopping sweatshop conditions in tobacco fields: the Barnes & Noble-operated campus bookstore agreed to immediately stop selling RJ Reynolds products, including American Spirits and Camel cigarettes. This momentum will propel forward students’ solidarity efforts on other campuses. Last summer, USAS and MEChA activists organized a delegation to the tobacco fields of North Carolina to meet with farmworkers and learn about RJ Reynolds refusing to negotiate with farmworkers’ union, the Farm Labor Organizing Committee. We were outraged by the working conditions and living conditions, and inspired by farmworkers’ struggle for union rights in spite of their historical exclusion from national labor law. In 2004, some 8,000 FLOC-affiliated farmworkers won the first-ever union contract for guest farmworkers against the Mt. Olive Pickle company after campus boycott campaigns by USAS activists at UNC, Duke, Florida State and Michigan State.
11.		We built powerful new student coalitions to Occupy Wall Street and make banks pay. With the energy and experience of the spring semester’s 13 on-campus occupations plus occupying Wisconsin state capitol under our belt, USAS snapped into action when the Occupy Wall Street movement sprang up. USAS activists at schools including Northeastern University, University of Washington and New York University were among the first to organize massive student walk-outs to join the Occupy movements in their cities. Many USASers have been arrested defending Occupy encampments. But we know these actions alone won’t make Wall Street banks pay up: We also organized four “Fight Back!” Organizer Boot Camps across the country. There, we trained students from 64 colleges in organizing and campaigning basics, including students from Occupy movements, undocumented students’ groups, and many others. (If you haven’t seen the video yet, check it out now for some inspiration!)

Today, the University of Washington ended its 25-year relationship with Sodexo following a massive campaign by UW USAS and the UW Kick Out Sodexo Coalition. The decision is a major boost to a campaign by students across the US, UK and Canada in solidarity with Sodexo workers in the Dominican Republic facing a fierce crackdown from the company as they struggle against sweatshop conditions.

A key victory for the international campaign to end Sodexo’s labor abuse in the Dominican Republic

UW is the fifth university this year to drop Sodexo amidst student protest over labor abuse, following Western Washington University, Northeastern University, Regis University and Pomona College. The campus food service giant has lost its very last contract with a public university in the entire state of Washington.

Earlier this year, UW students traveled to Sodexo’s work site in Pueblo Viejo, Dominican Republic, and were shocked by workers’ stories of abuse. The coalition hosted a powerful on-campus event with Karina Mieses, a Pueblo Viejo worker who Sodexo fired after she began speaking up against illegal wage theft, sub-poverty wages and harassment from management. She and her co-workers — over 300 Sodexo employees at Barrick Gold’s massive Pueblo Viejo gold mine — formed a union to improve working conditions, called SitraSodexoDO. But Sodexo responded by firing Karina along with at least three other union leaders, a flagrant violation of workers’ basic freedom of association.

Finally the coalition organized not one, not two, but three sit-ins to urge their university to kick out Sodexo unless the situation in Pueblo Viejo was resolved. UW arrested a total of 50 students to try to stop the movement. Sodexo even flew out top exec Thomas Mackall to dissuade UW administrators from heeding students’ demands.

But after Sodexo refused to re-hire any of the D.R. workers fired for speaking out against the abuse, and refused legally-mandated negotiations to improve working conditions, the UW finally said enough is enough and dropped Sodexo.  As always, students and workers united can never be defeated!

Sodexo will be replaced by Aramark, another corporate outsourcing giant. While UW USAS celebrates the hard line their university took against Sodexo’s labor abuse, they are already planning efforts to hold Aramark accountable to the same standard. After a campaign like UW USAS ran this year, Aramark knows it better be on its best behavior.

A wake-up call to the corporate giants of campus food service

The decision at UW is a wake up call to the “Big 3″ giants of outsourced campus services: Sodexo, Aramark and Compass. All three multinational corporations make massive profits from both cutting corners on food quality and exploiting workers. The companies sub-poverty wages and fierce union-busting don’t just stay far-away overseas — To the contrary, these sorts of sweatshop conditions are rampant on our own campuses.

But campus workers and students are fighting back! Just this year, workers on our campuses have gained a union and voice at the workplace for the very first time: Sodexo workers at Morehouse College, Loyola University Maryland, Stevenson University in Baltimore, Ursinus College, Whittier College, Loyola Marymount University, St. Peter’s College and Ohio Dominican University. Aramark workers at Georgetown University and Carleton University in Ottawa. And Chartwells (Compass) workers at Dominican University in Chicago.

At a time when companies everywhere tout the economic downturn as an excuse to strip away workers’ rights and protections, students and workers have proven that when we stand together, not even a multinational corporation can stop us.

