Posted on September 6, 2009 - by Editor

No Sweat!

No Sweat!

With the recession getting everyone down and affecting just about everyone except the super rich who now can only afford smaller island purchases, charities and just causes are sadly affected too. No Sweat, who for more than a decade have been championing workers solidarity and pushing for sweatshop workers in particular to gain fairer treatment, wages and working conditions are still fighting strong. At the recent No Sweat Fest in Kings Cross we sat down with long standing activist Jay Kerr who interrupted his busy schedule to shed some light on the organisation, what they do, how you can help and their new campaign called “Send It Back”.

So what is No Sweat all about, especially for those who come to these events purely for the music, what is No Sweat trying to do?

No Sweat is a voluntary activist campaign group. We were setup about ten years ago by some people who got the idea from America with the Students Against Sweatshops. We took the idea as we realised there was nothing like it in Britain. Essentially it’s a campaign against sweatshop labour. What we noticed nowadays is it’s all about Primark after the BBC (expose) but back 10 years ago companies like Nike, Gap, Reebok, Adidas, all the big sports brands, all the big clothing brands really & here in the UK especially Topshop and Topman etc were basically using sweatshop labour based in the Far East and some in the UK. Essentially they pay workers very little and make a massive profit on the clothes that they sell. So by branding their image from their clothing, they don’t sell clothing they sell a brand, they then pay the workers who make the clothes, the trainers, the t-shirts etc. and pay them very little in the countries they work in and make a massive profit for their shareholders.
No Sweat was formed to stand up against that practise and basically fight it and demand these people making the clothes around the world in the sweatshops get decent conditions, get decent wages, hours and the right to form independent trade unions to collectively stand up to the mangers who pay them. That’s the essence of No Sweat and what we do is raise awareness in the UK, form contacts with sweatshop workers abroad, like in Mexico, Bangladesh and inspire them with much needed solidarity in the UK. Not just making noise about it but arrange benefit gigs like today to raise money and send it out there. We also do viral campaigns, demos outside shops, and raise as much awareness and publicity as we can on the sweatshop cause.

How realistic are your ambitions and goals? Are you trying to get people to stop buying those brands or change people’s approach with buying from the big names?

The important thing for us is not to get people to boycott the shops, if you promote a boycott the company likes Nike/Gap might lose on some profit so we have an impact on exposing sweatshops, but the way those companies recoup the loss is by sacking all the lowest paid workers i.e. the sweatshop workers. They wait until the dust settles and they move on to somewhere else. And it starts all over again. So by boycotting we hurt the people we are trying to help. So by awareness we can try and get those companies to give some decent wages and conditions to the people who make the clothes by using a fraction of their enormous profits which are millions and billions and give some of the money to the people who make clothes and not just the shareholders who invest.

10 years is a long time to invest in any cause. So do you think No Sweat has made any difference?

I think we have seen a distinct difference. When we first started there was very little sympathy mainly from people who were actively in the know but we have raised greater awareness across the board. Nowadays we have organisations like the BBC doing investigative expose on Panorama and other programmes raising awareness for us, which all comes from our grassroots work. Things like basic demos outside shops and you can see the impact. Unfortunately the companies are not taking enough notice. They are spinning the stories and putting a glossy spin on them.

So how do people who share your cause and of similar mindset get involved?

Well we have a website obviously. We do some publicity through leaflets etc. We seem to have been one of the first groups to focus on this issue but since then other groups have come up like Behind The Label who are a charity wing of what we do. We are not connected but they do a similar campaign with a bigger base. And another group like War on One who are a longstanding charity they have been around for about 40 years, but since we have been doing this they have invested more of their time and energy in the sweatshop awareness. With the help of these other organisations we join forces a lot and share information; War On One might not have the activists so stand outside shops whereas we will. We might not have the resources to travel to Bangladesh to investigate, War on One will. A lot of the groups we work with, The National Garment Workers’ Federation of Bangladesh, they are a workers-run trade union there, and until recently trade unions were illegal in Bangladesh. They campaign on behalf of the workers and are worker run; we support them and War On One support them from a different angle. So we all help build that support.

Jay from No Sweat! © Imelda Michalczyk

So you are wearing a T-Shirt in aid of your cause too. Tell me about the merchandise you are selling here and how that helps?

We source our t-shirts’ through a company called ethical prints backed by the Wandsworth Trade Council, but are a independent company that source t-shirts’ from co-operatives from around the world. This particular T-Shirt- a parody of Starbucks with “Fuck Off” blazoned across it- is made by a women’s co-operative based in Bangladesh. They are paid four times the going rate of sweatshop labour wages in the area and what Ethical Prints are showing is that you can provide decent conditions. If a small company from south London can do what they are doing, then companies like Nike, Gap, Primark can change their policy/margins so that the money can go where it’s needed. Other shirts are a take on the Nike logo, with the Nike swish broken in half. It is a gimmick but raises awareness. My other favourite is “Store Wars” an outtake of course on Star Wars.

Are you not worried that people coming to this gig today are purely here for the music?

There is always that concern when doing a benefit gig but by doing it you are raising awareness through the bands and hoping to expose the people attending to something they may not have thought about. The money today is going to the workers on the Isle of Wight, which has been in the news; the wind turbine factory which was shut down the by UK government and the workers are fighting it by staying inside. A gig like today will raise awareness and raise some money and keep the motivation going. All the bands today are playing for free, so bands like The Skints and others are taking their time on tour and helping us raise awareness. We will often give them free t-shirts’ to wear which will help expose the sweatshop cause. Hopefully one day the big companies will take notice, we will keep plugging away and the idea is they will change their ways and give the workers what they need and workers will have the guts to stand up for themselves.

How often do you do gigs like this?

Well over the last 18 months we have being doing a monthly slot at the Cross Kings here in Kings Cross. A lot of punk bands like Jakal, Moral Dilemma, Active Slaughter have all done benefit gigs for us. On the other side to cater for another audience we have had comedians like Stewart Lee, Alexei Sayle, Mark Thomas have done benefit gigs for us. We try and do regular publicity events and go for different markets and look for different ways of doing it.
We are about to launch a campaign called “Send It Back”. We don’t want people to boycott like I said, but if you buy clothes from Primark cut out the label and send it to our offices in Kings Cross and we will gather them up and hopefully have thousands of them and take them to the companies abusing sweatshop workers and dump the labels on their doorstep.

What is it you would like these bigger companies to do, what changes would you like to see?

The government could introduce laws, but corporations like Nike, Gap, Primark could say “Ok we are listening to what you are saying and we want to do something.” A lot of these companies don’t source directly; they outsource the work abroad to a middle man, a subcontractor. They say “We want the clothes for X amount” and that person/supplier has to produce it for as cheap as possible and that’s where the sweatshop labour really kicks; when the middleman has to make profit for himself and deliver for the big companies. Well we want the big companies to put the money where their mouth is and pay better wages, and provide better conditions. Change the policy and we will stop attacking you. It’s a global struggle.

Please visit www.nosweat.org.uk/ for more information.