United Students Against Sweatshops

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"...our universities and colleges are complicit in the sweatshop system..."

Description

USAS is a coalition of students from colleges and universities committed to the enforcement of Codes of Conduct at colleges and universities that protect, respect and favor not only the workers that compose the institution, but also promote social justice both locally and globally. Currently, 200 colleges and universities are affiliated with USAS.

Mission

The abuse of sweatshop labor is among the most blatant examples of the excesses and exploitation of the global economy. We recognize, however, that the term “sweatshop” is not limited to the apparel industry as traditionally conceived; sweatshop conditions exist in the fields, in the prisons, on our campuses, in the power relations of a flawed system.

Thus, we consider all struggles against the systemic problems of the global economy to be directly or by analogy a struggle against sweatshops. Whether a campus group focuses its energies on the apparel industry or on another form of sweatshop, agreement with the principles below will be used as the sole requisite for working under the name of United Students Against Sweatshops.

(United Students Against Sweatshops, n.d.)

History

United Students Against Sweatshops was created in July 1998 by students from 30 colleges and universities that were already active in the Sweat-Free Campaign, a campaign started a year before to attempt to both raise awareness throughout campus communities and seek for solutions to the complicity of colleges and universities to the sweatshop system. The Sweat-Free Campaign then began to work under the newly formed organization.

USAS began their activism focusing on sweatshop conditions in factories outsourced by the Apparel Industry. As the movement started growing, USAS created the Workers Rights Consortium, which provided an alternative to available codes of conducts and their ficticious implementation. It also provided an alternative to the model of the FLA, which was based in "voluntary campus monitoring".

As the WRC became bigger and bigger, USAS turned their eye to their own campuses, where workers were employed at conditions that seem highly unfair. This was the beginning of the "Living Wage Campaigns", which have succesfully achieved important improvement in the working conditions of workers in colleges and universities. Nowadays, USAS is starting to focus on Coca-Cola and its relation not only to unfair labor condition but to certain human rights violations both in Latin America and in Asia.

To read a complete history, follow this link:

USAS Tells its History

Active Campaigns

Sweat-Free Campus Campaign

The Sweat-Free Campaign has historically been USAS' largest and most widespread campaign, and also the most successful. Because of this campaign, 154 colleges and unversities have affiliated with the Workers Rights Consortium and many others have adopted pro-active commitments and codes of conducts in order to improve the conditions of Labor for the apparel purchased by the school.

Nevertheless, USAS puts a strong emphasis on the fact that there is still a long road ahead. The only way for these codes of conducts to be enforced, and conditions to continue improving, students must continue pressuring schools to actively engage in working towards that goal. That is the purpose of the NEW Sweat-Free Campaign.

To find out more about the campaign, follow this link:

The NEW Sweat-Free Campus Campaign

Ethical Contracting Campaign

The most important focus of this campaign is to "kick out" Coca-Cola from college and university campuses in the United States, because of the relationship of this brand with Human Rights Violations in Colombia and Environmental Devastation in India.

This campaign has successfully achieved terminating Coca-Cola contracts with NYU, Rutgers NYU and Hofstra universities. Active campaigns are being held at Swarthmore College, Texas Tech, Youngstown State, University of Michigan, Iowa State, Trinity College and many more...

For more information on this campaign, follow these links:
Stop Killer Coke at USAS!

Student Activism at KillerCoke.org

National Campus Living Wage Campaign

USAS has undertaken a project to bring together Living Wage campaigns nationwide and provide students eager to start one the possibility not only to find resources that can help start up the campaign and get support for it, but also the chance to contact other activists that have already or are in the process of undertaking Living Wage campaigns.

It is clear that the frame in which a movement as big as the Living Wage can come together and build a solid common basis was the next step in a scattered initiative that had been undertaken by students that had previously been highly active in USAS.

FUTURE CAMPAIGN: Right To Organize Campaign

This campaign evolved from the experience of Living Wage Campaigns both at Georgetown and Washington University at St. Louis. The purpose is to fight for the Right of ALL campus workers to UNIONIZE, without being subjected to pressure, discrimination or other anti-union strategies.

To find out more follow this link:

Right To Unionize

Get Involved!

www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org

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