PSAS heads off campus for workers' rights

Armed with an assortment of placards and some protest chants left over from their recent sit-in of College Hall, eight members of Penn Students Against Sweatshops took their message of workers' rights on the road yesterday. But it wasn't university apparel regulations the members were protesting this time. As part of the National Student Labor Day of Action, PSAS visited Domestic Uniform Rental, a Northeast Philadelphia-based contractor of linen cleaning services, to protest poor working conditions and stalled contract talks. Some of Penn's laundry services are provided by Domestic, which is one reason the group decided to join in the protest. PSAS was joined by anti-sweatshop activists from Bryn Mawr College, Haverford College and St. Joseph's University, as well as representatives from the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. "This is a student-slash-labor day of action, in honor of the 32nd anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King," College freshman Anna Roberts said. She added that PSAS is particularly interested in Domestic because their employees' struggle for better working conditions is in line with the traditional aims of the anti-sweatshop group. "We [went] down today because Penn is one of Domestic Laundry's biggest customers," Roberts explained. "All of the tablecloths Penn uses are contracted out to these people, and this goes right along with sweatshops. We don't want to pay people [who abuse workers' rights] whether they're making our T-shirts or washing our laundry." PSAS moved into the campus spotlight in February, when its members staged a nine-day College Hall sit-in to demand that the University pull out of the Fair Labor Association -- a labor rights monitoring group of which Penn was a member -- and join the Worker Rights Consortium, a group which PSAS said was much more effective in monitoring factory conditions and protecting labor standards. Facing pressure from the protesters to act and from the Penn community to end the sit-in, University President Judith Rodin convened a special committee to investigate the matter and render a decision. In anticipation of its report, the University pulled out of the FLA until a final determination could be reached. Yesterday's rally included speeches by UNITE union leaders, Domestic workers and members of the student groups. "That sit-in taught us a few things," School of Arts and Sciences graduate student and PSAS member Michael Janson told the crowd of about 50 protesters. "It taught us the importance of solidarity. Our members are people who come from middle-class families. Our struggle is your struggle. Our struggle is against exploitation. Our struggle is for justice." Following the 30-minute rally, representatives from UNITE and Penn, Haverford, Bryn Mawr and St. Joseph's met with Tom Hench, Domestic's general manager, asking to inspect the facility and for him to answer questions from the protesters waiting at the front door. Though Hench refused to let the students and union members tour the building during work hours, he did speak briefly with the protesters and answer their questions. PSAS members, however, were not happy with his answers. College senior and PSAS member Miriam Joffe-Block said, "He obviously didn't want us to come in back because he wanted to clean things up. That's basically the same thing that the FLA is saying -- that it's OK for the companies to be able to prepare before their facilities are inspected."

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