USC Must Take Action for Workers' Rights!

President Sample to meet with SCALE members

uscsweatfree — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 03:16:18 +0000

President Steven Sample of USC has agreed to meet with members of USC’s Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation. The meeting is to take place on Thursday, April 26, at 10 am, in the Bovard Administration building on campus. The meeting is closed to the public, the media, and the administration has retained sole power of invitation–3 students from SCALE will be present, along with representatives of USC undergraduate and graduate student councils (USG and GPSS, respectively). President Sample, alongside Vice President of Student Affairs Michael L. Jackson and General Counsel Todd Dickey, will be representing USC’s administration.

This meeting is the first direct meeting between Steven Sample and members of SCALE since SCALE began its campaign 8 years ago demanding independent monitoring of factories that produce USC’s apparel. Only after years of SCALE’s public actions and demonstrations, culminating in a sit-in on April 10th, and a 100-signature faculty petition did President Sample agree to such a meeting.

Students not participating in the closed meeting will be engaging in silent demonstration outside of the meeting’s location to support its representatives and SCALE’s campaign. These students will be joined by supportive faculty, who, despite a request by faculty and SCALE, were not allowed to participate in the meeting.

We are asking to demonstrate your support for SCALE and more importantly SCALE’s ongoing campaign for workers’ rights and independent monitoring! Join our silent protest–to show that we and the workers we fight alongside may be silenced by university-corporate interests but we will not go away and to remind USC that its community expects more of them!

Story from KESQ NewsChannel 3

uscsweatfree — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:58:26 +0000

http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=6351885&nav=9qrx

Students stage sit-in at USC to protest labor policies

LOS ANGELES Thirteen University of Southern California students, along with two attorneys and a pastor, are sitting outside the Office of the President to protest the school’s labor policies.

Students walked into the administration building about eleven a-m. They claim the college uses sweatshops in making U-S-C apparel. The students are demanding the university join an independent monitoring group called the Workers Rights Consortium and adopt a designated suppliers program.

Sophomore and political science major Teresa Cheng says she is willing to sit it out in the waiting room and possibly get arrested.U-S-C spokesman James Grant says he admires the students’ ardor but, in his words, “We don’t believe this is the best way for them to achieve their goals.”

Pee, Coke, Lies

uscsweatfree — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:05:29 +0000

2.44 PM

The university is now engaged in lies and deciet.

DPS Officer Tse, one of the officers in the room with us, offered to let us use the bathroom and promised to allow us to return to Sample’s office.

Our NLG lawyer Jim Lafferty used the bathroom and returned succesfully. Tani Ikeda, a sophomore majoring in cinema production, then left to use the bathroom. While Tani was in the bathroom, VP of Student Affairs Micahel Jackson and Director of Campus Activities Heather Larabee entered the room and distributed Cokes and candy.

Directly after this Officer Tse returned to say that Tani would not be allowed would not be let back in, and furthermore, that anyone who left the room would not be able to return.

Why the hell would the university give us coke and candy when they know that the only way we have to pee is in a bucket filled with kitty litter? How does this look, considering Officer Tse’s promise for safe conduct?

Are they trying to force us out, betting that our bladders are weak, hopefully made all the weaker by sugary diuretics?

Well, we say no! Our bladders are large and strong!

We put the killer Coke outside and saved our morals and our bladders.

SCALE MAKES FRONT PAGE OF THE NATION

uscsweatfree — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 20:59:44 +0000

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=184592

Students v. Sweatshops (Again)

Liza Featherstone

This afternoon, students at University of Southern California began occupying their administration’s offices. The action is part of a likely wave of sit-ins on the nation’s campuses, as students are escalating a campaign for basic human rights for the workers, mostly young women, who make clothing bearing school logos. Seven years ago, a similar wave helped establish the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), the oversight group that students established, in cooperation with workers’ advocates here and in the developing world, as an alternative to monitors controlled by the apparel industry. (I covered those protests for the Nation, and later in a book.)

Students at USC have been trying for eight years to get their school to affiliate with the WRC. 168 colleges and universities have done this, making USC quite a holdout on this issue. The USC students are also demanding that their university adopt the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), a sensible system established by the Worker Rights Consortium to determine that collegiate clothing is made under decent conditions. The USC president, Steven Sample, has refused to meet with the students. “As students we learn in the classroom about global problems,” says junior Carlo Catteneo Adorno. “It’s disappointing that President Sample refuses to tackle such problems in the real world.”

Students at University of Michigan — my alma mater, so I’m proud of them– occupied their president’s office last week, also demanding that the University adopt the DSP. The students began this protest after several years of attempted “dialogue” with the administration on this issue. Instead of taking action to ensure that U-M clothing is not made under sweatshop conditions, President Mary Sue Coleman had the students arrested and forcibly removed from the building. Being a huge football school, U-M is obviously a significant player in the collegiate clothing industry, and it would make a big difference if its administration would finally embrace the DSP.

Several more sit-ins on this issue are expected before the end of the school year, according to Zack Knorr of United Students Against Sweatshops, unless the universities in question decide to avoid the bad publicity by doing the right thing.

SCALE takes Administrative Office!

uscsweatfree — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 19:58:20 +0000

Hello everyone: news from SCALE’s campaign!

14 students, 2 legal observers and one religious official have occupied a waiting area of President Sample’s office and will not leave until USC adopts the DSP and affiliates with the WRC!

Michael Jackson, a vice president from the Student Affairs department, and Todd Dickey, a vice president and legal counsel for the university, informed students that USC is willing to take discplinary action against students–this means we need you to tell the University that THEY are the ones who must face the consequences for THEIR actions–their irresponsible outfitting of the USC student body with clothes produced on the backs of exploited workers. So please call 213-740-2111 and tell USC that you support SCALE, all students who are sitting in, and that you will not accept disciplinary action against these students.

Power to the Students! Down with Corporate and University Inaction! Support SCALE, the Sit-In, and the WRC & DSP!

Pix to come soon!

uscsweatfree — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 21:27:23 +0000

The Student Coalition Against Labor Exploitation (SCALE) presents…

Come join former CA State Senator, author of Port Huron statement and one of the founders of Students for a Democratic Society, and Director of “No More Sweatshops”, as he rallies for the

USC administration to RESPECT WORKERS’ RIGHTS!
12 – 1 pm

TELL PRESIDENT SAMPLE: No More Trojan Apparel Made In Sweatshops!

Most importantly, Tom Hayden used to married to Jane Fonda.

Skip class! Skip work! This is the escalation of a 7 year campaign and we are going to finally get the USC administration to affiliate with the WRC and adopt the DSP.

SCALE has gotten letters of support from numerous faculty, city council members, activists, and students in the past year. We have held protests, rallies, knit-ins, and beyond. We have sat through more than a dozen meetings with various USC administrators.

I think we need to win this campaign already.

WE NEED YOUR SUPPORT.