Rip that shirt off!

Rip that shirt off!
March 2003

And see where it was made. Does it upset or anger you that it was probably made in a sweatshop?

Don't just boycott corporations. act to enforce the Codes of Conduct those corporations have adopted.

How do we get Nike, for example, to enforce its Code of Conduct? Listen to the workers. And work in solidarity with them!

The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) is doing just that right now in Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, India, New York State and many other places. The WRC is a monitoring organization created and governed by university students, professors and labor rights experts, which does not accept corporate funding and bases investigations on workers' initiatives.

The WRC's purpose is to assist in the enforcement of manufacturing Codes of Conduct adopted by colleges and universities; these Codes are designed to ensure that factories producing clothing and other goods bearing college and university names respect the basic rights of workers.

The WRC works with local support organizations that the workers have trusted for years to help stop firing of union leaders, and other types of union busting, while working to get the workers collective bargaining rights through the power vested in the $3 billion dollar industry of collegiate apparel. They've helped workers win struggles against some of the biggest corporations out there!

What would the campaign at UF aim to do?

Convince the University Athletic Association (UAA) that the Fair Labor Association (FLA), our current monitoring organization, on its own is insufficient due to the bias that comes with corporate sponsorship, and a lack of transparency.
Show them that the combination of WRC and the FLA will provide oversight to ensure that workers rights are not violated. Through:
- Full access to factory site locations through the database on the WRC website, not just corporate headquarters based in the US like appears on the FLA website.
- Completely external monitoring, without a cent of funding from corporations; even though the FLA conducts some investigations with independent monitoring companies, they are still paying the investigators with corporate dollars.
- Building public awareness about the ongoing violation of workers' rights and real changes made when monitoring succeeds.
- Greater worker confidence in the investigation, since they initiate the process through the WRC's Worker Complaint Mechanism.

While over 100 universities nationwide have recognized the inadequacies of the FLA and affiliated with the WRC, the state of Florida lags behind, and UF, as the largest state university, should lead Florida into this movement.

Let's stop RIPPING OFF the people who make Gator clothes and start getting serious about converting sweatshops into workshops of corporate responsibility.

Interested in working on this campaign, co-sponsoring us, or learning more about the issues? Call Amy Campney at 379-4681 or email amy_psalm25@hotmail.com OR Come to the meeting on Monday March 3rd at 7pm in Turlington Rm 2305.

Victories won! Go to the press room at www.workersrights.org. See the list of corporate headquarters: www.fairlabor.org