Yes it was Charles Kernaghan of the Nat'l Labor Committee on C-span last night. He gave a good talk at St. Michael's college, in Minnesota I believe. He said that companies in Central America actually give their women and children workers doses of amphetamines each day so that they can stay awake during their interminably long days. He also talked about the terrible conditions of garment workers in China, kept in virtual slavery. His group wants Walmart to provide the names and addrresses of their contractors, but the company will not do it. He urges us to write to WalMart urging it to do so.
michael yates
Doug Henwood wrote:
>
> christian a. gregory wrote:
>
> >i was just talking to a friend who said he saw a stunning presentation on
> >c-span about global labor situation-- partly focused on walmart. he said it
> >was given by one of the guys in the national labor committee, evidently a
> >new york group. anybody know anything about them?
>
> Was it Charlie Kernaghan you saw - the man who made Kathie Lee cry? He does
> a fantastic performance; you don't want to be on a panel after him. He and
> his colleagues at the NLC, with not much more than letterhead support from
> unions, have done lots, maybe more than anyone, to expose sweatshops in the
> garment biz. Charlie was an apolitical photographer who got politicized
> during the Central American wars of the 1980s. Now he traces the course of
> a garment from Guatemalan teenagers' hands to Ann Taylor, at a markup of
> several thousand percent.
>
> Doug