RE: Guest Workers Ask for Solidarity at Jordan Sweatshop Producing for Wal-Mart
In an unprecedented step, thousands of foreign guest workers from Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh and Nepal have come together to struggle for their basic rights at Jordan’s largest garment factory, Classic, which produces clothing for Wal-Mart and Hanes brands. Nearly nine years into the U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement, thousands of workers are still stripped of their passports, forced to work grueling 80 to 90-hour work weeks, including mandatory 24-hour all-night shifts, while being shortchanged of their wages, beaten and housed in primitive dorms infested with bed bugs.
If the guest workers win this struggle for their basic rights, word will spread well beyond Jordan to reach tens of thousands of guest workers working in similarly deplorable conditions around the world. This could be a huge step forward!
The workers are asking representatives of Wal-Mart, Hanes and Macy’s, as well as U.S. and Jordanian Government officials, to participate in a joint meeting in the Al Hassan Industrial Park in Jordan. Eight hundred to a thousand guest workers have already committed to attend the meeting. Finally, the labels and the government officials will hear directly from the workers!
Charles Kernaghan
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