The Brandeis Labor Coalition is working on an initiative to urge club leaders to amend their club constitutions to include a pledge to buy only sweatshop-free apparel. The BLC has been meeting with individual club leaders to successfully fulfill this initiative, explained BLC member Kaitlin Schofield '08. The initiative to focus on raising awareness about sweatshops began two years ago. The BLC made a club packet explaining what sweatshops are and why the BLC is working to eliminate them, Schofield explained.

The BLC's sweatshop information packet now has several definitions for sweatshop. The first definition is "an employer that violates more than one federal or state labor law regarding minimum wage and overtime, child labor, industrial homework, occupational safety and health, workers' compensation or industry regulation." In addition, it also defines sweatshops as factories often associated with mass-produced items in developing countries, sometimes characterized by instances of sexual harassment and violence against workers who try to unionize.

Schofield said the BLC tried many ways to keep apparel made in sweatshops from being bought and sold on campus before deciding to focus on working with other clubs to limit the amount of merchandise those clubs purchase that is made in sweatshops.

Schofield said the BLC originally focused on working with the Brandeis bookstore to carry sweatshop-free clothing by United Students Against Sweatshops. She said this proved difficult because the store is run by Barnes and Noble, a national chain, and it would be difficult to get them to change the distributor from which they buy apparel.

She said the group then "decided to attack it at a different angle by talking to our peers in clubs and making sure that the clothing and apparel they bought is sweatshop-free," Schofield said.

She explained that because clubs are not run by a giant organization, they can decide individually where they buy their apparel, which helps people realize their own purchasing power.

So far the Mixed Heritage Club, the Activist Resource Center, Students for a Democratic Society, Students for Environmental Action, Aikido and the Student Union have vowed to buy only sweatshop-free apparel. Waltham Group, Reslife, Student Sexuality Information Service and Adagio have also pledged to buy only sweatshop-free apparel, although they do not have constitutions.

SEA's constitution states that the club will only buy organic apparel in addition to sweatshop-free apparel. SEA President Stephanie Sofer '09 explained that the club constitution now states that "In accordance with SEA's mission, it is official SEA policy to only purchase SEA clothing that is certified to be sweat-free and organic."

In addition to talking with clubs about changing their constitution, BLC member Claire Charny '09 said the BLC wants a general awareness-raising campaign on campus about the issue.

"We have a big campaign plan for next semester, so I think it's really going to get off the ground. We have a lot of movie showings, and we're bringing speakers to campus. We're having a forum all around the issue of sweatshops, and hopefully that ... will kind of go into a more broader, longer sense of people [understanding] where we're coming from," Charny said.

However, the BLC had to go about a step-by-step process to get its plans off the ground. First it had to figure out what exactly they wanted to define as "sweatshop-free," Schofield explained.

"At the beginning we just went over what we defined as sweatshop-free, which is still kind of in the works. ... Is it made in a union? Or not? And what constitutes as ethical apparel?" Schofield said.

Charny said the BLC started with a "top-down" approach talking to the administration before they spoke with individual clubs. Some of these administrators included Assistant Dean of Student Life Maggie Balch.

"First we tried to see if this would be a campuswide thing. We tried to go to the administration to see if they could pass a mandate that said that everything should be sweat-free, but that's really an impossibility. That's when we turned to clubs, and we turned to an individual department like Reslife, because they [make] all of their [Community Advisor] and some of the orientation T-shirts," Charny said.

Charny added that after talks with Reslife, they got them to sign on. "A big win was the following year, all their T-shirts [were] made by a company called No Sweat Apparel, which is all union-made clothing," she said.

Although the BLC has not met much resistance, Charny explained that some people have been more enthusiastic than others about their initiative.

"Most clubs have been pretty receptive, and it's not like clubs would refuse [to change their constitutions]. They would just be like, 'I don't understand why this is important,' and not necessarily take the time to do it. [While] changing the constitution takes two minutes, changing someone's views takes a lot longer," Charny said.