Sweatshops

Workers’ revolt in Bangladesh

By Sacha Ismail Bangladesh is convulsed by fierce class struggles, centred around the country’s garment industry. Many tens of thousands of workers have gone on strike, blocked roads, attacked factories and other buildings, demonstrated, fought the police and rioted in the streets. Every day comes news of fresh strikes in a variety of industries — mainly the ready-made garment (RMG) sector, but also mill workers, river transport workers, rail workers, journalists, lecturers and teachers. The revolt began on 20 May with garment workers’ strikes in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka — beginning in a...

Thailand

Over 500 Thai textile workers defied the military junta’s ban on public protests to demonstrate in a dispute at their factory. Workers from the Gina Form Bra Company marched to the US embassy in Bangkok to protest at plans by the company’s owner, Hong Kong’s Clover Group International, to shut their factory at the end of October and relocate to China. The workers manufacture lingerie for Victoria’s Secret, The Gap and other American companies. The factory employs 1,600 workers, 95% of them women. Workers marched behind a handmade banner made of bras strung together. Many held sticks with...

US Living Wage activists tour UK

Brie Phillips and Diane Foglizzo from the US student Living Wage Action Coalition (pictured above with Laura Schwartz of No Sweat) have been on tour with No Sweat. They have been touring UK campuses promoting campaigns for Living Wages for all campus workers. Diane was a student activist at Georgetown University, and was an organiser and hunger-striker during the Georgetown Living Wage campaign which lifted wages for low-paid campus cleaners. A series of US student initiatives that link worker struggles to student solidarity now form the biggest protest coalition on US campuses since the...

You're never too young to picket

This item first appeared in
Jewish Socialist.

“Children from a secular Jewish Sunday school in Massachusetts have taken to the streets in defence of workers' rights. The manager of Wal-Mart's in Framingham, Massachusetts called police to deal with a protest by the children whose spokesperson...

First victory in London

Sweat-free campus campaigners at Queen Mary College in east London have won a great victory. The college council has committed itself to making Queen Mary the first “living wage campus” in the UK. This means no one will be paid less than a living wage (currently set at £6.70 an hour), or receive fewer than 28 days’ holiday and 10 days’ sick pay.

US Living Wage activists visit UK

Brie and Diane from the Living Wage Action Coalition are visiting the UK at the end of May and start of June. They will be speaking at various events including the student activist school at Sussex University on Saturday 27 May. Diane was a student activist at Georgetown University, and was an organiser and hunger-striker during the Georgetown Living Wage campaign. Brie was active in organising around farmworker rights with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and the Student/Farmworker Alliance through the victorious Taco Bell Boycott. She was the US national co-ordinator for the Student/...

USAS in conference

By Laura Schwartz Recently I attended the United Students Against Sweatshops conference in San Francisco. It lived up to everything I had heard about the energy and increasing power of the US anti-sweatshop student movement. 450 delegates were united in their commitment to 'solidarity not charity'. Support for the international workers' movement was firmly at the centre of all USAS discussions; they understood that workers and students would both benefit from united action.

A new generation

A series of US student initiatives that link worker struggles to student solidarity now form the biggest protest coalition on US campuses since the Vietnam war. As Dan Katz argues, this practical, effective movement should inspire UK students and show a way forward to home-grown initiatives like Students Against Sweatshops and People and Planet. Beginning with the anti-sweatshop struggles of the 1990s which were focussed on the garment-making transnationals, the activists of the US student movement have extended their campaigning. Activists have worked with the unions during “Union Summer”...

Unhappy Meals

>“McDonald’s is in some ways a toy company, not a food company,” says one retired fast food executive. In fact, in its desperation to sell its unhealthy products to small children, McDonald’s sells (or “gives away” with food) more than 1,500 million toys a year, worldwide. McDonald’s “Happy Meal” toys are manufactured in sweatshops in China and other developing countries. Here, the children don’t eat “Happy Meals”, they work long hours for less than the price of a “Happy Meal” per day. In 2000, a reporter for the South China Morning Post visited a factory near Hong Kong which made Snoopy...

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