Students at 40 major colleges and universities have announced a new national campaign to end what they deem sweatshop production of collegiate apparel. Students affiliated with United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), a national network of student labor rights activists, are asking universities to adopt a new plan by which they will require licensees that make product with college logos to produce this apparel only at “sweat-free” factories where workers are “paid a living wage and have been allowed to form unions and bargain collectively.”
The New Sweatfree Campaign is the second phase of what USAS calls their “seven-year struggle to bring justice to the global garment industry.” USAS believes that “sweatshop” production of collegiate apparel is still “rampant” in El Salvador, Mexico, Lesotho, Indonesia, Haiti, Thailand, China, the United States, and elsewhere.
USAS did say that workers have made strides and “tremendous improvement” towards protecting their basic labor rights through representation and collective bargaining in some factories, but also said university policies and independent monitoring have not been sufficient to sustain these “victories.” The group accuses major apparel brands of shifting orders out of the factories that support workers rights, forcing them to shut down.
