Nightmare on Sesame Street
Posted By Brooke Shelby Biggs on 2008-07-14 17:57:06
Topic :Sweat Shops
Our friends at the National Labor Committee have issued a brand-new report reveling that toys for the Christmas holidays distributed by K'NEX and Hasbro are being manufactured in sweatshops in China under horrifying conditions. Imagine, toys to brighten the lives of first-world children made by third-world children who are forced to work 15 hours a day and systematically cheated out of half of their wages!
Victoria's Disgusting Secret
Posted By Brooke Shelby Biggs on 2007-12-02 19:19:25
Topic :Sweat Shops
Tuesday marks an especially repulsive new holiday tradition in the United States: a prime-time soft-core lingerie fashion show featuring grotesquely thin women vaguely clothed in Victoria's Secret products. But what is worse than the cheap quality and bad taste of the lingerie is where it comes from: sweatshops like the one the National Labor Committee has exposed in Jordan. To produce knickers, employees at the D.K. Garments factory in Jordan work at least 15 hours every day, make 3/10ths of one per cent of the retail price, and live and work under threat of being beaten, fired, or falsely imprisoned. Not much to be merry about.
Be a Real Olympic Hero
Posted By Brooke Shelby Biggs on 2007-11-05 11:16:04
Topic :Sweat Shops
The tireless campaigners at the National Labor Committee have always been among Anita's biggest inspirations. This month they have issued threenewreports on sweatshop abuses in China, including a factory that made toxic Thomas & Friends toys (sold at Harrod's), slavery conditions for children making Christmas toys for Mattel and others. One eye-opening report focused on factories turning out Olympic-sponsor Speedo products. Anita was excited about these reports earlier this year, and especially in light of the Speedo report, wanted to challenge the British Olympic Association and Britain's Olympic athletes - past and present - to use their stature and celebrity to do something truly heroic, like Anita did: stand up against human-rights abuses.
Child Worker Update
Posted By Anita Roddick on 2006-10-25 13:44:59
Topic :Sweat Shops
Here’s an update, further to my dispatch of earlier this month, from our colleagues at the National Labor Committee on Tesco and the use of child labour at two of their suppliers, Harvest Rich and Evince Group, in Bangladesh.
Coke Pillaging Turkey
Posted By Anita Roddick on 2005-11-11 11:34:30
Topic :Sweat Shops
Coca-Cola's slogan is "Make it Real." How about "Make It Fair?"
I've been following the evildoings of Coca-Cola in Colombia and India, and now I learn that the same activites - union-busting, threats and violence against striking workers - are now happening even closer to home. Bravo to United Students Against Sweatshops for bringing this to our attention.
Slavery is Not History
Posted By Anita Roddick on 2005-05-12 13:02:57
Topic :Sweat Shops
12.3 million people worldwide are enslaved. That's more than the entire population of the state of Georgia in the United States or the entire nation of Cambodia. That is more than the historic population of the great Incan Empire.
The labor of these modern slaves provide their "employers" with upwards of $30 billion a year in pure profit, and more than 50% of those profits go into the pockets of businessmen and corporations based in the U.S. and Europe. We should all be nauseated by the numbers.
Nike Takes A Significant Step
Posted By Anita Roddick on 2005-04-18 04:36:53
Topic :Sweat Shops
Make no mistake, this latest step taken by Nike to release the details of the factories they use to produce their goods is VERY important! Everyone fighting the issue of sweatshop labour has been requesting this information to be released for years. The location of factories was always seen as a contentious point with the standard mantra that it would give their competitors an edge. Maybe now Wal-mart will follow suit – let’s hope!
The Biggest Dress Ever
Posted By Anita Roddick on 2005-01-31 13:19:16
Topic :Sweat Shops
I am thrilled to be a part of The Big Dress, a project of SPEAK designed to demonstrate the magnitude of the problem of sweatshops worldwide. SPEAK is soliciting thousands of fabric squares from around the world to add to this enormous - and I mean enormous - frock. You can be a part of it by sending your fabric square, too!
The Face Behind the Labels
Posted By on 2005-01-25 18:53:47
Topic :Sweat Shops
Milwaukee artist Terese Agnew has completed an epic 9'x9' quilt, beautifully depicting a young female garment worker from Bangladesh, sewn entirely with tens of thousands of clothing labels donated by thousands of people across the U.S. and abroad.
A Major Victory in Bangladesh
Posted By Anita on 2004-07-01 07:38:36
Topic :Sweat Shops
In Bangladesh, garment workers have the legal right to three months maternity leave with full pay. Yet in over 90 percent of the factories, this right is routinely violated. For the women and their infants, this is literally a matter of life and death. The National Labor Committee launched a campaign to get multinationals to pledge that the factories they subcontract with would honor the law, and 18 major multinational corporations have signed the pledge (with the notable exception of Wal-Mart).
