Spring Break
Sweatshop workers ask Terps to boycott Terp gear
Ben Penn
Issue date: 3/13/08 Section: News
Manuel Pujols, who said he works grueling 12-hour shifts at a factory in the Dominican Republic, might have made the university T-shirt you are wearing right now.
Feminism Without Borders' efforts to convince the university to support the Designated Suppliers Program, which puts demands on clothing suppliers and factories to enforce humane working conditions, continued yesterday evening with a sweatshop workers panel featuring Pujols and another speaker.
The two factory workers informed about 100 people at the Art-Sociology building's main lecture hall about their harsh working conditions while making T-shirts that universities, including this one, brand with their logos and sell to students.
Pujols opened the panel by describing exhausting 12-hour shifts, which include two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute break. Pujols said employees get paid $200 every 32 days and frequently suffer injuries. But when workers try to complain about the conditions or organize, they are sometimes threatened, terrorized or fired, he said.
Pujols, along with his Hanes coworker Julio Castillo, is going on a seven-state tour speaking on college campuses. Pujols said he would like students to not only boycott the university apparel, but align with him in his efforts to change the conditions at the factory.
"We ask you to help in our struggle because you are the consumers of the products we produce," Pujols told the crowd through a translator.
Feminism Without Borders is asking students to urge the university, particularly Joe Ebaugh, director of trademark licensing, to support the Designated Suppliers Program. The program calls for brands such as Nike or Adidas to order a portion of their university apparel from factories that treat workers humanely and to pay the factories enough money to adequately pay their employees.
Ebaugh, who attended the panel, responded to the campus feminist group's written request that the university adopt the Designated Suppliers Program with a formal letter of his own last month. Ebaugh said the letter told the group that the university cannot support the Designated Suppliers Program, in part because of legal issues.
Feminism Without Borders' efforts to convince the university to support the Designated Suppliers Program, which puts demands on clothing suppliers and factories to enforce humane working conditions, continued yesterday evening with a sweatshop workers panel featuring Pujols and another speaker.
The two factory workers informed about 100 people at the Art-Sociology building's main lecture hall about their harsh working conditions while making T-shirts that universities, including this one, brand with their logos and sell to students.
Pujols opened the panel by describing exhausting 12-hour shifts, which include two 15-minute breaks and one 30-minute break. Pujols said employees get paid $200 every 32 days and frequently suffer injuries. But when workers try to complain about the conditions or organize, they are sometimes threatened, terrorized or fired, he said.
Pujols, along with his Hanes coworker Julio Castillo, is going on a seven-state tour speaking on college campuses. Pujols said he would like students to not only boycott the university apparel, but align with him in his efforts to change the conditions at the factory.
"We ask you to help in our struggle because you are the consumers of the products we produce," Pujols told the crowd through a translator.
Feminism Without Borders is asking students to urge the university, particularly Joe Ebaugh, director of trademark licensing, to support the Designated Suppliers Program. The program calls for brands such as Nike or Adidas to order a portion of their university apparel from factories that treat workers humanely and to pay the factories enough money to adequately pay their employees.
Ebaugh, who attended the panel, responded to the campus feminist group's written request that the university adopt the Designated Suppliers Program with a formal letter of his own last month. Ebaugh said the letter told the group that the university cannot support the Designated Suppliers Program, in part because of legal issues.
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