Word: sweatshop
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Even Harvard students who do not consider themselves particularly liberal would generally agree that sweatshop labor is objectionable. After all, these factories pay their workers pennies per hour to work shifts of 12 hours or more at a time, under the most dehumanizing conditions. Their health and safety are jeopardized in various ways, ranging from being denied bathroom breaks to having to work with dangerous tools and chemicals. Unionizing is forbidden. Over 90 percent of the workers are women, who are often subjected to sexual harassment or abuse. Clearly, these conditions are appalling, and cannot be justified by any means...
Despite calls from students and the recommendation of a high-level administrator, Harvard has yet to take meaningful action towards ending these outrages. Harvard did, however, take action to quell the outcry against sweatshop labor in the late 1990s. Along with some of the companies best known for their unfair labor practices, including Nike, Reebok and Liz Claiborne, Harvard helped form the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a group that ostensibly monitors the working conditions in factories. Yet this corporate-dominated organization does nothing to ensure fair labor practices. It relies heavily on for-profit monitoring and has no requirement...
...first step that the University must take to combat this situation. Summers and the members of the Harvard community, including students who buy and wear Harvard apparel, cannot in good faith allow these conditions to continue. Harvard has the ability to do its part in the battle to end sweatshop labor; the only question remains, why haven’t we already...
...They are an elaborate, corporate cover-up,” she says, noting that Nike—a corporation that has been a major target of anti-sweatshop activism—was a founding member...
Members of Harvard Students Against Sweatshops met with University officials last fall to press them to join the WRC, a non-profit monitoring agency founded by unions, non-governmental organizations and universities to prevent overseas sweatshop labor...