INVESTMENT

REFERENCE    http://www.ifcla.net/investment.php

GUIDE TO BUYING FAIR TRADE                                          http://www.gopromocodes.com/buying-fair-trade

SweatFree Communities   www.sweatfree.org
IFCLA has begun a campaign to get municipalities in the St. Louis region to become Sweatfree Communities.  This means that the town, city, county, state, school district, etc. decides by resolution or ordinance to purchase uniforms and clothing from non-sweatshops.  They join the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium to carry out this decision.

St Louis Board of Aldermen passes Comprehensive Sweatshop Free Procurement Resolution
WE ARE PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE: On Friday, June 29, 2012 the Board of Aldermen passed a resolution which builds on standards set forth in (Buy American) Ordinance 62017 for purchasing goods and commodities for the City.  The Comprehensive Sweatshop Free Program will require that vendors who are awarded the annual contract for the City of St. Louis’ uniforms report where and under what workplace conditions and labor practices the uniforms are being produced.

L-R:  Freddie Dunlap, Commissioner of Supply; Alderwoman Marlene Davis (19 Ward), Marilyn Lorenz, Program Coordinator IFCLA, Alderman Craig Schmid (20 Ward), President Lewis Reed.  Missing: Alderman Stephen Conway (8 Ward)  (these Aldermen co-sponsored the resolution)

U. City adopts resolution against sweat shops
University City, MO was the first municipality in Missouri to become a Sweatfree Community and join the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium!!   The City Council passed the resolution on October 4, 2010.

The campaign for St Louis County and St Charles Sweatfree is about to begin  Join us if you live there. Form a committee in your municipality.  Let’s make the whole region sweatfree!  Your neighborhood, school, workplace, place of worship…
Then we can support the effort for St Louis region as a Fair Trade Town .

Contact IFCLA  ifcla@ifcla.net or 314-721-2977 if you would like to organize a sweatfree task force.

SweatFree Communities, a campaign of the International Labor Rights Forum, assists sweatshop workers globally in their struggles to improve working conditions and form strong, independent unions.

In 2003, grassroots organizations in Maine, Minnesota, New York, Washington, and Wisconsin created SweatFree Communities (SFC).  Each group had been successful—through mostly volunteer efforts—in promoting groundbreaking new procurement policies to ensure our state and local governments, using our tax dollars, were not buying uniforms and other clothing made in sweatshops.  Just seven years later, nine states, 44 cities, 15 counties, 118 school districts, four individual high schools, four dioceses, and one nationwide religious denomination have adopted such “sweatfree” policies (total 193).  SFC coordinates these local campaigns; maintains resources for education and policy development; conducts research on supply chain transparency and the working conditions in government supplier factories; and coordinates educational forums for government officials.

http://www.sweatfree.org/policieslist  for the complete list of sweatfree communities

At the same time, SFC has worked with leading government agencies to form the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium(est. May 2010), a membership organization for governments to help them act with combined strength and transparency in meeting their goals for sweatshop-free purchasing. The Consortium provides expertise and pools resources to monitor working conditions and enforce “sweatfree” standards.  The Consortium’s goal is to change the rules of competition to favor not businesses that produce the cheapest possible goods at the expense of workers, but those that offer good value while operating transparently, providing humane working conditions, and valuing workers’ human and labor rights.   http://buysweatfree.org/

In 2010, SweatFree Communities joined forces with the International Labor Rights Forum, becoming an ILRF campaign and beginning a new collaboration to strengthen our advocacy efforts to create a sweatfree world.

Did you know?

Procurement in the United States accounts for 20 percent of GDP, two-thirds of which is state and local purchasing (13% of GDP), and one-third of which is federal (7% of GDP). The federal government procures over $500 billion of services and goods annually, which is more than the GDP of all but 16 countries.  SweatFree Communities estimates combined U.S. federal, state, and local government apparel procurement alone at more than $10 billion annually.  An estimated 25% of U.S. workers wear a uniform of some type and many of them are government employees.  Any way you look at it, government procurement is a force, one that governments can use responsibly to create jobs, promote decent working conditions and a fair global economy, level the playing field for high-road businesses, and improve the transparency and accountability of both government spending and the participating industries.

SweatFree Communities is an exciting and positive approach in the international worker rights movement.  Campaigns for sweatfree procurement policies foster sustained local activism and strong coalitions of labor, student, solidarity, peace and justice, and faith-based groups.  Local campaigns attract new people to social activism, channeling their outrage about sweatshops into engagement with local institutions.  New movement leaders emerge from local campaigns as graduating high school activists take leadership roles in the university anti-sweatshop movement and other organizations.  These innovative campaigns allow community activists to control the shape and timing of their own efforts, in coordination with other local campaigns.  Because most localities include multiple entities that purchase goods and services — for example, the city, the county, the school district, and the state — one successful campaign can provide momentum for another.  As a local issue in which elected officials have to take positions, these campaigns also offer significant possibilities for press coverage and public education.  Using institutional purchasing as a lever for worker justice, the sweatfree movement ultimately empowers ordinary people to create a just global economy through local action.

to be updated…  www.ifcla.net has background information

  • LEGISLATIVE STRATEGIES
  • RECOGNIZE FREE TRADE FAILURES
  • UNDERSTAND CONNECTIONS
  • RAISE AWARENESS
  • PROMOTE FAIR TRADE
  • COLOMBIA FTA

 

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