Word: sweatshops
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Primo factory in El Salvador, 5.000 workers, mostly young women, produce clothing for Harvard and other American colleges through Lands’ End. Conditions at Primo are, perhaps not entirely surprisingly, appalling. According to the Workers’ Rights Consortium (WRC), a not-for-profit independent sweatshop monitoring organization, workers at Primo face abuse from supervisors, forced and unpaid overtime and inadequate health treatment. Perhaps most egregiously, Primo systematically blacklists workers it suspects to be or have been involved with a union...
...labor-racketeering unit at the Manhattan district attorney's office. A few attempts to wire undercover agents had failed, in part because the target--the notorious Gambino family--was wary of such tricks. So Spitzer came up with a high-risk plan to set up his own sweatshop. He brought in a state trooper to run it undercover, then hired 30 laborers who had no idea it was a front. The shop set up on Chrystie Street in the city's garment district, turning out shirts, pants and sweaters. But the sting took longer than anyone had anticipated. "Every...
...there's a limit to how far retailers will go to let customers fiddle with their products. Jonah Peretti, 28, who works for a new-media arts group in New York, tried to order a pair of Nike iD shoes embroidered with the word sweatshop. That's a swipe at Nike's reputation as a company reliant on cheap foreign labor. Nike's response: Just forget it. --With reporting by Joseph R. Szczesny/Detroit
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...