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WAL-MART / NO BURMA CONNECTION



RangoonPost@xxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> 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.
>   >>