United Students Against Sweatshops To Speak On Brooklyn Campus

January 27, 2013

BROOKLYN, N.Y. January 28, 2013 - St. Josephs College (SJC) is pleased to welcome United Students Against Sweatshops, a nationwide advocacy group committed to raising student awareness about the exploitative practices of the garment industry, to speak at its Brooklyn Campus on Monday, February 4 at 4 p.m.

At this event, workers and organizers from Honduras and Haiti will speak about the abuses they endured in their home countries and of how multinational corporations such as Gildan and Adidas profit from this mistreatment. A worker from Haiti will speak about her unions protracted struggle to force Gildan and Adidas to honor a nationwide minimum wage increase for some of the poorest garment workers in the world. In addition, a worker from Honduras will tell stories of death threats and intimidation she and her coworkers faced when organizing to improve working conditions in their factory.

This event is one of a series of which workers will be speaking out across New York in the backdrop of another mounting campaign against Adidas. Four universitiesCornell, Oberlin, Rutgers and the University of Washingtonhave already committed to end their apparel contracts with Adidas over the brands refusal to pay $1.8 million in legally-owed severance pay to 2,800 former Indonesian workers at a factory called PT Kizone, which shut down unexpectedly over a year and half ago. In the wake of Novembers deadly factory fire in Bangladesh claiming the lives of 112 garment workers, students and consumers are more aware than ever that something has gone terribly wrong in the global apparel industry and brands like Adidas and Gildan are to blame.

This event, which is free and open to the public, will take place in the Alumni Room Gallery located at 245 Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn, N.Y. For more information, call 718.940.5584 or email [email protected].