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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.
> >>