Date of publication: April 3, 2011
Source: Washington Square News
Author: Hanqing Chen
In a room bound by silence, the voice of one woman in NYU's philosophy building reached a stunned audience with the help of an interpreter.
"My name is Aleya. I come from Bangladesh," said Aleya Akter, a sewing machine operator in a Bangladeshi factory. "I've been working for Wal-Mart since 1994. When I started I used to get $7 per month for 208-hour work and now I get about $80 a month for 26 days a month. I was working 14 hours in a row and sometimes up to 3 a.m. shifts."
As part of a larger campaign to keep Wal-Mart from building a store in Brooklyn, Oxfam @ NYU invited the "Sweatshop, Warehouse, Wal-Mart: A Worker Truth Tour" speaker series to give students a closer look at the experiences of Wal-Mart employees...