A small group of University students laid the foundation Thursday for the creation of an LSU affiliate of United Students Against Sweatshops.
National and regional organizers informed students of the role they play in the global supply chain of collegiate apparel.
United Students Against Sweatshops National Organizer Teresa Cheng described her organization’s recent campaign against Nike’s treatment of factory workers in Honduras as a concrete example of USAS meeting its core goals.
USAS groups at the University of Wisconsin and Cornell University, among others, collaborated with the Workers Rights Consortium and laid-off factory workers to create a “sandwich of pressure” on the administration of their universities, Cheng said. Wisconsin and Cornell USAS groups both succeeded in ending their schools’ product-licensing contracts with Nike, she said.
The University students in attendance Thursday resolved that their first major goal is to motivate the University to re-affiliate with the Workers Rights Consortium, the only independent factory monitor directly accountable to universities.
Micah Elkins, general studies senior, said he heard about USAS and Thursday’s meeting through his sociology class and was motivated to attend by the injustice he saw in the collegiate apparel industry at the University.
“I have been here a while and been going to games since I was in diapers,” Elkins said. “The amount of LSU gear my family has is ridiculous. Nike makes $18 off of a T-shirt and someone gets paid 10 cents to make