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TWENTY-FIVE UNIVERSITIES CUT CONTRACTS WITH RUSSELL ATHLETICS, A SERIAL ABUSER OF WORKERS RIGHTS! |
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Coverage of this case has reached The NYTimes, USAToday, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Rachel Maddow show, and local news across the nation! To see regular updates on this campaign, go to http://www.reininrussell.org
As of 4/2/09, following a wave of campus activism, twenty-five universities are severing ties with Russell Athletic over worker rights violations at their Jerzees de Honduras factory. We will continue driving business away from Russell until the company re-opens the Jerzees de Honduras facility at full capacity, re-hire all union workers and complete the collective bargaining process.
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To United Students Against Sweatshops' Supporters and Allies:
My name is Rod Palmquist and I am the International Campaigns Coordinator for United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). USAS would like to update its supporters and allies about a campaign we are currently working on in solidarity with workers from SITRAJERZEESH, a garment union in Honduras.
On October 8, the Russell Athletic Corporation, a supplier of apparel to colleges in the United States announced its decision to close one of their factories, called Jerzees de Honduras. Jerzees de Honduras is one of the only garment factories in Honduras with an independent union, and the plant employs more than 1800 workers. At the end of January of 2009, Russell announced its decision to close Jerzees de Honduras, which two independent monitoring organizations in the United States found to be a violation of workers' rights to freedom of association. Additionally, worker leaders of Jerzees de Honduras have reported receiving death threats, which they believe are linked to the factory’s closure. As a result of these threats and the anti-union closure of the factory, many organizations including United Students Against Sweatshops, have filed a petition with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
In response to these blatant violations of university labor codes of conduct and international law, United Students Against Sweatshops has launched a campaign in solidarity with SITRAJERZEESH, the workers' union at Jerzees de Honduras, to force Russell Athletic to reopen one of the few unionized factories in its entire supply chain. USAS students at campuses all across North America have demanded that their schools terminate their licensing contracts with Russell Athletic unless this corporation immediately reopens Jerzees de Honduras at full capacity, ensures that their union workers remain employed, stop the threats of violence against worker leaders, and negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with the workers' representatives. USAS has recently finished hosting a Worker Tour with Moises Elias Montoya Alvarado and Norma Estela Mejia Castellanos -- the president and vice-president of the union respectively -- which was a huge success, and resulted in 12 universities deciding to terminate their business relationships with Russell Athletic.
To date, the University of Miami, University of Houston, Georgetown University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rutgers University, Duke University, Macalester University, University of Washington, Columbia University, Purdue University, Cornell University and Penn State, have all decided to cut contracts or refuse to do business with Russell Athletic over their violations of workers rights in Honduras (AS OF FEBRUARY 26, 2009). You can read more about universities taking action against Russell in an online article at the Huffington Post written by former US Representative David Bonior: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-bonior/schools-score-points-by-s_b_166823.html. USAS is excited to announce that according to internal estimates, our current campaign against Russell has resulted in this company losing over $5 million in collegiate business! On top of this, several other schools are actively considering contract cuts in the near future. Right now, the campaign against Russell is in a crucial stage, as USAS believes that we have a chance to force Russell to actually reopen Jerzees de Honduras, which would be an almost unprecedented victory for garment workers' rights in today's current economic climate. To learn more about the campaign against Russell, or to find out how you can support SITRAJERZEESH's struggle in Honduras, please visit www.reininrussell.org.
Russell’s decision to close the Jerzees de Honduras facility is yet another example of why implementing the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP) is necessary to support union factories in the collegiate apparel industry over the long-term. In the past two years, we have seen dozens of factories shut down after making real strides to enforce labor standards. In many cases, it appears that major apparel brands decided to pull their orders from the facilities because they were unwilling to pay the slightly higher costs that are an inevitable result of a factory taking labor rights seriously. The Designated Suppliers Program was created to prevent this from happening, to reward factories that respect workers’ rights, instead of punishing them with a loss of business. United Students Against Sweatshops hopes our campaign against Russell is successful in reopening Jerzees de Honduras, as Jerzees would be exactly the kind of unionized garment factory that would be rewarded with stable, long-term business under the Designated Suppliers Program. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or for more information, and thank you for your continued interest in, and support of United Students Against Sweatshops.
In Solidarity,
Rod Palmquist |
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