Los Angeles is the latest school board to take a stand against sweatshops
By Carol Chmelynski
2/18/03 -- "There's no excuse for the district to spend a single taxpayer dollar on any product manufactured by child labor or sweatshop labor," says school board member David Tokofsky of the Los Angles Unified School District.
The board voted unanimously Jan. 14 to ban the purchase of athletic clothing, football helmets, pompoms, soccer balls, staplers, and other supplies from manufacturers that use child labor or do not provide safe working conditions for employees.
"With a budget approaching $10 billion, the district has an obligation to establish the strictest procurement guidelines," says Tokofsky, who proposed the "sweat-free schools" policy for the nation's second largest school district.
"No More Sweatshops!," a national campaign launched in September and co-founded by former state legislator Tom Hayden, lobbied the district, as well as the Los Angeles City Council, to adopt anti-sweatshop policies. Los Angeles, has some 5,000 garment factories, surpassing New York City as the nation's garment industry capital, according to the California Department of Industry Relations.
Hayden says the school district will be able to rely on existing oversight organizations to review whether suppliers meet workplace standards.
Los Angeles is not the first district to take a stand against sweatshops. The Minneapolis school district adopted a similar policy in October, in response to an effort led by students.
Volunteers from the Youth Organizing Committee on Child Labor and Sweatshops had been visiting high schools throughout the metropolitan area, talking to students about deplorable conditions in the international garment industry, says district spokesperson Melissa Winter.
The Minneapolis student government council, which is made up of 10 students from each of the city's seven high schools, drafted resolutions to change the district's purchasing policies.
"The initial language the students proposed was well-intentioned," says David Jennings, the district's chief operating officer, "but it also was something we couldn't enforce."
The resolution eventually passed by the school board calls for the board to direct the staff "to develop a purchasing policy that excludes athletic equipment and apparel goods made in sweatshop environments."
"We're in the business of enriching children's lives, and our resolution points to the fact that we should be worried about children not just locally, but globally," says Minneapolis school board Clerk Audrey Johnson. "If a number of school districts pursue this type of research and find out what's going on with sweatshops and how the products are being made, we can, in some small measure, have an effect on bettering the lives of children the world over."
In September 2001, New York Gov. George Pataki signed the "Sweat-Free Schools" law, which allows New York school boards to consider labor standards applicable to the manufacture of apparel when determining the lowest responsible bidder.
The law allows school boards to consider in the bidding process such issues as employee compensation, working conditions, employee rights to form unions, and the use of child labor.
As of last June, at least 13 New York school districts had adopted a no-sweatshops policy -- some even before the law was passed. The first was the Albany City School District, which approved an anti-sweatshop policy in 1998.
"We're a very union-strong city with a large labor population," says spokesperson Lisa Stratton. "The capitol's here, and our school board believed adopting this policy was the right thing to do."
"Education is the biggest thing," says Russ Agdern, a campaign organizer for No More Sweatshops! "Once people learn about the conditions and why we're trying to stop them," things will improve.
The group is trying to persuade the Walt Disney Co. to return to a factory it had left in Bangladesh after women workers protested the "horrible conditions," Agdern says. "We're campaigning to get Disney to go back to the factory and try to make things right rather than just making a mess and running away."
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| Reproduced with permission from the Feb. 18, 2003, issue of School Board News. Copyright © 2003, National School Boards Association. Opinions expressed in this newspaper do not necessarily reflect positions of NSBA. This article may be printed out and photocopied for individual or educational use, provided this copyright notice appears on each copy. This article may not be otherwise transmitted or reproduced in print or electronic form without the consent of the Publisher. For more information, call (703) 838-6789. |