Student Activists Target Sweatshops At NBA Final

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)

By Julia Shindel
Sunday morning, and the quiet Orlando streets are already heating up. Anti-sweatshop activists have surreptitiously dropped a 3-story banner off a downtown construction site that says “STOP David Stern Sweatshops,” in bold red and black letters. With all eyes on the pivotal NBA finals Game 5 tonight, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) has seized the opportunity to put the spotlight on Russell Athletic, makers of NBA basketballs, backboards, and university sporting merchandise. NBA Commissioner David Stern has lavished a $125 million dollar contract on Russell, which also owns the Spalding and Huffy brand names. Russell has been targeted by USAS since last fall, as student activists across the country have mounted campaigns to get their universities to cut contracts with Russell, which they accuse of mass firings, sweatshop conditions and union busting, including shutting down factories where workers speak up. Dozens of universities – 74 at last count -- have already cut their contracts, including the training grounds of future NBA players like UCLA, Duke, Georgetown, and North Carolina. Sunday afternoon in Orlando, as thousands of basketball fans poured into the Amway arena, student activists from across the country – including the University of Montana, Penn State University, and Georgetown University – passed out anti-sweatshop flyers and chanted while holding signs that read “ Spalding = Sweatshops” and “David Stern Stop Funding Sweatshops” while a life-sized puppet of David Stern bobbed overhead. “I’m here for the workers,” Julia Watkins of Penn State University told Union City, “For the work they’ve done, the courage that they have, how brave they are. It’s obviously time for Russell Athletic to reopen Jerzees de Honduras, give workers their jobs and their dignity.” The Orlando Magic lost on the courts yesterday; now it’s time to get real about worker’s rights and ending sweatshop labor. 
- Shindel, a junior at Georgtown University, is interning this summer – through Georgetown's new Labor Center -- at Jobs With Justice DC and the Metro Washington Council; photos by Julia Shindel