We won’t stop till D.R. Sodexo workers win justice!

Our demands of Sodexo are very simple:

1. Re-hire every Pueblo Viejo worker fired in retaliation for speaking out against sweatshop conditions. This includes Maria Magdalena Ortega Jimenez, Carin Yadel Mieses, Maraquia Penalo Rodriguez and Heriberto Sosa Morillo.
2. Improve working conditions in Pueblo Viejo by completing the legally-mandated collective bargaining process with workers’ union, SitraSodexoDO.

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Register for the USAS 15th Anniversary National Conference or share this video on Facebook.

This video is the product of the hard work of hundreds of students from 64 universities and colleges. We spent November sharpening our organizing skills we need to build a movement powerful enough to beat corporate greed. USAS activists organized four regional “Fight Back!”, bringing together students organizing around issues from undocumented students’ rights to fighting tuition hikes and demanding justice for workers and their unions.

Watch the video above to hear what students have to say about this moment, and the need for more young people to get serious about organizing.

What’s next? To celebrate a decade and a half of our nation-wide student movement, we’re hosting our 15th Anniversary National Conference in Madison, Wisconsin, on February 17 and 18 — exactly one year after students and workers inspired the world when they occupied the state capitol. Register now and help spread the word by sharing the video on Facebook.

In solidarity,

Teresa Cheng
International Campaigns Coordinator
United Students Against Sweatshops

The WRC recently contacted its affiliate schools with some news about Adidas. According to the WRC, PT Kizone, a factory in Indonesia, was shut down abruptly and its owner fled the country, failing to pay 2,800 workers at least $3.3 million in legally mandated severance. NIKE, Adidas, and the Dallas Cowboys Merchandising Group were producing logoed university apparel at this factory. For many years, all these brands have profited from the work of its lowest low-paid workers in Indonesia and they owe those workers fair treatment in return. Adidas’ refusal to pay the money owed to workers producing their apparel not only represents a grave violation of Indonesian law, but the University’s Licensing Code of Conduct. The University has in fact already made a commitment to cut the licensing contract with Adidas in response to these labor violations by adopting the Code of Conduct. The agreement has been made since 2005, what is missing now is action.

Adidas’s actions warrant such dramatic action on the part of the University because other companies have shown a willingness to meet their obligations when faced with similar pressures. In response to the WRC contacting its affiliate universities, NIKE came forward and paid the workers in proportion to their production at the factory—nearly half a million dollars. Adidas, however, has failed to pay the workers any of the money that it owes. Student groups at other schools across the country are running similar campaigns to make their schools pressure Adidas to pay its workers. NIKE was, undoubtedly influenced to do this by the past “Just Pay It” campaign, wherein major universities cut their licensing agreement with NIKE in order to pressure it pay workers at a factory in Honduras. The success of that campaign depended on a domino effect beginning with just a few schools, and leading to a wave of cut contracts. By cutting its licensing contract with Adidas, a well-regarded school like the University of Chicago would begin the same kind of domino effect—a series of losses that would push Adidas to correct its labor violations in Indonesia.

Sign the Online Petition

Students Organizing United with Labor (SOUL), a labor rights RSO, has repeatedly asked President Zimmer to cut the university’s contract with Adidas but has yet to see the administration take any action. After sending a message to President Zimmer asking him to cut or suspend Adidas’ licensing contract, we received a flat rejection. The administration asserted that “Adidas has expressed concern about the situation and continues to work with Fair Labor Association (FLA)”. But such a fact should be obvious – Adidas holds a seat on the Board of Directors of the FLA. The school cannot continue to hide behind the clearly biased FLA in order to avoid taking action.

Ultimately, it is up to the members of the University of Chicago community to make sure that President Zimmer lives up to its commitment by requiring Adidas to fix these violations or lose their ability to profit using the U of C logo. The University’s response to our message asking President Zimmer to cut the Adidas contract concluded by saying, “As you know, we share a long-standing commitment to fair labor practices”. Let’s prove it.

Students, faculty request proof of non-sweatshop labor

]]> http://usas.org/2011/12/02/ut-austin-students-against-sweatshops-work-out-for-workers-rights/feed/ 0 http://usas.org/2011/12/02/gator-students-against-sweatshops-leave-gifts-for-machen-protest-use-of-adidas-apparel/ http://usas.org/2011/12/02/gator-students-against-sweatshops-leave-gifts-for-machen-protest-use-of-adidas-apparel/#comments Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:29:26 +0000 USAS National http://usas.org/?p=4596 Originally posted in The Alligator, December 1, 2011

Students leave gifts for Machen, protest use of Adidas apparel