Student Labor Week of Action

Labor Notes profiles the March 27th- April 4th week of actions (250 events in all) led by Student Labor Action Project and Jobs with Justice entitled Resistance and Recovery involving students from campuses across the country :

s the corporate attack on workers intensifies with the economic crisis, JwJ activists and college students took the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination as occasion to push back.

Putting some weight behind the 1.5 million signatures they’ve collected in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, JwJ chapters and students rallied all over the country. Students and community groups at University of Central Florida confronted corporate heads outside an anti-EFCA seminar hosted by the university and an anti-union law firm.

Rallies at Rite Aid pharmacy locations around the country supported employees in California fighting for a first contract. In Massachusetts, hundreds picketed outside Home Depot, a major anti-EFCA player.

For the tenth straight year, student-labor activists joined forces on different campuses. Student groups lobbied in Washington, D.C., for a higher education funding bill called the DREAM Act, while others pressured school administrators to support EFCA. They also intensified a years-long fight for the Designated Suppliers Program, which would ensure that schools uphold “sweat free" policies when buying university apparel.

Immigration raid protest in Phoenix, AZ and Sheriff Joe Arpaio

This past Saturday, thousands of protesters demonstrated in Phoenix against recent immigration raids led by local Sheriff Joe Arpaio. According to the Reuters article covering the event:

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has dispatched deputies into Hispanic communities in the Phoenix area where they stop people and arrest anyone who cannot prove he or she is a legal U.S. resident.

Under a deal allowing them to enforce federal immigration laws, the deputies have arrested more than 1,500 people whom they determined were in Arizona illegally.

Latino activists and lawmakers call his program a clear case of racial profiling because only people who look Hispanic are targeted. Arpaio steadfastly denies the charge.

Earlier this month, he stirred more controversy when he marched 220 illegal immigrants in shackles and striped prison garb through Phoenix under armed guard.

The word "unsentenced" was printed on their prison garb assuming their guilt even before their trials and paraded in front of TV cameras to a tent city encircled by an electric fence. So much for innocent until proven guilty under American law.

The NY Times labeled the stunt a "degrading spectacle," in an editorial in early February, orchestrated by Sheriff Arpaio "the publicity-obsessed star of a Fox reality show and the self-appointed scourge of illegal immigrants." He's facing a federal investigation for possible civil rights violations. But the Times aptly notes that, Sheriff "is not an isolated rogue":

As a participant in the federal policing program called 287(g), he is an official partner of the United States government in its warped crackdown on illegal immigration.

These immigration raids, which began under the Bush administration, have wreaked havoc on immigrant communities across the country. A report called "Over-Raided, Under Siege" released in January 2008 by the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee examining the federal policing program, concluded that the "Department of Homeland Security is leading a new type of assault on the rights, lives and wellbeing of immigrant families, workers and communities in the United States" which subjects them to a "distinct form of 'collective punishment.' " Such treatment of immigrants has gotten international attention and increasingly tarnishes any American claim to human rights leadership globally.

One of the groups organizing the protest in Phoenix was National Day Laborers Organizing Network has built a campaign targeting Arizona for a "coordinated national intervention" to not only help out those immigrants suffering under these raids but to "to help scaffold efforts to achieve broader federal immigration reform goals":

Maricopa County, Arizona: Ground Zero

Immigrants’ rights are under unprecedented assault across the country, but nowhere more so than in Arizona. The infamous Sensenbrenner legislation never needed to pass to achieve its desired effects. The very ideas contained within the bill that brought millions of people onto the streets in protest have become the reality in Arizona, where immigrants have been dehumanized.

In Phoenix, the fifth largest city in America, the “attrition strategy” has been taken to extreme and dangerous levels. Sheriff Joe Arpaio has become the public face of ICE’s experimental and dangerous 287(g) program which devolves federal immigration enforcement responsibilities to willing local law agencies.

Sheriff’s deputies roam the streets in black ski masks, separating children from their parents during routine traffic stops. People with known relationships to white supremacist organizations direct law enforcement activity. Vigilantes deputized as part of an official “posse program” raid government buildings with assault weapons and attack dogs to chase down suspected janitors. And last week, the nation witnessed the ritual humiliation of migrants in a spectacle evocative of some of the most horrific episodes of human history.

In Phoenix, the idea that immigrants are “Illegal” has metastasized. The proposition is no longer just that immigrants should be deprived of rights, have less ability to form unions, not be allowed to send their kids to school, and be denied basic services. What is now being tested before is the country is whether those deemed to be “Illegal” are worthy of punishment.

They are asking people to do the following things to support their campaign:
1) Hold local teach-ins to raise awareness about the crisis in Arizona, and raise funds to support local efforts.

(2) Join us in Phoenix on February 27 and 28th for a national gathering and peaceful demonstration.

(3) Sign a petition to request the Department of Justice to investigate Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

(4) Call you Congressperson and let her or him know that we can not let our country become like Arizona.

SOLE and the cut Russell Contract

Props to SOLE (Students Organizing for Labor and Economic equality), my former student activist group at Michigan for being mentioned in the recent New York Times article about the University of Michigan cutting its contract with Russell Apparel over documented anti-union tactics in its Honduras factory in violation of their code of conduct:

The University of Michigan announced on Monday that it was ending its apparel licensing agreement with the Russell Corporation, becoming the 12th university to do so in response to the company’s decision to close a unionized factory in Honduras.

University of Michigan officials said an agreement under which Russell made T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces with university logos would end as of March 31 because Russell had violated the university’s code of conduct calling on licensees to guarantee the basic rights of workers.

...

Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, said, “Over a period of two years, Russell engaged in the systematic abuse of the associational rights of its workers in Honduras, thereby gravely and repeatedly violating the universities’ codes of conduct.”

....

“This is a toxic company,” said Leigh Wedenoja, a University of Michigan senior who is a member of the president’s advisory committee as well as Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality. “We feel that if the university is serious about encouraging human rights, then we could not keep Russell as a licensee.”

Unfortunately, such conditions in garment factories across the world sourced by major apparel and clothing companies are the rule rather than the exception and University code of conducts that most major colleges across the US currently have are inadequate. They fail to address the global supply chain in the garment industry that create these sweatshop conditions. As Scott Nova of the WRC explained it in 2006:

While colleges and clothing companies have agreed on such measures, it has
become apparent that they alone won’t work, said Scott Nova, executive director
of the consortium. He said that the problem is that factories in developing
nations are desperate for the work. So if an American clothing company with a
contract to produce thousands of sweatshirts with a college logo seeks bids, the
factories will bid low. Even when that company includes a code of conduct as a
requirement, the factories will claim that they will comply, get the contract
(at prices that would make it next to impossible to comply with the code) and
assume no one will notice. Because the contracts are short-term, he said, even
if someone did notice, the contract would be over soon enough.

"The basic underlying supply chain model of jumping from factory to factory, of pushing prices down, is simply incompatible with a reasonable level of worker rights," said Nova.

As a result, since 2005, students on campuses across the country (including SOLE) have been fighting for the adoption of a systematic, anti-sweatsop measure known as the Designated Supplier Program (DSP) at their universities. The DSP addresses the structural problems of the global apparel market by creating a fair trade model for the factories manufacturing collegiate apparel. Under the program " university licensees are required to source most
university logo apparel from supplier factories that have been determined by universities, through independent verification, to be in compliance with their obligation to respect the rights of their employees." In order to do this, university licensees are required to meet several obligations to their suppliers:

• pay a price to suppliers commensurate with the actual cost of producing under applicable labor standards, including payment of a living wage
• maintain long-term relationships with suppliers;
• ensure that each supplier factory participating in the program receives sufficient orders so that the majority of the factory’s production is for the collegiate
  market

There has been some progress in getting universities to adopt the DSP and get started on implementing it. Atleast 30 colleges including the entire University of California state colleges, the University of Wisconsin. Indiana University, University of Miami and Georgetown University have adopted the DSP. But there has been alot of resistance as well to it at major universities that carry alot of weight in the collegiate apparel market like my alma mater the University of Michigan.

In 2007, after a two year long campaign and the formation of a sweatfree coalition over the DSP, I and 12 other students engaged in a sit-in in the President's office to have our voice heard and get this proposal adopted. Unfortunately instead of talking with us, the President (Mary Sue Coleman) had us arrested. In past achievements towards sweatfree UMich apparel had come through sit-ins such as to get the University adoption of a code of conduct (1999) and its membership in the WRC (2000) . Thus our own effort seemed like a continuation in this struggle. Unfortunately it didn't turn out that way due to a President who readily claimed that she "doesn't take demands from students."

Only when we can address the structural problems of the global apparel industry that create sweatshop conditions, which the DSP is the only measure out there that does, can we end the kind of problems that happened at the Russell factory in Honduras.

Starbucks and "Ethical Coffee"

It appears that Starbucks is trying to remedy its image by giving some of those that grow their coffee a better deal. According to Corp Watch: Starbucks is creating a deal with the Ethiopian government to create a "a licensing, distribution and marketing" agreement for three of their specialty coffees.

For over a year the Ethiopian government has pushed Starbucks to recognize their legal ownership of the names of its coffees. In the place where coffee was born, 11 million Ethiopians (about 1/5 of the population) depends on this crop for their livelihood and makes up 2/3 of the country's export earnings. Through ownership rights over its coffee, Ethiopia has the potential to increase income in their coffee industry by $88 million.
As of now, Ethiopian farmers as well as other coffee growers across the world make on average 3 cents for every cup of coffee sold. Its bean is considered one of the finest in the world where people pay 26$/lb but those in Ethiopia that grow the crop only get 6 percent of that profit resulting in horrible poverty.

Check out Oxfam's report for more information

Even with this possible "agreement" to help benefit Ethiopian coffee farmers, Starbucks is far from a socially responsible corporation they claim to be. Despite being listed on Fortune's 100 best companies to work for in 2007, they have a record of union-busting both in their shops (against the IWW Starbucks Worker Union) as well as in their US roasting plants.
Strikes against Starbucks in their coffee shops:
- scheduling manipulation ensures that every barista is a part-time worker and isn't guaranteed any work hours per week. For example, a Starbucks employee can get 35 hours of work one week, 22 hours the week after, and 10 hours the following week. As a result Starbucks workers in the United States earn as little $6, $7, or $8 per hour depending on the location, far from a living wage.

- Though Starbucks touts a health care plan for its employees, it covers only 42% of its workforce which is less than Walmart (47%)- a company notorious for its inadequate health care plan among other things

The barriers to health care for employees are two-fold. First, employees must work 240 hours per quarter to qualify to purchases health care through the company. With no full-time workers and no guaranteed work hours, qualifying to purchase health care is far from assured. Second, workers must pay significant premiums, co-pays, and deductibles to participate in the health care plan. With inadequate wages

- inadequate staffing during shifts as well as ergonomic issues put Starbucks employee's safety and health at risk.

If management scheduled an appropriate numbers of workers on the shop floor, workers would not have to work at such an unsafe speed with very hot beverages. The combination of the unduly brisk pace and the ergonomic inadequacies result in repetitive strain injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome for many Starbucks workers.