La Voz De Berkeley Fall 1998, Berkeley, Volume 8, Issue 2

Fuerza Unida Fights Back

Dear Friends & Supporters,

We call on you to please help us organize Raza and All Students and Youth of Color across the Southwest this fall for justice for garment workers and corporate responsibility from Levi Strauss & Co. We are a group of workers who lost our jobs when Levi’s closed its San Antonio plant and laid off 1,150 mainly Mexican American women in 1990. Levi’s moved the plant to Costa Rica where workers earned in a day what the average San Antonio seamstress would have made in half an hour. We founded the grassroots organization Fuerza Unida, or United Force, to fight for justice and have conducted an 8-year battle for very modest severance terms—which Levi’s has refused.

In November 1997 laid off 6,400 workers at 11 US plants. Soon after the announcement, a Levi’s spokesman admitted that the new severance package had to do with "lessons learned in San Antonio" and that the company had failed to anticipate how much criticism it would receive from the community (Albuquerque Journal, 11/11/97). Although company representatives denied that the jobs were going overseas, on April 8 Levi’s announced plans to return production to China. Human rights activists are challenging that decision and recent revelations of abuses of workers in Levi’s contracted plants in Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere.

Levi’s cultivates its image as a "socially responsible corporation" but treats its workers badly. CEO Bob Haas received an award from the United Nations for improving the lives of his employees on the same day that the company said it would fire a third of its factory workers in the US and Canada. In February 1998 President Clinton awarded Levi’s a corporate leadership award for its support of community diversity programs, but ironically these programs were in communities like Albuquerque, El Paso and Knoxville, where Levi’s plant closures disproportionately hit workers of color and women.

We want Levi’s to reopen dialogue with us and offer a just settlement to the laid-off and injured workers and our community. As the world’s largest garment manufacturer, Levi’s outsources work to contractors in some 50 countries. Sales in 1997 totaled $6.9 billion. Sources close to the company said a restructuring plan designed to cut $200 million to $220 million in operating costs is expected to result in additional layoffs over the next 2 years (San Francisco Chronicle, 7/16/98). In 1997 Levi’s lost a $10 million anti-discrimination suit with laid-off workers in El Paso, and this July Levi’s settled out of court with another 80 of the 110 employees. Terms were not disclosed, but one attorney said the settlement was in the millions of dollars (Laredo Morning Times, 7/17/98).

We appeal to you as the younger generation who will be the future leaders of our communities and gente. Many of you have mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters and cousins like us who, through our labor as garment, hotel, restaurant, service, and farm workers and maids, helped our families and communities survive in this country. Many of us have worked long hours, at low wages, without the benefits and the respect we are due. Especially during the last 2 decades, hundreds of thousands of us have lost our jobs as giant manufacturers and retailers have moved overseas searching for lower wages and higher profits by exploiting our sisters in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, Asia, South America, and Africa. We were early victims of NAFTA.

Students and youth have played leadership roles in our community in organizing for justice, supporting workers struggles, and most recently fighting against racist attacks like Propositions 187, 209, and 227 in California that are wiping out public education and health for undocumented immigrants, affirmative action programs for people of color, and bilingual education for our children. Students will be organizing on many campuses across the country this fall against sweatshop exploitation of workers around the world. Please help us organize a special mobilization reaching out to Raza and all students and youth of color for corporate responsibility from Levi’s to the Mexican and Mexican-American women and all the women of color the company left jobless.

1. Volunteer to help organize the South West Days of Action for Garment Worker Justice on your campus. 2. Get organizations, students, teachers, professors, and individuals you know on and off campus to endorse a call to action. 3. Get organizations, students, teachers, professors, and individuals you know to sign letters and postcards to Levi’s CEO Bob Haas urging him to open dialogue and reach a just settlement with the San Antonio workers and our community.

ĦLa mujer cambiando, el mundo transformando! ĦAqui estamos y no nos vamos!

In Solidarity,

Viola Casares & Petra Mata Fuerza Unida Co-Coordinators

710 New Laredo Hwy., San Antonio, Texas 78211 Tel: 210-927-2294 Fax:210-927-2295