Fruit of the Loom focus of forum on labor rights

[Judi Lynn]

Fruit of the Loom focus of forum on labor rights
By JUSTIN STORY, The Daily News, [email protected]
Friday, August

Student activism against labor violations at a Honduran Fruit of the Loom plant made its way here Friday, when United Students Against Sweatshops held a community forum to discuss the situation in Fruit of the Loom’s corporate home city.

About 25 people gathered at the Western Kentucky University ALIVE Center for the forum moderated by USAS, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that has encouraged nearly 100 universities nationwide to stop doing business with Fruit of the Loom and its subsidiary Russell Athletic, which makes athletic apparel for many universities and colleges, including WKU.

Jack Mahoney, a staff member for USAS and Georgetown University graduate, said that Friday’s forum was the culmination of a week in which USAS members from several universities visited Bowling Green to speak with residents, clergy, community organizations and labor representatives about the efforts of workers in Honduras to unionize at Jerzees De Honduras, which produces sweatshirts, shorts, T-shirts and other apparel for Fruit of the Loom and Russell Athletic.

In October 2008, workers at the plant attempted to organize in response to making wages of $40 to $60 a week, which Mahoney said was not enough to make a decent living in Honduras, working unpaid overtime to meet high production quotas and having unsanitary drinking water at the plant.

Five days after negotiations with plant leaders stalled and the company would have been ordered by law to enter into mediation with the union, Fruit of the Loom announced it was closing Jerzees De Honduras, leaving 1,800 employees without a job.

Fruit of the Loom is Honduras’ largest private employer, with 10 factories operating there, none of which is unionized.

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