About Us

SweatFree Communities assists sweatshop workers globally in their struggles to improve working conditions and form strong, independent unions.

SweatFree Communities was founded in 2003 by anti-sweatshop organizers in Maine, Minnesota, New York, Wisonsin and elsewhere who had been working separately on local campaigns to convince school districts, cities, states, and other institutional purchasers to adopt "sweatfree" purchasing policies and stop tax dollars from subsidizing sweatshops and abusive child labor. SweatFree Communities created a structure to facilitate the sharing of resources and information and is building a national sweatfree movement with the unity and political strength to generate significant market demand for products that are made in humane conditions by workers who earn living wages. We have held four national conferences and support and coordinate dozens of local sweatfree purchasing campaigns. We link these campaigns to workers who are organizing to improve their conditions.

SweatFree Communities is an exciting and positive approach in the anti-sweatshop movement. Campaigns for sweatfree procurement policies foster sustained local activism and strong coalitions of labor, student, solidarity, peace and justice, and faith-based groups. Local campaigns attract new people to social activism, channeling their outrage about sweatshops into engagement with local institutions. New movement leaders emerge from local campaigns as graduating high school activists take leadership roles in the university anti-sweatshop movement and other organizations. These innovative campaigns allow community activists to control the shape and timing of their own efforts, in coordination with other local campaigns. Because most localities include multiple entities that purchase goods and services -- for example, the city, the county, the school district, and the state -- one successful campaign can provide momentum for another. As a local issue in which elected officials have to take positions, these campaigns also offer significant possibilities for press coverage and public education.

In a time when governments increasingly renounce their responsibility to regulate corporate activity and protect public welfare, sweatfree procurement laws are an innovative counter-offensive that utilizes governments' roles as bulk purchasers to reclaim government for the public interest.

Contact us to get further information or to join the network.