Kohl's Department Stores

"Kohl's sources its clothing from such places as Burma (aka "Myanmar"), where teenage girls receive 4 cents/hr in sweatshop factories jointly owned by the Burmese military. Workers at Kohls' subcontractor, Chentex, in Nicaragua's Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone, get paid just 30 cents per hour for twelve hour shifts six days a week and only 20 cents for every pair of jeans that has a final border customs value of $7.14. Nicaraguan workers sewing jeans for Kohl's are paid $65 a month and live in "utter misery,'' Kernaghan said. He said many work as many as 50 hours overtime, added to the 47.5 hours week.

Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone is the largest FTZ in Nicaragua. It is made up of 15 enterprises that employ approximately 20,000 workers. Large US retailers, like Wal-Mart, Kohl's, J.C. Penney, Target, Sears and Gap, contract production to factories in the Las Mercedes Free Trade Zone."

We don't want this in our city, do we? Yes, there are plenty of stores in Rochester who support sweatshops, but this one hasn't opened yet, and we should try to prevent it from opening, or at least let people shopping there know where their products are coming from. So email if you are interested in helping flyering or maybe even protesting; I am not sure when the opening day of the store is, but if you want to you can email me or IM me with your name, and number or email address, and i will email you back with info. Thanks.

*PS. I'd appreciate it if someone would help me with this, I've never organized a protest or anything like it before.*