United Students Against Sweatshops worked to address abuses in
the garment industry with speakers and a satirical runway show.
The Tuesday night event in the Kerckhoff Grand Salon featured
Alejandra Domenzain from the Los Angeles Garment Workers Center,
garment workers Esperanza Hernandez and Beatriz Estevez, UCLA Labor
Center project director Juan de Lara, International Vice President
of UNITE! Christina Vazquez, and SweatX shop steward Enriqueta
Sota.
It also included three satirical fashion shows interspersed
between the speakers, as well as a slide show. The first two
fashion show skits had student models walking up and down the aisle
wearing clothes from popular companies while another student read
information about the conditions the clothes were made in. The
third had models wearing clothes produced under humanitarian
conditions.
The former workers told the audience about their abuse at the
hands of subcontractors while they made clothes for major labels.
Domenzain translated their comments from Spanish to English.
De Lara explained how the UCLA Labor Center has been educating
students and helping exploited workers.
“Because we’re part of the UC system, clearly part
of our role is education … part of what we do in supporting
events like this is expanding the dialogue on campus so that it
includes topics like low wage workers and sweatshops,” de
Lara said.
Vazquez and Sota lauded UCLA’s students for helping to
improve working conditions worldwide. Vazquez also criticized
corporations in general for being socially and environmentally
irresponsible.
Students found the presentation well executed.
“I thought it was good in between speakers, it was
entertaining. I learned a lot and I had fun,” said fifth-year
computer science student Fernando Guayasamin.
This quarter a small group of students including Nathan Lam,
Judy Kim, and Triet Vo revived USAS. They said their organization
has important work to carry out on campus, and that Tuesday’s
event was a positive step.
“Our hope is to educate students about sweatshop issues
with speakers from the UCLA labor center and workers who have
worked in the Los Angeles garment district,” Lam said.
USAS focuses on sweatshops in Los Angeles to emphasize that
exploited labor is a problem in the United States as well.
“A lot of people have the idea that sweatshops are more
international, in third-world countries, so when they see labels
“˜Made in USA’ they think that it’s made with
proper labor,” Kim said.
Lam said there is no organized opposition to USAS, but that they
occasionally receive arguments that in the developing world
sweatshops provide better wages than the people could otherwise
earn. Student Yuka Matsukawa brought up this issue.
“I think it seems impractical because they’re
fighting for this cause, but like the speaker (Hernandez) said,
there are four other people to replace their positions,” she
said.
“These companies, it’s not like they can’t
afford to pay a living wage, people at the top make (billions of)
dollars off the products made by workers who make a mere pittance
compared to them,” Lam said.
The large crowd at the event was partly due to several
professors offering credit for attendance. Organizer Suzan Luu said
USAS asked for professors to give their students extra credit to
attract students already interested in the issue.