A sweatshop is a crowded workplace with very poor, socially unacceptable or illegal working conditions. The work may be difficult, dangerous, climatically challenging or underpaid. Workers in sweatshops may work long hours with low pay, regardless of laws mandating overtime pay or a minimum wage; child labor laws may also be violated. The Fair Labor Association's "2006 Annual Public Report" inspected factories for FLA compliance in 18 countries including Bangladesh, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Malaysia, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, China, India, Vietnam, Honduras, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, and the US. The U.S. Department of Labor's "2015 Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor" found that "18 countries did not meet the International Labour Organization's recommendation for an adequate number of inspectors."
The Port Huron Statement is a 1962 political manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). It was written by SDS members, and completed on June 15, 1962, at a United Auto Workers (UAW) retreat outside of Port Huron, Michigan, for the group's first national convention. Under Walter Reuther's leadership, the UAW paid for a range of expenses for the 1962 convention, including use of the UAW summer retreat in Port Huron.
Charles Horton Cooley was an American sociologist and the son of Michigan Supreme Court Judge Thomas M. Cooley. He studied and went on to teach economics and sociology at the University of Michigan, was a founding member of the American Sociological Association in 1905 and became its eighth president in 1918. He is perhaps best known for his concept of the looking-glass self, which is the concept that a person's self grows out of society's interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others. Cooley's health began to deteriorate in 1928. He was diagnosed with an unidentified form of cancer in March 1929 and died two months later.
Robert Alan Haber is an American activist. He was the first president of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a U.S. radical student activist organization. Haber was elected at the first meeting of SDS in 1960. FBI files at the time indicated his official title as Field Secretary. Described variously at the time as "Ann Arbor's resident radical" and "reticent visionary", Haber organized a human rights conference in April of that year which "marked the debut of SDS" and invited four organizers of the 1960 NAACP sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Andrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University (NYU), and a social activist and analyst. He has authored and edited numerous books, and written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Newsweek, and Al Jazeera. Much of his writing focuses on labor, the urban environment, and the organisation of work, from the Western world of business and high-technology to conditions of offshore labour in the Global South. Making use of social theory as well as ethnography, his writing questions the human and environmental cost of economic growth. Outside his field, Ross is known as a recipient of the 1996 Ig Nobel Prize for literature for his part in the Sokal hoax.
Carl Preston Oglesby was an American writer, academic, and political activist. He was the President of the leftist student organization Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) from 1965 to 1966.
The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, formerly known as the National Labor Committee, is a non-profit, non-governmental organization (NGO) that investigates human and labor rights abuses committed by large multinational corporations producing goods in the developing world. Today the Institute is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with offices in Bangladesh and Central America. Charles Kernaghan currently serves as the Executive Director. The Institute publishes investigations with the goal of influencing public opinion and corporate policy. It is widely considered to be the organization that began the late-20th-century anti-sweatshop movement in America.
Eric Thomas Chester is an American author, socialist political activist, and former economics professor.
The Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA) is a nonprofit organization of Asian-Pacific American trade union members affiliated with the AFL-CIO. It was the "first and only national organization for Asian Pacific American union members".
Ellis McNatt Jones is an American sociologist and author at College of the Holy Cross. His research has focused on ethical consumerism, corporate social responsibility, and lifestyle movements. He is best known for his research translating the social and environmental records of companies into an A to F rating system for use by consumers.
Lowell Juilliard Carr was an American sociologist, prolific author, and long-time university professor. He is best known for his book Willow Run, which discusses the sociological conditions arising from the wartime increase in the worker population at the Willow Run bomber plant during World War II. He was also a pioneer in the field of studying the underlying social causes for juvenile delinquency.
Terry Robbins was an American far left activist, a key member of the Ohio Students for a Democratic Society, and one of the three Weathermen who died in the Greenwich Village townhouse explosion.
César Rodríguez Garavito is an international human rights and environmental law scholar and practitioner. He is co-director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University School of Law and the editor-in-chief of Open Global Rights.
Howard Norton Machtinger is a former director of Carolina Teaching Fellows, a student teacher scholarship program at the University of North Carolina. He is an education and civil rights activist, a teacher, a forum leader, and a political commentator. Machtinger is a former member of Students For a Democratic Society and Weatherman.
The Student Labor Action Coalition (SLAC) is a network of campus organizations that support worker struggles and their unions.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "participatory democracy." From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in the course of the tumultuous decade with over 300 campus chapters and 30,000 supporters recorded nationwide by its last national convention in 1969. The organization splintered at that convention amidst rivalry between factions seeking to impose national leadership and direction, and disputing "revolutionary" positions on, among other issues, the Vietnam War and Black Power.
Export-oriented employment refers to employment in multinational corporations' international industrial factories, usually located in developing countries. Such factories produce goods and services for sale in other countries. While these multinational producers have globally expanded women's access to employment, evidence suggests they do so by reinforcing traditional gender roles or creating new gender inequalities. Such gender inequities allow multinational firms to greater exploit profits per worker than they would otherwise due to the decreased labor cost. This decrease in the cost of labor comes as a result of the relegation of women to certain occupations. Studies show that in the quest for lower unit labor costs, export-oriented facilities create poor working conditions.
Josephine Fellows Gomon was a social and political activist, mayoral secretary, labor leader and schoolteacher. She is noted for her contributions to Detroit, Michigan through city politics, civil service and activism.
Robert Cooley Angell was an American sociologist and educator. Committed to the advancement of rigorous social scientific research, Angell's work focussed on social integration and the pursuit of a more peaceful world order. Professor Angell enjoyed the highest honors which his discipline bestowed, presiding over both the American Sociological Society (1951) and the International Sociological Association (1953–1956). As a devoted educator, Angell was instrumental in developing the Honors Program at the University of Michigan, becoming its first director from 1957–1960.
Corey Dolgon is an American author and sociologist.
