Though the United Students Against Sweatshops organization is just starting to look at returning to campus, it already has plans to make change: The group is trying to get Syracuse University to cut its contract with Adidas.

Jose Godinez and Claudia Chen, undecided freshmen in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management and the College of Visual and Performing Arts, respectively, are spearheading the movement to restart the USAS branch at SU.

The two attended a speech by Haitian and Honduran sweatshop workers in Hendricks Chapel on Feb. 5, they said. The speakers talked about their poor working conditions in sweatshops and brought up the group’s “Badidas” campaign. Badidas is a movement that encourages universities to drop Adidas as a sponsor because of the company’s refusal to pay $1.8 million to 2,800 sweatshop workers in Indonesia, according to Badidas’s website.

“I went to see the two workers talk, and I was really motivated by it to start the USAS chapter here,” Godinez said. “We’re trying to establish the group on campus now and supporting the Badidas campaign by getting Syracuse to cut their contract with Adidas as sponsors.”

The neighboring USAS chapter at Cornell University is facilitating the start of the Syracuse chapter, providing Godinez and Chen with resources and support from the national organization.

Cornell was the first college to drop Adidas’ sponsorship as a result of the Badidas campaign, said Theodora Walsh, president at the Cornell USAS chapter. She said she hopes SU will join them.

“Student organizations with national connections that work together have incredible potential to change relationships universities have with big brands,” Walsh said. “Syracuse, in particular, is interesting because they have huge licensing deals with collegiate apparel and Adidas.”

The current focus of the SU chapter is supporting the Badidas campaign by exposing Adidas’ sweatshop conditions and encouraging students to make conscientious decisions by choosing clothes from labor-responsible factories.

For example, the SU bookstore sells products from a brand called Alta Gracia. The products are made in a unionized factory in the Dominican Republic that pays its workers a living wage, said Gretchen Purser, an assistant professor of sociology who is working with the group.

“We sell so many clothes, so instead of having relationships with brands that contract with sweatshops, Syracuse has a role to play to make sure there are responsible working conditions behind its sales,” she said.

Purser was a USAS member at her alma mater, University of California-Berkeley. She said the labor advocacy group had a much larger presence on SU’s campus during the 1990s, and hopes the group’s presence can return as a formidable student movement.

“It’s about having a student organization that promotes worker’s rights, which is a fundamental movement that benefits all workers,” Purser said. “USAS has historically focused on sweatshop conditions, but it also focuses on labor conditions at universities.”

Currently, the USAS branch at SU is in its infancy stage, gaining momentum by raising awareness and recruiting new members on campus. The group’s first general interest meeting will be held Feb. 26 at 6 p.m. in the Whitman atrium.

For now, Godinez, who is organizing the meeting, said the group is trying to get as much support as possible and reaching out to people interested in joining the cause.

“I think it’s a moral obligation,” Godinez said. “People would connect to this cause because it’s inhumane that workers have to deal with such poor conditions to make our SU apparel.”

Published on February 20, 2013 at 11:22 pm

Contact Alfred: alng@syr.edu

@alfredwkng