Honduras: sweatshop campaign presses Nike

Honduras: sweatshop campaign presses Nike

Submitted by Weekly News Update on Tue, 07/20/2010 - 11:01.

As of July 15 a campaign started by students at various North American campuses in the fall of 2009 around the labor practices of Oregon-based Nike, Inc in Honduras seemed to be on its way to winning several new victories. In an internal June 28 letter, Cornell University president David Skorton announced that the institution would let its sports apparel licensing agreement with the giant sportswear firm lapse on Dec. 31 "unless significant progress is made" in resolving severance pay issues from the January 2009 closing of two Honduran plants, Vision Tex and Hugger de Honduras. Two weeks later, on July 14, Pennsylvania State University spokesperson Geoff Rushton said in an email that the university was urging Nike "to play a positive role in assisting" the laid-off workers and was "continuing to monitor the issue."

Nike is also facing pressure at the University of Washington, where the advisory committee for trademarks and licensing has recommended letting the Nike agreement lapse when it expires in December. A student group, the Student Labor Action Project, is calling for faster action.

The campaign's first victory came on Apr. 9, when the University of Wisconsin in Madison announced it was cancelling its Nike contract because of the company's failure to provide legally mandated back pay and severance packages worth some $2.1 million to more than 1,600 workers for two Nike contractors in Honduras. According to the internet news site Inside Higher Ed, "past campaigns...have shown that once a few universities take a stand, others often follow." (Inside Higher Ed, July 2; State College.com, July 15; Seattle PI blog, July 16)

Plant closings became a major labor issue in Honduras in 2009 because of the world economic crisis and a deterioration in labor rights after a June 28 military coup ousted then-president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, who had good relations with the country's labor movement.

http://ww4report.com/node/8857

Huge Anti-Sweatshop Victory for Activists—And Hondurans
By Jeremy Gantz

http://www.inthesetimes.com.nyud.net:8090/images/working/cache/RUSSELLPRO_11182009-250x188.jpg

United Students Against Sweatshops
members protest the actions of
Russell Athletics in Honduras,
where the company closed a factory
employing 1,200 people after they
unionized. (Photo Courtesy of
United Students Against Sweatshops)

Honduras hasn't exactly been full of good news since June, when President Mel Zelaya was ousted from power and ushered abroad, throwing the country into political chaos.

But a huge victory was scored yesterday for 1,200 workers in the country who were fired by Russell Athletics early this year after unionizing. The apparel company, which has fought off unions for years, shut down the factory.

But soon the workers will be back to work at a new plant. Better yet, Russell has pledged not to fight the organizing efforts of employees at its seven existing factories in Honduras—a major victory for the U.S. anti-sweatshop student movement, which has been fiercely and creatively pressuring Russell to reverse its anti-union stance since the factory closed in January.

As the New York Times' Steven Greenhouse reported today:


Calling Russell's decision "landmark," United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) said in a statement today that "his...is one of the most significant campaign victories of the global justice movement. No one has ever forced a multinational corporation to reopen a facility it shut down in the global race to the bottom."

Russell's decision to rehire the workers and make peace with unionists can be seen as the result of a decade of steady movement-building and coalition-building by student activists across the country. They pressured Russell's bottom line by convincing university administration's to adopt "codes of conduct" for the factory used by apparel companies.

And they went farther, as the Times reports, persuading school officials to create in 2000 the independent monitoring group Worker Rights Consortium, which inspects factories to enforce the labor codes. 170 universities are members of the organization, which wrote a report accusing Russell of violating workers' rights.

“This is a landmark event in the history of workers’ rights and the codes of conduct that we expect our licensees to follow,” said Mike Powers, a Cornell official who sits on the consortium, the Times reported. “My hat is off to Russell.”

More:
http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5212/huge_anti-sweatshop_victory_for_activistsand_hondurans/

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Definitely forget about Nike until they remember they're human beings, just like the Honduran workers.