Labored response
Printer-friendly version Date of publication: April 5, 2006
Source: Brattleboro Reformer
Editorial
We have to admit we were stunned to see the Brattleboro Union High School Board balk at a proposal to have the school's Child Labor Education and Action project (CLEA) formally affiliate with the Workers Rights Consortium, a group that enforces manufacturing codes of conduct for clothing bought and sold by colleges and universities.
In the seven years it has been in existence, the student-run CLEA has done some amazing things. Members have gone on trips to Guatemala and Nicaragua to meet and live with the children and families affected by child labor practices. They have held workshops and teach-ins to raise awareness of the issue with their peers.
In 2003, CLEA won the Vermont National Education Association's Human and Civil Rights Award. Collaborating with the School for International Training, CLEA has demonstrated how youth activism can make a difference in trying to end the exploitation of children.
Child labor has been almost eliminated in the industrialized world, but it is widespread in Asia, Africa, India and Latin American countries. UNICEF estimates more than 250 million underage laborers are working in factories, usually in squalor and almost always for little pay.
So it boggles our minds to see why some members of the BUHS Board would get upset at spending $500 to allow CLEA to affiliate with the Workers Rights Coalition to insure that the athletic and band uniforms the school buys is certified child labor-free.
But we can see why conservative members of the BUHS Board attacked CLEA on Monday night. Congressman Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., has been one of CLEA's biggest supporters and helped it get its startup funding of $350,000 from the federal departments of Labor and Education and the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.
But this is not about politics. It is about human rights.
Brattleboro wants to become the first high school in the country to adopt standards shared by more than 150 colleges and universities -- to insure that clothing that bears the school name was not made in factories that use child labor or engage in other exploitative practices.
The BUHS Board should be embarrassed it resisted this request. We hope that when the board takes the matter up again on May 15, it not only gives CLEA what it asked for, but also apologizes for the badgering and bullying of CLEA members that some members of the board displayed on Monday.
