Northwestern Students Against Sweatshops will ask NU administrators to lend their weight in support of workers striking against a company that used to supply linens to the university.
“Students have been successful in fighting the anti-sweatshop movement,” said Sarita Gupta, executive director of Jobs with Justice. “(But) these movements don’t mean anything if we can’t localize them and make them real on a local level.”
Workers at Carousel Linens in Highwood, who are mostly Latino immigrants and speak little English, have been striking for six weeks for the right to form a union, picketing outside the business every morning and holding rallies on Fridays.
Carousel owner Scott Close did not return calls for comment.
Carousel has four university customers in the Chicago area that are affiliated with the Student Labor Action Project, which is part of Jobs with Justice and involves students with local workers, said Lenore Palladino, a University of Chicago senior who works with Chicago-based Jobs with Justice. Of the four, NU and DePaul University have said they will stop using Carousel, and students are negotiating with administrators at U of C and Loyola University.
Aramark, NU’s provider for linens, has used products such as tablecloths from Carousel at NU for special events in the past, said Lizzy Gore, an NSAS member, but Aramark has stopped using Carousel since the strikes began.
Since it was a corporate-level decision, local branches of Aramark have been slow to stop using Carousel as a supplier, Gore said. Although NU cannot use its business with the company as leverage for negotiations, Gore said she is asking administrators to use the university’s position in the community to pressure the company.
“The administration wouldn’t have to put their stamp of approval on anything, it would just be them supporting us being able to express our views to the owner,” said Gore, a Weinberg senior. “If you’re within a 20-minute radius of here, Northwestern has some clout. If the vice president for student affairs or someone equally important called, it would be much harder to ignore.”
Student delegations from the universities have tried to meet with Close, but were not allowed to meet with him, Gore and Palladino said.
Close refused to acknowledge that 85 percent of the employees signed cards saying they wanted to unionize, said Eddie Acosta, an organizer for the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.
Although many of the workers have been with the company for five to 10 years, they have not seen a raise above minimum wage and have worked in sweatshop conditions, Palladino said.
“They’re not making enough to feed themselves, to house themselves or to have adequate health care,” she said.
Acosta said 80 percent of laundry workers in the Chicago area are unionized, including those at Skokie Valley Laundry, where relatives of some of Carousel’s employees work.
“The management refuses to let them organize,” Gore said. “History has shown that, especially in situations where workers don’t speak English and aren’t familiar with U.S. labor laws, workers can be easily intimidated.”
NSAS’s involvement with Carousel is a change for the group from its globally oriented work with the Worker’s Rights Consortium.
“Sometimes student activism is criticized for being idealistic and abstract and out there trying to save the world,” Gore said. “But when you do it locally, you can really see the difference.”
