by Daron Letts

She's 18-yrs-old, poor, has respiratory problems, and she probably sewed your t-shirt together.

Internationally, garment workers are almost always females between 18 to 25 yrs-of-age, though in some countries girls as young as fourteen have been discovered working in factories.

Women in these factories (known as Œsweatshops') can work as much as 13 hours a day, seven days a week.

Despite international media attention and nation-wide student protest, many Canadian colleges and universities continue to licence corporations that use sweatshop labour to produce clothing sold in their campus bookstores.

Some Canadians are trying to change that.

The Maquilla Solidarity Network (MSN) is a Canadian-based network of over 400 individuals and organizations who support workers world-wide in their struggle to improve working conditions, while trying to educate Canadians about the restructuring of the international garment industry in the wake of globalization.

Spokesperson Musonda Kidd talks regularly with women who work in sweatshops and she describes the conditions these women work under as ³wretched².

"The factories are often hot and very dusty, with poor ventilation, causing many workers to develop health problems," she says.

The "starvation wages" the women receive are so low that women are forced to work overtime to get by, she adds. "If they work just the regular hours it's not enough to live on."

Kidd says sweatshop workers cannot exercise even the most modest freedoms. "Women must get permission to go to the bathroom and they are often allowed only two bathroom visits a day," she says.

Before hiring, many factories conduct pregnancy tests. If a worker becomes pregnant, she might be fired.

Attempts to organize unions in Asian and Latin American sweatshops also lead to workers being fired or worse.

"If workers try to unionize a factory, they may be fired, they might receive death threats, or a plant may simply shut down and change location," she says.

"You hear stories of workers showing up to work one morning and finding a sign on the gate saying the factory is closed. The women might be owed back pay, but the factory is gone without warning."

Kidd says a Liz Claiborne factory in El Salvador that fired a group of workers attempting to organize a union illustrates both how insecure the women's jobs are and also the impact international support can have. Following an international letter-writing campaign, Liz Claiborne agreed to work with the factory to rehire the fired workers.

Kidd says that, from the factory manager's perspective, it's all about controlling the workers to keep costs low and profits high.

"We've asked the workers themselves why factories are picking younger women and they think factory managers believe younger women are less likely to know their rights and that they would not be strong enough to challenge the system," says Kidd.

Kidd is pleased that Canadian students are "challenging the system" by pressuring school administrations to ensure their clothing is made under good working conditions.

"Students are asking where the clothes bearing school logos are made," she says.

Kidd hopes more school administrations will realize how they are connected to the issue of sweatshops.

"A college has a reputation," suggests Kidd. "School officials must realize that other people are sweating for the garments we wear."

Ian Thomson is a member of the University of Toronto chapter of Students Against Sweatshops, a national organization of students seeking industry-wide codes of conduct and independent monitoring systems to ensure humane working conditions in the world's garment factories.

Thomson doesn't want schools to blindly reject companies with Asian or Latin American suppliers.

He suggests collective student action directed at school administrations will have a greater effect on the labour practices of apparel manufacturers because of the sheer volume of clothing purchased by the country's colleges and universities for retail in campus bookstores.

"Students have recognized that there are many other effective actions that student groups, church groups, or individual consumers can take instead of boycotting particular countries while still getting their message across to school administrations and the corporations that supply them," he says.

Thomson makes it clear his group doesn't wish to take jobs away from Asian or Latin American countries.

"The two things we tell companies are: we're not asking you to pull out of these countries and we're not asking you to eliminate the jobs that you have created in, let's say, Taiwan or El Salvador," he states.

Instead, Students Against Sweatshops asks schools and their suppliers to respect the agreements of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO, in which most countries have membership, provides an international forum for government, business, and unions to jointly establish acceptable worldwide labour standards.

"I agree that Canadian law shouldn't be the basis by which to assess other countries' labour practices," Thomson states. "Fortunately, the ILO provides a standard."

Due to student pressure, many Canadian schools have adopted their own Œcode of conduct' for companies competing for the right to produce licensed college and university products.

"Generally, the code stipulates that if the school's name is on your product, then you have to live up to certain standards and those standards apply no matter where a company produces its clothes," he explains. "It implies that if you will be sourcing from Malaysia or the Philippines you have an obligation to do better than what the local standards are."

Students Against Sweatshops will soon be publishing a base code for campuses to adopt.

"The code we're developing is the floor. It contains the basics. Schools can improve upon it," Thomson remarks.

Members of Students Against Sweatshops reject the notion that increased wages, improved working conditions, and modest benefits will spell a raise in North American retail prices. Their research indicates that almost seventy-five per cent of the retail price for a sweatshop garment is pure profit for the manufacturer and retailer.

For instance, Nike's labour costs account for merely 4 per cent of the price of a pair of shoes. If Nike cut its $975 million (US) marketing outlay by 4 per cent, they could pay a livable wage to Indonesian factory workers.

Thomson is encouraged by the growing list of over a dozen Canadian campuses that have become involved, including Simon Fraser, Waterloo, McGill, and the University of New Brunswick. South of the border, over 100 colleges and universities have taken action.

Thomson doesn't feel the struggle to reform the garment industry is in vain, maintaining that progress has been made.

"Until last year, no one in the garment industry was willing to reveal where their garments were made or who their suppliers were. But now companies are disclosing, not where all their clothes are made, but where college and university apparel is produced," he reports.

"Students are really pushing the limits of corporate responsibility in the garment industry," Thomson declares.

The Holland College logo currently appears on hats, jackets, back-packs, baseball-caps, and shorts produced in China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines.

Holland College Bookstore Officer Norma Forbes has no comment at this time.