Student campaigners People and Planet are claiming to have won a ‘historic’ victory in the worldwide fight against sweatshops.

The environmental and social pressure group say that their boycott of Fruit of the Loom products has lead to improved working conditions for Latin American garment workers.

On Sunday, Honduran factory worker Reyna Dominguez Martinez addressed a People and Planet conference in Manchester to announce that US company Russell Athletic, which owns Fruit of the Loom, has been forced to re-hire 1200 Honduran workers who had been unjustly fired by the company.

She said this opened the door for increased worker’s rights and worker organisation across all of Fruit of the Loom’s facilities in Central America.

At the ‘Shared Planet’ conference Martinez explained how workers at the Jeerzes de Honduras factory had taken a stand against abuses by the company which had resulted in them being blacklisted in the local apparel export industry. Some workers even received death threats for speaking out.

However, on 14 November Russell Athletic announced that it would re-hire all 1200 workers, pay them economic compensation and conduct workers’ rights and freedom of association training at a new factory, to be built in nearby Choloma.    

The historic agreement can be viewed as a success for student campaigning with nine universities across the UK, including Edinburgh, involved in a boycott against Fruit of the Loom clothing. American anti-sweatshop group, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) had also been successful in lobbying universities and colleges to cancel some of their biggest Russell Athletic contracts.

Across the world, over 100 universities boycotted Fruit of the Loom, making it the largest garment boycott in history.

Fiona Ranford, a recent University of Edinburgh graduate and People and Planet campaigner told The Student:  “This is a historic win for the global justice movement. It’s the first time global campaigning has resulted in the reopening of a large factory that a brand has already closed down. It shows that there are consequences to abusing workers rights and that companies can no longer hide their abuses in the shadows. Student pressure can be incredibly effective at regulating an industry famed for abuses’.

Moises Alvarado, President of the Worker’s Union in Jeerzes de Honduras, where the Fruit of the Loom factory was closed, has praised the work of students in the anti-sweatshop campaign: “For us, it was very important to receive support of the universities. We are impressed by the social conscience of students.”

On 24 November, Reyna Martinez will address an Edinburgh Public Meeting about the ‘Buy Right’ campaign and her experiences in Honduras in the David Hume Tower Conference Room at 7pm.

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