Re: [libreplanet-discuss] Please support my friend's free culture film, "Tejid@s Junt@s", a documentary about workers organizing to turn a sweatshop into a union-shop!

[Ted Smith]

On Wed, 2012-06-27 at 14:30 -0700, Danny Piccirillo wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> My friend Will Delphia has been involved with the Alta Gracia project and
> made this free culture film (CC-BY-SA) documenting the struggle of workers
> in a sweatshop organizing a union.

This is misleading -- Alta Gracia was never a sweatshop, and the workers
there were never not unionized. Alta Gracia is essentially a charity
project run by the company Knight Apparel.

After the workers at a nearby factory unionized and were subsequently
shut down, Knight Apparel started Alta Gracia. Knight Apparel then
contacted a myriad of student groups who had protested (I believe)
Russel Athletic, the company that shut down the unionized factory. The
basic idea was, "if those students can generate so much publicity for a
'bad' company, imagine how much free marketing they can generate for a
'good' company."

Alta Gracia is a good factory, the workers there are paid well and have
health care, and the FSF should probably source its t-shirts from there.

But this has nothing to do with "the struggle of workers" and everything
to do with corporate profits. This is "worker-friendly" capitalism,
similar to "green" capitalism.

-- 
Sent from Ubuntu

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