Our friends in the US from United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) have begun a new campaign demanding the infamous worker right abuser Nike ‘Just Pay It’. Nike currently owe 1,800 workers $2.2 million in severance payments and without jobs these workers are in need of food and money. Associated Press also report that owners of the factory pocketed payments to the Honduras’s national health care system, costing workers their health insurance.

However the student fightback in the US has already had a small but significant success with the Worker Rights Consortium affiliated University of Wisconsin ending contracts with Nike in solidarity with workers. This makes the university the first in history to stand up to Nike and make a clear demand that human rights are respected, an action which USAS hope will echo throughout the sector and encourage other universities to cut.

This small victory highlights the importance of the Worker Rights Consortium and the power a affiliated university can have in protecting human rights within its supply chain. Find out more about the Worker Rights Consortium and how you can get your university to affiliate.

The Worker Rights Consortium have also recently created a UK specific Q&A document to help answer any questions

There is no doubt that power is held in the hands of the few rather than the many; it is also beyond doubt that this power is largely held by large corporations fuelling their wealth and power at the expense of those poorer. Yet as a lowly campaigner who wishes to seek international justice, there can either seem to be no way in which to pull these companies into ethical rein, or there can be too many. Since I seem to have stumbled across the latter, I thought I might make a little comparison between those that I can think of:

1. Fairtrade  (Bottom-Up)
2. Worker Rights Consortium (Top-Down)
3. The Forest Trust (Cleaning the System)
4. RBS and Ditch Dirty Development  (Legal & Financial Pressure)

(more…)