Learn about the United Steelworkers Rapid Response's fight for anti-sweatshop legislation.

USW Rapid Response Info Alert: Protecting Dogs and Cats and Workers (PDF). USW Rapid Response Brochure: Global Exploitation Must End (PDF).

More and more, smart consumers are thinking about the people who make the products we buy and the conditions they work in. From the clothing we wear to the toys our children play with, store shelves are stocked with goods made in sweatshops where workers labor in unsafe conditions and are paid wages so low they must struggle to feed and shelter their families. The aisles we shop are lined with products made in factories that exploit child labor and fire and harass workers when they try to improve their lives by forming unions.

The global economy has opened the American marketplace to goods from countries that routinely allow abuse of working people, but some sweatshops thrive even in this country.

The following links will help you learn more about sweatshops and how you can be part of the movement to stop them.

• AFL-CIO's Union Label & Service Trades Department
  This site helps guide shoppers to quality products and services produced by union women and men. Check out Union Label's list of worker-friendly products and services—as well as the list of companies that don't deserve your patronage because they're harming workers.
• United Students Against Sweatshops
  United Students Against Sweatshops' website covers student efforts to halt sweatshop labor in the production of apparel sold by universities.
• Worker Rights Consortium
  The Worker Rights Consortium is an organization created by college and university administrations, students and union advocates that helps enforce manufacturing codes of conduct adopted by more than 100 colleges and universities. The codes are designed to ensure that factories producing clothing and other goods bearing college and university names respect the basic rights of workers. 
• National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice
  Visit the National Interfaith Committee website for an online brochure, "Conscious Giving: Steps to Sweat-Free Holiday Shopping." (Phone: 773-728-8400.)
• Bangor (Maine) Clean Clothes Campaign
  Learn about this community-based campaign against sweatshops in the global clothing industry, which succeeded in passing a municipal ethical purchasing policy and publishes an online guide to starting similar campaigns in communities. 
• National Labor Committee
  The National Labor Committee works with local, national and international groups on campaigns to promote workers' rights. Its website provides information on current campaigns, including anti-sweatshop activities.
• Campaign for Sweatfree Schools
  This site outlines the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition's Campaign for Sweatfree Schools. The coalition urges schools to adopt a code of conduct for the manufacture of apparel purchased, licensed or required by schools in the state, and to educate students about sweatshops and fair labor practices.
• Sweatshop Watch
  Sweatshop Watch offers information on campaigns around the globe.
• Campaign for Labor Rights
  The Campaign for Labor Rights has been dubbed "the grassroots mobilizing department of the U.S. anti-sweatshop movement." Its website includes a guide to sweat-free, union-made online shopping and information about worldwide corporate accountability campaigns.
• Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
  A complete history of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire that killed 146 workers. The site includes information on sweatshops and strikes prior to 1911, and audio interviews with survivors of the fire.