Campaign Option: Ending Exploitation
“Serfs up, Kings down!…”: THe CIW marched on Burger King on 30 November
Essential Info
The horror stories which are splashed across the news are not just aberrations - exploitation is endemic in 21st century capitalism with the root cause being a disproportionate degree of power held by corporations.
This campaign aims to shift power in local and global workplaces indirectly through raising awareness as well as directly through redistribution of autonomy to workers via living-wage regulation, promoting cooperatives and unionisation.
Aim & Objectives
Targeting the worst corporate abuses of workers by corporations will raise awareness of the exploitative nature of neo-liberal capitalism, e.g. Coca-cola and Topshop.
Campaigning for the extension of democratic alternatives such as co-ops and sweat-free organisations which allow for focussing upon on all levels of the supply-chain (Fairtrade, for example, only focuses on production).
Forging a coalition with the aim to incorporate workers’ rights within international legislation and therefore to promote a living-wage guaranteed amongst large corporations both here and abroad.
Creating an upsurge of union membership amongst young people in the UK to acquire interest on a local scale with a positive feedback mechanism pertaining to the related (and more severe) global issues.
Targets & Strategies
Following Redress Fashion, groups will raise awareness of injustice through high profile actions and campaign for their education institutions to set up sweat-free steering groups to ensure its products are being produced under cooperative or at least sweat-free conditions at all stages of the supply-chain i.e they meet the International Labour Organisations ethical employment conventions which include:
- No forced or child labour
- Right of association and collective bargaining
- Living wages
- No inhumane treatment
In this way the campaign will also follow on from Redress Education and the exciting new national boycott of Fruit of the Loom and could eventually achieve the setting up of a UK Worker Rights Consortium.
Evidence from the United Students Against Sweatshops campaign in the US suggests that the best way to ensure sweat-free merchandise in our universities, colleges and schools is to create a Worker Rights Consortium (WRC).
USAS explain on their website that a WRC is a non-profit organisation created by students, labour rights experts, and workers from across the globe with participation from college and university administrators.
The WRC’s purpose is to: enforce manufacturing codes of conduct adopted by colleges, universities, high schools, and school districts; these codes are designed to ensure that factories producing clothing and other goods bearing school logos respect the basic rights of workers, such as the freedom of association and overtime pay. In the US there are now more than 140 colleges and universities affiliated with the WRC, using their leverage in the $4 billion collegiate apparel market to support workers’ rights
Where workers (including students) on campus are being exploited, groups can work with student unions for unionisation and living wages.
Finally, groups can use support garnered from these measures to organise against corporations refusing to pay global living wages, and work to promote the idea of a ‘global living wage’ on campus as part of a larger, national campaign to tackle global injustice.
Actions
One of the strengths of this campaign is that such a wide range of actions can be taken.
6th form groups could start of by campaigning for their school or college to go Fairtrade before moving on to issues such as sweatshop labour used in their school uniforms or college merchandise. This is a great way to introduce people to campaigning and could include stalls, fashion shows, football games and petitions.
Raising awareness about sweatshops in the garment industry can be done through attention grabbing stunts and colourful demonstrations on the high-street and at companies headquarters.
Students can also use stunts such as fashion shows and petitions to get motions passed supporting sweat free goods, boycotting companies such as Fruit of the Loom and Coca-Cola and setting up sweat free steering groups and a UK Workers Rights Consortium.
Another strategy would be working with trade unions to unionise students and the institutions workers.
Lobbying would also be used to force politicians to enact anti-sweatshop legislation.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A huge amount of research has been done on the issue and the solutions by People & Planet, United Students Against Sweatshops, The Worker Rights Consortium, War on Want and Labour Behind The Label.
- Great potential for coordinated action with Groups in the states, such as the boycotting of Coke and Fruit of the Loom.
- We can actually have real links with people in the Global South such as the Honduran Fruit of the Loom employees.
- As all organisations rely on labour in some form it is relevant to students, in schools, colleges and universities; both in the existing P&P network and those we seek to engage, particularly in Further Education colleges (where many courses are vocational), newer universities and schools in disadvantaged communities.
- This campaign will mean that all the work that the Network and the office have put into Redress Fashion will not be wasted.
- From the success of similar campaigns in the US we know that we can have a massive impact and the campaign should be a great success.
- This is an opportunity to create a powerful alliance between P&P, students and workers, P&P and trade unions (especially important for funding a new campaign).
Cons
- Not a completely brand new campaign.
- Contains many possible directions and strands.
