Student Social Action for Labor Rights

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Labor Rights

Labor Injustices in Colleges & Universities

Unfair Labor can and probably does occur everywhere. The t-shirt you are wearing may have been sowed by 12 year-old children, who get paid 7 cents an hour; the person that cooks your food, cleans the floors at your dorm, washes your bathrooms, they might all be victims of Unfair Labor.

Campus Workers

A college community is composed by:

• Students
• Faculty
• Administrators
• Non-student workers

It is the non-student workers that can be underpaid. The definition of underpayment in such situation is linked not only to minimum wage for the particular State, but also to State indicators of the minimum amount of money a family needs monthly to support itself and not fall below the poverty line. Students at colleges and universities nationwide were appaled when they discovered that workers in their school had to go on welfare because their wage could not support their family. The Harvard "Living Wage" Campaign's slogan was: "Workers can't eat prestige"

Activism for Workers' Rights

Throughout the Nation, students have organized to protest and fight for better rights for workers both at their instituion and outside, both at the US and Worldwide

History

The student struggle for workers rights has perhaps its initial seeds in the coalition between student organization and labor unions. However, the actual movement for Labor Rights is stemmed in the struggle against Globalization and its consequences. It is a battle against the order established, against injustices both on the personal and the public sphere, both at home and far away; and that is a struggle that has a long history:

"Although the first nationally organized student movement in America occured in the 1930s, student opposition to the established order had a long tradition. The history of protest within and against American colleges and universities is nearly as old as the institutions themselves. While most undergraduates have tended to be inactive and passive, the have had periods of sudden and explosive activity. From the earliest days, college students in the United States have rebelled against what they considered repressive authority and unrepresentative administrations."

(Brax, 1981, p.3)

Student activism is clearly a long-lasting tradition in the United States. In fact, the first student rebellion in a college or university in this country happened in 1766 at Harvard University(Brax, 1981, p.3). Nevertheless, this phenomenon has not had consistency throughout the decades. During the 1930s, as Brax suggests "change [...] occurred in most students' life styles and political views, change that proved to be significant because it involved students for the first time in the broades societal issues of war and peace and the protection of civil liberties." (Brax, 1981, p.17) However, the movement died out in the beginning of the 1940s with the US involvement in the Second World War, when the peace and anti-interventionism ideals lost most of its appeals.

The 1960s are, according to Robert Rhoads, the "high-water mark of student protest"(1998, p.vii). In his own words:

"It is particularly the decade of the 1960s that speaks to the actions of contemporary student activists. The democratic concerns of the 1960s [...] launched major campus movements against social inequality, limited student rights, and American Imperialism. [...] While the Civil Rights Movement had launched a momentous wave of student activism, ti was the Peace Movement that closed the door on the decade of campus unrest."

(Rhoads, 1998, p.viii-5)

The 1960s were not only a time of high student activism in the United States, but also in many other places in the world. It's an interesting coincidence to note that during the Spring of 1968, students were taking control of the Sorbonne in Paris, Columbia University in New York City and the National University of Mexico, in Mexico City. The French May was qualified by Jean-Paul Sartre as one of the most important revolutionary moments in History.

The 1960s gave way to the 70s, and even though student activism grew and exploded in other parts of the world, especially in Latin America, the US movement receded:

"No one is quite sure what happened. Maybe the few most commited activists who tended to generate the passion of protest simply burned out or graduated and got on with their lives. By the mid-1970s the economy had slowed down and perhaps students had more to worry about than 'equity and justice for all.'[...]Instead of campus wars over policies and politics, the vast majority of students of the mid to late 1970s waged their battle against polyester and embraced political apathy."

(Rhoads, 1998, p.55)

The 1970s and 1980s saw perhaps a rise in other types of activism, but the common struggle against the larger structural injustices of the system experienced a strong decline. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that at this point there seems to be a diversification and separation between different struggles, which in the past could have been seen together. The Civil Rights Movement in the 60s gave way to the Peace Movement, and they were strongly linked in the search for justice and equality. During the following decades, movements against sexism, heterosexism, racism, environmental justice, all took their own separate paths, becoming independent movements.

The movement that arises in the 1990s and peaks in 2000 for Labor Rights can be linked with the auge of the 1960 simply because of its challenge of the whole structure of society. Globalization and Neoliberalism reinforced a process as old as the system itself, that one that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. The fight for Labor Rights falls into a larger scheme of an "Anti-Globalization" movement, as the media has tagged it. According to Naomi Klein, there is inherent irony in this tag, because this movement is "turning Globalization into a living reality, much more than a 'multinational' will ever be able to". (2002, p.15)

Globalization & Inequality

Outsourcing

Sweatshops

Pepsi & Burma

USAS

Living Wage

Student Organizations

United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS)

Workers Rights Consortium (WRC)

Living Wage

Campus Activism