Hi folks! Please forward this to other organizations and individuals who
may want to participate (and pardon any cross-postings). - Dale
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Please contact Wal-Mart this Friday, November 20, and ask them to release a
list (including addresses) of all their supplying factories worldwide.
This is a national call-in day for the 1998 Holiday Season of Conscience to
End Sweatshops and Child Labor.
Contact info: 1-800-WAL-MART (1-800-925-6278) or 501-273-4000
E-mail cserve@walmart.com
Fax 501-273-4894 (caveat: last month they had their fax
disconnected)
What this campaign is NOT:
* It is NOT a boycott
* It is NOT an effort to have Wal-Mart "buy American"
What this campaign IS:
* An effort to make Wal-Mart accountable to us - the consumers of
these products - and to make Wal-Mart's own Code of Conduct
independently verifiable
* An effort to promote a LIVING WAGE for workers in the Third World and
in the US - an effort to stop US and overseas workers from being pitted
against each other by RAISING the wages and conditions of THIRD WORLD
and US sweatshop workers
* An effort to create a space in which workers can empower themselves
- "Employment yes, but ... with dignity!"
The goal of the 1998 Season of Conscience (the People's Right to Know
Campaign) is to press Wal-Mart to release the list of all its suppliers
worldwide, so that human rights and religious groups can begin to check
working conditions at these factories. This would give consumers a way to
discern which products were made in factories where workers' human rights
were respected. Wal-Mart has a record of contracting with factories that
use child labor (for example, 13-year-olds in Honduras and 10- to
12-year-olds in Bangladesh), and with factories where workers are abused
verbally, physically, and sexually at jobs paying subliving wages for very
long work hours, where unions are repressed. Wal-Mart contracts with
suppliers in at least 49 countries.
Many other U.S. companies besides Wal-Mart have relied on sweatshops or
child labor, but the 1998 Season of Conscience focuses on Wal-Mart because
it is the world's largest retailer. If Wal-Mart releases information on
its suppliers, it will be easier to get these other companies to follow.
Such information is essential to establish a system of independent
monitoring of factory conditions - a key to stopping worker abuses.
We need AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE to contact Wal-Mart this Friday. PLEASE
PASS ON THIS MESSAGE to other individuals and e-mail lists who may want to
participate in the campaign. Future Wal-Mart call-ins are scheduled for
December 18 and January 29.
The People's Right to Know Campaign is spearheaded by the National Labor
Committee (NLC), the same organization that successfully pressed Kathie Lee
Gifford to act against the child labor used to make her clothing line. The
NLC, originally founded in 1981 to support endangered workers in El
Salvador, is backed by many labor unions, religious groups, and human
rights organizations.
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For general information or for copies of campaign materials, contact:
National Labor Committee
275 7th Avenue, 15th floor
New York, NY 10001
(212) 242-3002
Fax (212) 242-3821
E-mail natlabcom@aol.com
www.nlcnet.org
NLC has materials to assist with a wide variety of Wal-Mart actions.
Dale Wimberley
Sociology, VPI & SU
Coalition for Justice, Blacksburg, Virginia