Take Action
Get Your Community to Join the Sweatfree Consortium!
Sweatshops are commonplace in the global apparel industry. But joining together we have the power to create change.
Thanks to strong grassroots campaigns, many school districts, cities, counties, and states have adopted sweatfree purchasing policies. These policies aim to direct purchasing power away from sweatshops to places where workers are treated with dignity, receive a living wage, and have a voice on the job. Working together, we can put these policies into action, supporting workers' rights.
In March 2007, SweatFree Communities convened a historic meeting of human rights activists and public officials who agreed to form a State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium, which will pool resources for factory monitoring and coordinate enforcement of sweatfree purchasing policies. The interim Steering Committee for the Sweatfree Consortium is now inviting states, counties, cities, towns, and school districts to join the Sweatfree Consortium as provisionary members. The more that join at this early stage, the sooner the Sweatfree Consortium will get off the ground.
We need your help to make the Sweatfree Consortium a force for good in workers’ lives. Here’s what you can do:
Contact your GovernorContact your Mayor
Endorse the campaign
Join a local sweatfree campaign
More resources
Information to share with your government representatives:
White Paper Summary
Q&A for Government Representatives
Model resolutions: Cities, States (Ask your Mayor and Governor to sign on to these!)
In-depth resources:
White Paper (Revised version available here soon)
Legal Memorandum on Drafting Sweat-Free Statements (May 14, 2007)
Legal Memorandum on Consortium (March 28, 2006)
Cities and States Calling for a Consortium
Presentations from Consortium Convening Meeting (March 29, 2006)
Letter and Resolution from Governor Baldacci (Feb 28, 2006)
Letter from Mayor Newsom (Nov 17, 2005)
General sweatfree activism & organizing resources:
Sweatfree Toolkit
Many more resources
