NEWS - burmanet-l@igc.apc.org STUDE

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Subject: NEWS - burmanet-l@xxxxxxxxxxx STUDENTS PROTEST WAL-MART SWEATSHOPS 

In a message dated 10/11/99 5:20:42 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Thakin writes:

<< 
 Title: STUDENTS PROTEST WAL-MART SWEATSHOPS 
 Date: 06-OCT-99
 Author: None given
 Source: UNITE
 Reference: www.uniteunion.org/sweatshops/newsthisweek/s9-29-99html and
 www.nlcnet.org.
 
 Demonstrations broke out at dozens of campuses this week after sweatshop
 workers from El Salvador toured U.S. universities. The workers were fired
 for union organizing at a factory that sews Wal-Mart's Kathie Lee label. 
 
 This summer a group of U.S. students investigated Salvadoran sweatshops with
 the National Labor Committee's Charles Kernaghan. 
 
 "We heard about workers being obliged to work fifteen hours a day, sometimes
 up to twenty. Workers fainted in the factory because of the heat. Workers
 made wages that kept them far below the poverty line," said Alex Zwerdling,
 a student at Middlebury College in Vermont. "And when they tried to change
 these conditions, they were fired, they were black-listed, and their lives
 were threatened." 
 
 This week college and high school students across the country are holding
 demonstrations inside Wal-Mart stores. One student described a protest:
 "About 30 students walked directly to the Kathie Lee section where we draped
 a black sheet over the Kathie Lee clothing to symbolize the lack of
 transparency in the industry. One student got on the in-store P.A. system
 and read the list of abuses over the loud speaker. Security didn't like this
 much, and asked us to leave-which we did. We marched out chanting 'Wal-Mart
 stop sweatshops!'" 
 
 University of Arkansas students held a candlelight vigil at Wal-Mart
 headquarters, while Columbia and NYU students protested outside the live
 broadcast of Kathie Lee Gifford's TV show. Today's Wall Street Journal
 devoted an editorial to the student protests. 
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