Saturday, December 30, 2006

The "No Sweat" Ethos

Bienestar International manufactures union-made footwear & casual clothing under the brand name No Sweat but No Sweat is also an activist, campaigning organisation, fighting sweatshops worldwide.

Sweatshop labour is child labour, forced overtime, poverty wages, unsafe conditions, harassment of workers and intimidation of trade unions.

The No Sweat brand stands for workers solidarity.

· A living wage

· Safe working conditions

· Independent trade unions

In order to enforce these rights, they need to be free to organise!

No Sweat aim to:

· Make solidarity with sweatshop workers and their organisations

· Help unionise sweatshops in Britain

· Publicise, expose and help stamp out sweatshop employment.

No Sweat is an open, broad-based campaign, who look to the anti-capitalist
protest movements and to the international workers movement and seek to
build common, united, campaigning action against exploitation and the
sweatshop bosses. Below are a few fact and augments for No Sweat existence.

Child and sweatshop labour is a scandal.

Some of the high street's most famous names, including Nike, Gap, Adidas and Reebok, have been exposed by the newspapers, and TV programmes such as Panorama and John Pilger's The New Rulers, as sweatshop employers.

Children as young as 11 have been found working in scandalous conditions in factories commissioned by these companies to produce their goods.

A single top or pair of trainers can cost more to buy in the UK than the worker who produced them receives in a month. The average wage for a Nike worker in Vietnam is just $47 a month.

According to the US National Labor Committee, Phil Knight, co-founder of the Nike corporation, is worth $12.3 billion.

Forced overtime, sexual abuse, poor health and safety conditions and violence and harassment, especially against trade unionists, have been uncovered by reporters and trade union and Government investigators.

Workers in sweatshops must be free to organise their own, independent trade unions. Codes of conduct mean nothing unless the workers themselves can enforce standards such as a limit to the working week, no forced overtime, decent health and safety.


No Sweat Footwear

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