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.