Emergency motion for NUS Conference re Indonesia and Sweatshops

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday April 13, 2002 20:44 by students going to nus conference - no sweat kat at nosweat dot org dot uk No Sweat, PO Box 36707, London SW9 8YA, England 07904 431959 (UK)

Supporting Dita Sari and the FNPBI's stand against Reebok's bribe attempt

London Institute students' union have submitted this emergency motion to NUS conference 2002. Please support it! For more information on the international appeal refered to in the motion go to http://www.nosweat.org.uk or look at the following article on Indymedia.ie http://indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=1906 For more details email [email protected] or [email protected]

The text of the appeal itself is available as a .RTF file (for opening in all kinds of word processing or dtp programs on PCs and Macs) at http://www.nosweat.org.uk/files/leaflets/fnpbi.rtf

NUS Conference emergency motion

*No to sweatshop labour - solidarity with workers and students in Indonesia*

Conference believes

1. That over the last few months, Indonesian trade unionists and students have been subject to increasing violence from the police, the military and armed
Islamic fundamentalist gangs
2. That gay organisations (mainly fairly prosperous groups of gay men, meeting largely for social purposes) have also been attacked
3. That in early March, the FNPBI, Indonesia’s independent (not-state) trade union federation, put out an international appeal for solidarity
4. That Dita Sari, chair of the FNPBI, was recently awarded the Reebok Foundation's Human Rights award, due to be presented at the opening of the Winter
Olympics in February
5. That Dita refused the award, rightly seeing it as an attempt by Reebok to whitewash their record on workers' rights and pointing out that the money had been
sweated from workers earning poverty wages in the Indonesian garment industry.

Conference further believes
1. That the conditions in which Indonesian workers live and work are often appalling, and that they have every right to organise to fight for improvements
without fear of violence or persecution
2. That No Sweat has launched an international appeal to make up the $50,000 the FNPBI lost by turning down Reebok’s award, including a target of £5,000 to
be raised in the UK by the summer.

Conference resolves
1. To condemn in the strongest terms all attacks on workers and students for trying to organise, and on the lesbian, gay and bisexual community simply for
offending religious reactionaries.
2. To donate £1000 to the FNPBI as part of the international appeal and mandate the NEC write to them and to the press publicising NUS's support.
3. Twin with the FNPBI's student federation and publicise their activities on the NUS website and in NUS publications.
4. To support the No Sweat campaign and donate £500 to it
5. To mandate the NEC to ensure that NUS only deals with companies which allow their workers to organise independent trade unions.

To print this motion, a printer-friendly version is at
http://www.nosweat.org.uk/sections.php?op=printpage&artid=2

For more information on the international appeal refered to in the motion go to http://www.nosweat.org.uk or look at the following articles on Indymedia: UK: http://uk.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=26634 or IE http://indymedia.ie/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=1906

The text of the appeal itself is available as a .RTF file (for opening in all kinds of word processing or dtp programs on PCs and Macs) at http://www.nosweat.org.uk/files/leaflets/fnpbi.rtf