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Issues: Worker's Rights
A Bargain with Misery:
Sweatshop Watch and Garment Worker's Center
This workshop was developed to educate workers in the garment industry, and to evoke their stories, about how globalization is impacting them on a daily basis. This workshop is especially pertinent with massive job loss looming as a result of the phase-out of garment quotas and the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, which has partially shielded the U.S. garment industry from lower-cost overseas imports. A Bargain with Misery communicates some of the global economic dynamics impacting garment workers in the U.S. and encourages international solidarity. The workshop illustrates how international trade is corporate-centered and creates a race to the bottom in which workers are jeopardized and left most vulnerable. It forces participants to act out the give and take of structural adjustment and globalization’s macroeconomic pressures.
Also found below are excerpts from an interview with Sweatshop Watch’s Karin Mak, who has facilitated this workshop several times. She lends some insight on how to introduce and guide audiences through the workshop and offers some commentary on the challenges facilitators have faced and how they have adapted. Some additional reflections are included at the end of the interview.
Download an Interview with Karen Mak of Sweatshop watch:
Download the workshop files:
Scripted Role Play: A Race to the Bottom.
Tennessee Economic Renewal Network
This is a very easy and powerful roleplay developed from the actual stories of folks participating in TERN's worker exchanges. Just make three copies and give them to three volunteers, who each read one line at a time with the CEO finishing off each round. Encourage people to act the part!
Download the file:
Introducción a la Coalición de Trabajadores de Immokalee:
Lucas Benitez trabaja con la Coalición de Trabajadores de Immokalee, una organización del base comunitario que lucha por derechos de campesinos en Florida y mas allá. Más que explicar el valor de los graficos y teatro como herramientas de educación popular, Lucas también habla de como la educación popular ha creado un cimiento por el trabajo de la Coalición y iniciativas como Root Cause, que fue una march bien poderoso contra el ALCA.
marque aquí por este entrevista.
Introduction to the Coalition of Immokalee Workers:
Lucas Benitez works with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a community-based organization that fights for farmworker rights in Florida and beyond. Here, Lucas explains the value of graphics and theater as popular education tools . He also discusses the role that popular education has played in creating a foundation of consciousness amongst members that has fed initiatives like Root Cause— an unprecedented global justice march against the FTAA in Miami in November 2003, organized and led by local people of color.
Click here to read the interview:
The Everyday Face of Globalization and the Taco Bell Boycott:
Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Mexico Solidarity Network and the Student Farmworker Alliance
This workshop deals with Immigrant exploitation/ the Sweatshop system/ the fast food industry/ corporate unaccountability/ and the negative effects of corporate globalization in our everyday life (including our food!).
It shows how everyday people can get involved in transforming that relationship, exploring their potential role as consumers, students, activists, family members, community leaders, etc.