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About Us

SLAP is a student group at the University of Washington dedicated to promoting worker's rights by waging on-campus labor campaigns. We are a group of students who are committed to acting in solidarity with workers' struggles locally and around the world. UW SLAP is an affiliate of United Students Against Sweatshops and Washington State Jobs with Justice.

SLAP has had several victories over the past few years, including getting the UW Administration to adopt a policy that will make all Husky apparel sweatshop-free in the future, winning medical care and fair wages for university janitors, and forcing a campus sub-contractor to allow their employees to unionize. We can be reached via email at: uwslap@u.washington.edu, or snail-mail: SAO Box 207, University of Washington Box 352238, Seattle, WA 98195. For updates and more information on our group, visit www.uwslap.org.

To find out how to join UW SLAP, click here. If you are a supporter of our group, and would like to give SLAP an in-kind donation or monetary gift, please get in touch with us via email.



Struggles we are dedicated to

  • Supporting worker and immigrant rights
  • Undoing institutionalized racism
  • Combating other forms of oppression in the labor market
  • Changing people's consumption practices to promote social justice
  • Lobbying decision-makers to advance working class issues

What we've accomplished:

  • Last year we won a historic campaign to get the UW Administration to sign on to the Designated Suppliers Program, which is a policy that will source future Husky apparel from factories that respect the right to unionize, and pay workers a living wage.
  • In 2006, we campaigned to get LVI Environmental to adopt a stance of union neutrality towards their employees on campus and in the Northwest.
  • In 2005, we helped SEIU Local 6 win a legal contract giving workers fair wages and health benefits in all future off-campus lease agreements, and won these benefits for janitors in UW Medical School buildings.
  • In 2004, we organized with a campus union, SEIU Local 925, to help them achieve their first pay raise in 12 years.
  • We have hosted various speakers on campus who have addressed issues such as the benefits of unionization, immigrant workers' rights, sweatshop labor, Wal-Mart's exploitative business practices, and inequities in global trade.
  • We are the founding member of the UW Sweat Free Coalition, whose goals are to ensure that the workers who make clothing bearing our school's name recieve living wages and are allowed to unionize, and to eliminate the use of sweatshop labor in the production of officially licensed UW apparel.
  • We are an affiliate of United Students Against Sweatshops, which is a coalition of student organizations in the United States and Canada that aims to build a grassroots movement to fight for sweatshop-free labor conditions and workers' rights.
  • We are a member of the UW Fair Trade Coffee Coalition, which aims to convert our school into a 100% Fair Trade Certified coffee campus.
  • We are a member of Washington State Jobs with Justice, an action-oriented coalition of labor, community and religious organizations working together to build unity and support for the struggles of working people.

USAS Principles of Unity

In waging our DSP campaign last year, UW SLAP affilated with United Students Against Sweatshops, which is an international movement of students on college campus who are fighting for sweatshop-free labor conditions and workers' rights. Over 200 student organizations in the United States and Canada have joined USAS' network by adopting the below Principles of Unity:

  1. We work in solidarity with working people's struggles. In order to best accomplish this and in recognition of the interconnections between local and global struggles, we strive to build relationships with other preogressive movements and cooperate in coalition with other groups struggling for justice within all communities campus, local, regional, and international.
  2. We struggle against racism, sexism, homophobia, classism, and other forms of oppression within our society, within our organizations, and within ourselves. Not only are we collectively confronting these prejudices as inherent defects of the global economy which creates sweatshops, but we also recognize the need for individuals to confront the prejudices they have internalized as the result of living and learning in a flawed and oppressive society.
  3. We are working in coalition to build a grassroots student movement that challenges corporate power and that fights for economic justive. This coalition is loosely defined, thus we strive to act in coordination with one another to mobilize resources and build a national network while reserving the autonomy of individuals and campuses. We do not impose a single ideological position, practice, or approach; rather, we aim to support one another in a spirit of respect for difference, shared purpose and hope.
  4. We strive to act democratically. With the understanding that we live and learn in a state of imperfect government, we attempt to achieve truer democracy in making decisions which affect our collective work. Furthermore, we strive to empower one another as individuals and as a collective through trust, patience, and an open spirit.

Links:
Send mail to: uwslap@u.washington.edu
Last modified: 2/17/2008 6:06 PM