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Background and Other Resources
The Global Sweatfree Movement
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Background
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| Read more about the Sweatfree Movement, its accomplishments and its goals. |
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Links
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| Find out other organizations that are working to end sweatshop labor. |
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Publications
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| Books, videos, and audio tapes about the sweatshop crisis. |
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A sweatshop is any factory where workers' basic human rights to form indepedent trade unions are violated, or where employees are not paid a living wage- which means enough money to support their families with dignity.
Sweatshop workers face dangerous and exploitative conditions and often suffer from health and safety hazards, lack of benefits, and arbitrary discipline. Many goods manufactured in poor nations- from Alpine car stereos, to Nike shoes and clothes, to children's toys sold at Wal-Mart- are produced in sweatshops.
Sweatshops also exist in the United States. A 2000 investigation by the Department of Labor found that two-thirds of the garment factories in Los Angeles failed to meet basic minimum wage and overtime laws- meaning that the workers in those factories were not paid fairly. And here in the U.S. workers routinely face repression and intimidation when they try to form unions, according to studies by Human Rights Watch and others.
The products at the store may seem like a bargain, but they come with a very high human price for the workers that made them.
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