International Women’s Day Celebration: Globalization and Sweatshops

In countries around the world, millions of people, mostly women, toil in sweatshops to make the clothes we wear. These women work dozens of hours per week, enduring verbal and sometimes physical and sexual abuse to make the shirts and shoes that end up on retailers’ shelves. They earn only poverty wages, and their efforts to improve their situation are often met with repression. At the beginning of the 21st century, our clothing is made in nearly the same conditions as in the 19th century.

Carmencita (Chie) Abad knows firsthand what it is like to work in a sweatshop, having spent six years as a garment worker on the Pacific island of Saipan in the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. During that time, she frequently worked 14-hour shifts in dangerous conditions in order to meet arbitrary production quotas.

Abad worked for the Sako Corp., which made clothes for the Gap and other major U.S. retailers. In her struggle to unionize workers, she was forced to leave the island and is now working to educate Americans about inhumane factory conditions occurring worldwide, including on U.S. soil. Abad will tell her audience what they can do to help eliminate sweatshop abuses.

Admission is free. Lundring Events Center is located in Gilbert Sports and Fitness Center.