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emergency motion on sweatshops and indonesia for NUS conference

students at the london institute | 13.04.2002 19:16

London Institute Students' Union have submitted the following emergency motion to the NUS conference : "No to sweatshop labour - solidarity with workers and students in indonesia".

If you are going to NUS conference or know anyone else who is and who might support it, please get in touch and support this motion!





London Institute students' union have submitted this emergency motion to NUS conference 2002.
Please support it!

For more details email  kat@nosweat.org.uk or  admin@nosweat.org.uk

NUS Conference emergency motion

*No to sweatshop labour - solidarity with workers and students in Indonesia*

Conference believes

1. That over the last few months, Indonesian trade unionists and students have been subject to increasing violence from the police, the military and armed
Islamic fundamentalist gangs
2. That gay organisations (mainly fairly prosperous groups of gay men, meeting largely for social purposes) have also been attacked
3. That in early March, the FNPBI, Indonesia’s independent (not-state) trade union federation, put out an international appeal for solidarity
4. That Dita Sari, chair of the FNPBI, was recently awarded the Reebok Foundation's Human Rights award, due to be presented at the opening of the Winter
Olympics in February
5. That Dita refused the award, rightly seeing it as an attempt by Reebok to whitewash their record on workers' rights and pointing out that the money had been
sweated from workers earning poverty wages in the Indonesian garment industry.

Conference further believes
1. That the conditions in which Indonesian workers live and work are often appalling, and that they have every right to organise to fight for improvements
without fear of violence or persecution
2. That No Sweat has launched an international appeal to make up the $50,000 the FNPBI lost by turning down Reebok’s award, including a target of £5,000 to
be raised in the UK by the summer.

Conference resolves
1. To condemn in the strongest terms all attacks on workers and students for trying to organise, and on the lesbian, gay and bisexual community simply for
offending religious reactionaries.
2. To donate £1000 to the FNPBI as part of the international appeal and mandate the NEC write to them and to the press publicising NUS's support.
3. Twin with the FNPBI's student federation and publicise their activities on the NUS website and in NUS publications.
4. To support the No Sweat campaign and donate £500 to it
5. To mandate the NEC to ensure that NUS only deals with companies which allow their workers to organise independent trade unions.

To print this motion, a printer-friendly version is at
 http://www.nosweat.org.uk/sections.php?op=printpage&artid=2

For more information on the international appeal refered to in the motion go to  http://www.nosweat.org.uk or look at the following article on Indymedia UK:  http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=26634

The text of the appeal itself is available as a .RTF file (for opening in all kinds of word processing or dtp programs on PCs and Macs) at  http://www.nosweat.org.uk/files/leaflets/fnpbi.rtf

students at the london institute
- e-mail: kat@nosweat.org.uk
- Homepage: http://www.nosweat.org.uk

Comments

Hide the following 2 comments

no-sweat?

14.04.2002 10:35

Isn't no-sweat a front for Alliance for Workers' Liberty? If so, I don't think that NUS should be donating £500 to them.

I've been to the NUS conference before - it's full of cliques which are all as bad as each other - annoying trots, labour sycophants, and saddos who can't bear to abandon student politics.

The only thing it's good for now is 10% discount at HMV, but you can get cheaper CDs elsewhere, or just copy them so I could do without it.

I've heard that the NUS conference costs over £300,000. Our conference delegates got elected on about 4 votes each - it's disgraceful. If you're a student, try and get your union to disaffiliate from this corrupt organisation.

anti-clique


sweat more!

15.04.2002 12:58

Too right! If Trots like the AWL are involved in No Sweat, logically us real revolutionaries must oppose it. I suggest setting up the Campaign for Sweatier Shops, demanding that younger kids be employed and made to work longer hours.

And yes, breaking up the NUS will lead immediately to anarchist revolution, since all students are on the brink of overthrowing the state, if only the NUS wasn't holding them back. As with so many ideas, you can tell it's truly revolutionary because the Tories support it.

a nonny mouse