PRESS RELEASE INFORMATION FOR FALL 2000

CONTACT: BRITTANY BRADDOCK, 778-7387

UMF STUDENTS PETITION PRESIDENT TO MAKE UMF MAINE'S FIRST CLEAN CLOTHES CAMPUS

A group of students at the University of Maine at Farmington undertook a campaign to guarantee that the university purchase clothes and other goods only from companies who treat their workers by internationally recognized standards of fairness. They presented a petition last fall to college president Theo Kalikow urging that UMF become a "clean clothes" campus.

The student organizers and other Farmington-areas citizens came together under the name FACES, Farmington Area Citizens to End Sweatshops. The students spent last spring collecting over 750 signatures on their petition from other students, faculty and staff.

The petition urged the University of Maine at Farmington to do business only with suppliers who comply with the following conditions in the manufacture of textiles, apparel, footwear and related items, or anything bearing the UMF logo:

Workers must be paid a living wage.

Workers must be free from forced overtime, harassment, abuse and discrimination.

Workers must have the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

Workers must have the right to a safe and healthy work environment.

Contractors and subcontractors will publically disclose names and addresses of all

factories they use to make goods they sell to UMF.

In addition, the petition urged UMF to drop its membership in the Fair Labor Association, a monitoring organization with heavy industry representation, and join the Worker Right's Consortium, a fully external monitoring system.

The concerns of FACES center around the prevalence of sweatshop labor in the United States and across the globe. Sweatshops violate minimal safety, wage, and human rights standards by employing child labor, paying workers as little as $.11 per hour, requiring that they work up to 15 ½ hours per shift, and exposing them to toxic substances in unventilated buildings. Sweatshop workers are often subject to illegal firings, forced pregnancy tests, and even corporal punishment.

Over fifty percent of U.S. garment factories qualify as sweatshops under standards set by the U.S. Department of Labor. Sweatshops also flourish in developing countries, where there is a pool of desperate, exploitable workers.

According to Erin Clark, former organizer of the student group, "A Haitian worker in a factory making Disney clothes will have to work fourteen and a half years to make what Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney, makes in one hour. UMF students don't want to lend their university's name to this kind of exploitation."

The students in FACES asked President Kalikow to make UMF the first college in the state of Maine to adopt a code of conduct committing its suppliers to disclose the conditions under which the goods they supply the college with are made, and to buy only goods manufactured under established fair labor standards.

FACES plans to extend its anti-sweatshop crusade into greater Farmington, educating area citizens about sweatshops and organizing the area "clean clothes community." For further information on FACES and local anti-sweatshop activism, please contact BRITTANY BRADDOCK AT 778-7387 or FACES04938@yahoo.com