End Race to the Bottom
How can you tell if that sweater you bought for the holidays was made by a teen-age girl forced to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week, in a sweatshop earning 10 cents an hour?
The truth is, you can’t.
Most companies don’t want you to know, so they hide their production behind locked factory gates, barbed wire and armed guards.
Wal-Mart and other retailers claim to have a “Buy American” policy, until you read the small print that says they’ll comply “whenever pricing is comparable to goods made offshore.”
It’s time to end the race to the bottom.
The UAW is part of an active social movement of labor, religious, student and community organizations across the nation working together to end child labor and sweatshop abuses.
But the coalition isn’t calling for a boycott — it’s just the opposite.
“We want to keep jobs in the developing world, but jobs with dignity, justice and fair wages,” said UAW Vice President Cal Rapson, who directs the union’s Consumer Affairs Department, which offers workshops on child labor and sweatshop abuses. “We can fight back. We can hold corporations accountable to respect human and worker rights.”
To learn more about workshops offered by the UAW Consumer Affairs Department, please call 313-926-5269.
