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Change to Win collected some ideas for how to enjoy a sweatshop-free holiday season.
Never fear! The International Labor Rights Forum and SweatFree Communities have stepped into the breach with the latest edition of their Shop With a Conscience Consumer Guide, which lists tons of places you can buy sweatshop-free clothing for everyone on your list. And their 2010 Sweatshop Hall of Shame is a handy list of retail outlets that don’t deserve your business until the way they treat the men and women who make their products moves from “naughty” to “nice”.
They’ve even got these materials available as PDF brochures (Consumer Guide, Hall of Shame), suitable for printing out and taking with you to the mall. Heck, you could even print out some extra copies and hand them out to other shoppers while you’re there, you know?
I have some more ideas I’ll publish soon about union-made or otherwise worker-friendly holiday gifts. There’s one universal rule to remember for holiday gifts: ship with US Mail or UPS, not FedEx.
UPS is almost entirely union employees (Teamsters), with impressive wages, benefits and treatment for workers. FedEx, on the other hand, doesn’t even consider their employees to be employees, with meager pay, no benefits, no vacation days, and no respect. Check out this handy chart to see the stark difference between how UPS and FedEx treat their employees.
UPDATE: As laborite57 points out in the comments, FedEx Air’s 3,000 pilots are union members. Specifically, FedEx Ground is the biggest problem for FedEx, as those workers are considered contractors, not employees. But this classic quote from FedEx founder Fred Smith says it all about the company as a whole:
FedEx CEO Fred Smith told The Wall Street Journal in 1989, “I don’t intend to recognize any unions at Federal Express.”
4 Comments
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This advice likely to get a rather frosty reception over at the Air Line Pilots Association (AFL-CIO). They represent about 3,000 FedEx pilots, They also are not terribly fond the UPS managers who have tried to block ALPA’s attempts to get an affiliation agreement with UPS’ in-house pilots union.
The problem with FedEx is specifically FedEx Ground, not Air.
Merry Christmas, Michael! I have to disagree about FedEx though. The problem is not with subsidiary FedEx Ground, but with the anti-union mania at the top levels of the company, especially with that old curmudgeon Fred Smith.
But your basic point is well taken. I always use USPS or UPS, never FedEx, even though the pilots there deserve recognition for their courage and fortitude in standing up to Fred Smith and his lackeys.
That’s definitely true about Fred Smith; I think Ground is the most clear manifestation of FedEx’s anti-union culture and is a good example of why UPS is a better union choice. I’ll update my post to reflect your comments, though.