USAS Year-End Report: ‘Tis the Season of Solidarity

 

On the eve of the six month anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse, which claimed the lives of 1,134 Bangladeshi garment workers, we launched a new movement on college campuses across the country to demand an end to deathtrap factories. In the last eight years alone, over 1,800 Bangladeshi garment workers have died in building collapses and factory fires while earning just $37 per month on the job. On our campuses we are calling on our universities to require brands producing college-logo apparel to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally-binding contract — a Contract to End Deathtraps — between unions and brands that will transform the Bangladesh garment industry from deathtraps to safe workplaces — if enough brands sign it. Already, we’ve won impressive victories, with Temple, Duke, UPenn and NYU announcing that they will require their licensees to sign the Accord, and we won’t stop until every university in the country does the same! In response to this pressure, Adidas, Knights Apparel, Top of the World, and Fruit of the Loom just recently signed the Accord!

Campaign for a Contract to End Deathtraps

Campus Worker Justice

On dozens of campuses across the country, USAS locals are campaigning alongside campus workers and their unions to halt corporate outsourcing, raise wages, and negotiate fair contracts. Students in Boston, LA and DC are standing with adjuncts in their fight for a union voice. All across Tennessee, USASers are supporting the United Campus Workers in their fight for a living wage, and recently won a dollar raise for the lowest-paid campus workers in the UT system. In California, USASers walked the picket lines with AFSCME 3299 and UAW 2865 in the largest strike ever in the University of California system. At the University of Texas at Austin, USAS and the Texas State Employees Union successfully halted plans to outsource food service workers, and continue to campaign against the administration’s efforts to privatize other parts of the campus.

You can find the USAS website here.

-Submitted by Kathleen