By Lily Jamali
Daily Bruin Contributor
DAVIS, Calif. “”mdash; Student activists from across California
convened at UC Davis this weekend to educate themselves and
strategize on corporate accountability for sweatshops and
farmworkers issues.
More than 150 students attended the third annual California
Students Against Sweatshops conference, including six students from
UCLA’s chapter of CALSAS. UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, Cal,
Cal State and Santa Clara were among the 25 schools represented. A
handful of high school students also took part.
“We are here to talk about ways that we can get our
universities out of the sweatshop business,” said Dale
Weaver, a graduate student of history at San Jose State
University.
“Our mission is to get our universities, colleges and high
schools to stop exploiting the workers that are connected with
them.”
Student anti-sweatshop activists used the conference to network
among themselves and to reach newer members of the movement.
“I’m very interested in campaigning for
farmer’s rights,” said Christine Riordan, a third-year
Spanish and international development studies student and member of
UCLA Students Against Sweatshops. “I thought this would be a
good opportunity to talk to other people and learn about
it.”
On Saturday morning, the conference opened with testimonials
from two immigrants who have experienced sweatshops first-hand. The
first testimonial came from a farmworker who picks mushrooms for
Pict-Sweet in Oxnard.
Assisted by a Spanish translator, he discussed the alleged
harassment he and other workers currently experience from managers
while they try to mobilize with the United Farm Workers.
Another testimonial followed from an Asian immigrant who arrived
in the Bay Area in 1990 and has since worked in the garment
industry.
“It was very hard for me when I got here because of the
racism and the language barrier,” said Shirley Liang, who
came representing Asian Immigrants Women Advocates, an
Oakland-based organization that has fought against alleged
sweatshop abuses by Jessica McClintock and Esprit.
“Since I didn’t know English, people didn’t
treat me with respect,” Liang added as she described the work
AIWA has done to improve workers’ lives by offering English
classes to them.
Following the testimonials, Evelyn Zepeda, a second-year
political psychology and women’s studies student at Pitzer
College, spoke about her recent trip to the Kukdong factory in
Puebla, Mexico. Kukdong produces college apparel for UC Berkeley,
University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina.
On Jan. 3, managers at Kukdong, a Nike subcontractor, fired five
workers who had been organizing a switch to a worker-controlled
union. Six days later, workers organized a “wildcat
strike” in which 800 workers walked out.
Nike has acknowledged in the past an “ongoing labor
dispute” at the Kukdong factory.
The Jan. 24 report issued by the Workers Right Consortium, an
independent monitoring group that conducted a fact-finding mission
at Kukdong, indicated the use of child labor, rancid food, and
unlawful denial of maternity leave to women, who compose 70 percent
of the workers at Kukdong.
“Some of the other conditions included verbal and physical
abuse,” Zepeda said. “Physical abuse was common,
especially from Korean management toward the workers.”
In addition, conference speakers educated students with
information on abuses in the banana industry in Latin America.
Keynote speaker Deborah James from Global Exchange, a non-profit
human rights organization, described the loss of union jobs in
Costa Rica to workers in Equador.
“Equadorian workers are being terribly exploited right
now,” James said.
“A wage of $2 a day is just insane considering the changes
that have taken place in their economy,” she added,
contesting the idea that Latin American workers are paid up to
living standards in their own countries.
James also addressed the health risks banana industry workers
confront as a result of pesticides.
“There is a case from a number of years ago where 20,000
workers in Costa Rica alone were made sterile from the use of
pesticides,” James said. “It’s an industry with a
tremendous history of human rights.”
To end the conference, 60 students protested in solidarity with
Kukdong workers at a Nike factory store in Vacaville, 20 miles from
Davis.
Protesters outside the store handed out flyers to Nike customers
and passers-by. Holding signs that said “Nike is
Slavery” and other slogans, they stood in front of the
entrance for an hour before concluding with a verse of “We
are angry, gentle people.”
“This is not just going to spill over,” Zepeda said.
“The bullshit that Nike pulls is going to have an impact on
what a whole generation is going to think.
“They may think that this is just a bunch of radical
college students that were in Seattle and D.C.,” Zepeda
added. “But they need to realize that the majority of us are
in this for the long haul.”