Collete Fair Labor Activists Score Big Victory

When I was in college, I remember reading and hearing about how college students all over the country were forcing their colleges to acknowledge that workers who made apparel with collegiate logos were often exploited. Students would organize, demand action, sit-in and put pressure on their institutions to do right by people making a very marginal living.

So I read with great joy today that these activists have acheived a big victory–an athletic apparel supplier has agreed to verifiable fair labor standards, enforced by an independent non-profit, at one of its factories in the Dominican Republic.

This is a big deal. Often, institutions of higher learning will have codes of conduct that they hide behind when their students demand a fair deal for these workers. The problem with these codes is that they’re totally unenforceable–imagine a union contract with no grievance procedure for our school employees. That this company has agreed to verified enforcement of this policy means a real improvement in the lives of Dominican textile workers.

These college activists and their colleagues in the Dominican Republic can feel very proud of this achievement. The workers will now have the right to a fair and livable wage (by Dominican standards) and the right to organize and bargain collectively. This is no small thing.

You can read about the history of this movement in Liza Featherstone’s “Students Against Sweatshops.”