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SweatFree Communities: What we do

In the Short-term

Our project is simple, but ambitious – we organize for collective bargaining power. We believe in that simple idea that there is power in numbers, and when we are united we can do more than any one of us can alone. SweatFree Communities works to build community collective bargaining while simultaneously working on campaigns that have the goal of building the collective bargaining power of workers around the world.

The collective bargaining power we are working to build has two parts -- and we work for both parts at same time because we believe that both are necessary to create real, sustainable change.

1. Community collective bargaining: We build community power. Not through back-room deals or high-level lobbying, but through the kind of community organizing that brings people together and builds power for people on a local level to make decisions about the things that affect their daily lives. And by empowering communities in this way, people gain the power to act decisively in solidarity with other communities that are struggling around related issues. When we all come together to make concrete demands of businesses and elected officials, we will make our collective voice heard. One way to do this is to pass resolutions as a community – to bring decision-making to the grassroots.
   
2. Worker collective bargaining: We support workers globally who are organizing to build power for themselves through collective bargaining with their employers. This solidarity work is crucial to our project because we don’t support a top-down paternalistic solution to issues stemming form the global sweatshop – we don’t want to pass local resolutions against sweatshops just so consumers in the U.S. can feel good about what they buy. Rather, we take our cues from the workers who are struggling to build power and a voice. We work strategically, and in close coordination with workers who are struggling to form unions and to bargain collectively with their bosses.

In the longer-term:

Connecting Outwards...and Inwards
Organizing around sweatshop labor abuses allows us to understand the important connections we have to workers across the globe. The apparel and footwear industry is a complicated web of companies and contracts that tie workers to consumers. Sweatfree purchasing tells corporations that we don’t want worker abuse marketed in our communities. Our values of dignity and justice – not corporate values – should shape our economy and our communities. We welcome a global economy, but only when created through a process that is democratic, humane, and just.

In the longer-term, our organizing approach is to bridge the gap between the global solidarity work that is a touchstone of our organizing project, and take a closer look at our own communities. If we are in solidarity with people around the world who are deeply and negatively affected by corporate-driven globalization, then we must also look to the people in our own communities who are affected in many of the same ways by this same system. In the longer-term, our project is to connect the local entities of our network to organizing that is happening in their own communities around issues of housing, healthcare, welfare rights, environmental protection, reproductive rights, union organizing, etc…because these issues are driven by the same systems that drive the global sweatshop. And to build true collective bargaining for an entire community, we must be able to make the connections between the issues that all of the members of our community face and are organizing around -- we must be able to ally ourselves strategically to bring “community collective bargaining” to a level that is real and sustainable.