Why I Joined the Sweatfree NYS Movement

original article: http://www.labor-religion.org/2013/10/29/local-high-school-students-join-the-sweatfree-movement/#.UrOKf41Olq4

The following article is written by Katrina Josberger, a student from Coxsackie-Athens High School.

Living our comfortable, busy lives as Americans we often forget an entire world exists outside our country. We overlook the basic structure of our economy and how most of the material products purchased in department stores and apparel shops are made using cheap, inhumane labor in India, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. Millions of people, mostly young women, work in factories all seven days of the week, often clocking over 100 hours. Women are forbidden from taking a maternity leave, like Bangladeshi worker Morium Begum who lost her unborn baby at seven months when she was forced to work through illness and exhaustion. The Ha-Meem Group, the factory company employing Begum and 30,000 other garment workers, produce 70% of the apparel for Gap and Old Navy. Workers are paid 20 to 24 cents an hour, denied paid maternity leave, banned from organizing workers’ unions, and physically beaten. They are refused basic human rights and live in poverty, unable to afford food despite working 14 to 22 hour shifts. How can this be permitted? These women are being treated worse than working animals and are desperately in need of someone to speak up for them.

The World of Difference Club first became involved with protecting the rights of sweatshop workers in April 2013. A small group of students and teachers attended a field trip at the Capital to listen to the story of Sumi Abedin- a young woman who survived the Tazreen Factory Fire in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She quietly told us about her horrific experience: the factory doors were locked and there was no fire escape.  Workers around her desperately tried to find a way out of the building through another floor, but soon the air became intoxicated and many of her coworkers suffocated to death. Left with no choice, Abedin jumped out of the 4th floor of the burning building. “I jumped not to save my life,” she said. “I jumped to save my body. Because if I would be in the factory, my parents would not be able to get my body.” Miraculously, she survived, but not without a broken leg and arm. Wal-Mart gave her a financial compensation, but it wasn’t enough to pay for Abedin’s surgery and expenses while she was recovering and unemployed. She wants Wal-Mart to take responsibility and fully pay for her expenses while she is physically unable to work and establish a safety code which will prevent similar tragedies and hundreds of deaths from occurring.

Inspired by Sumi’s story, I volunteered to be the student liaison for the Sweatshop- Free Committee in Albany last July. The Committee is a group of representatives from different organizations such as C-A’s World of Difference Club, the Labor- Religion Coalition, and the PEF Union who raise awareness about sweatshops and work together to end sweatshop labor in New York and in Bangladesh. One of our long-term goals is to convince Gap and Wal-Mart, two of the largest garment distributors in the world, to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. This Accord is an agreement by clothing companies to inspect and maintain minimum safety standards at garment factories in Bangladesh. The lack of a ubiquitous safety code at sweatshops in Bangladesh is responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent workers in factory fires (such as the Tazreen Factory Fire in November 2012) and building collapses (the Savar building collapse in April 2013). However, many American corporations such as Gap and Wal-Mart, have refused to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh and created an alternative- the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Contrary to it’s name, the terms of the Alliance fail to protect Bangladeshi workers because the corporations which use dangerous sweatshops to produce their garments are not accountable for safety laws or deadly disasters, like building fires. Companies who sign the Alliance have refused to take responsibility for the human rights violations and deaths occurring in the factories which produce their label.

Almost 2,000 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in preventable disasters since 2005. You can help stop the inhumanities in sweatshops by signing and delivering the attached letter to your local Gap or Walmart. Ask to speak to the manager and confidently tell him or her why Wal-Mart/ Gap should join the Accord. The only way our campaign will succeed is if awareness and action start with local people. Or help the World of Difference Club raise money for Sumi Abedin at the upcoming World of Difference bake sale. As Americans, we have the power to demand justice for the workers who produce the clothes available in the U.S.. We have an obligation to expose injustice when it exists and advocate for human rights and safety for all- physical distance and country borderlines are not an excuse.

For additional reading and information:

-http://www.globallabourrights.org/reports?id=0658
-http://action.sumofus.org/a/asda-bangladesh-accord/4/2/?akid=2414.117558.XkCwzj&rd=1&sub=fwd&t=3