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NMASS (National Mobilization Against Sweatshops) is
a workers membership organization that was founded
by young working people in 1996 in New York City. Now,
in 2004, we have two Workers'
Centers -- one in Brooklyn and one in the Lower East Side
of Manhattan -- and members and supporters all over the country.
Some of us are:
- Injured workers fighting for our right to compensation
and medical benefits
- Working people from Lower Manhattan suffering health and
economic problems because of the government's discrimination
against low-income people following the 9-11 disaster
- Mothers demanding recognition for the work we do raising
kids
- Garment, restaurant, construction, office and other workers
standing up to long work hours and other sweatshop conditions
- Students and other working people who feel the system
is more and more limiting our choices, downsizing our dreams
and channeling our lives.
- We are people born in this country and we are immigrants
from the Caribbean, Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle
East and other regions.
Together, as working people, we are taking back the right
to control our work, our health, our time and our lives. One
central demand that unites is the right to a 40-hour workweek
at a living wage for all. This does not mean that we are fighting
for everyone to work the same hours or for there to be a cap
on hours. Instead, we are demanding control over our time
-- the right to say "no" to hours beyond a 40-hour
workweek and the right to have the hours we put in raising
the next generation of workers in our homes compensated as
part of that 40-hour workweek. We recognize that working people
taking back this kind of control means ending what we call
"the sweatshop system."
The United States today resembles the brutal sweatshop system
that existed in the garment industry over a hundred years
ago. Financiers and employers are sweating immense wealth
out of us without any accountability, using downsizing, subcontracting,
outsourcing, and temporary and contingent labor. We are working
longer and longer hours, leading to injuries and occupational
diseases. Our human rights to medical attention, to compensation,
to rest and recovery are increasingly violated. This sweatshop
system also fails to compensate the hard work we do outside
of our jobs, such as raising children in our homes. It is
stealing away our freedom and our lives, turning us into disposable
work machines.
In a few short years NMASS has forced the scandal of sweatshops
to the forefront of national and international consciousness.
We're getting people to see that sweatshop conditions such
as long hours have spread to every corner of our economy.
We've begun to popularize the idea that long hours are the
key issue facing U.S. workers. We are organizing in many ways
through fighting campaigns and building a new working people's
culture through videos, theatrical productions, music concerts,
poetry slams, art shows, social events. We are educating people
with presentations, our website, and publications such as
Sweatshop Nation.
Join us!
Long-term Goals of NMASS
- The control of time and the ability to work and live as
healthy human beings as a fundamental human right
- Laying the groundwork for a new kind of labor movement
led by working-class communities, aimed at challenging the
sweatshop system
- Creation of a new kind of culture with a new set of values
that makes as its highest priority promoting the needs and
potential of human beings
- Development of a positive identity of youth and students
as future workers, agents of change, and leaders in confronting
the sweatshop system
- Recognition and support for the work of women, including
that of mothering
- Building communities of and for working people
Campaigns & Projects
Current Campaigns (click here
to go to the Campaigns page)
Projects
Members of NMASS seek to explore their own identities as
working people and find new ways of reaching out to the community
through the arts and media. We draw upon our own experiences
as workers as well as those of others. Some of our projects
include our theater project, our video project, the injured
worker oral history project, musical events and parties, and
Sweatshop Nation, our official
publication.
Staff & Membership
NMASS relies on the donated time and energy of our dues-paying
members and countless friends and supporters who lead and
participate in our campaigns and educational and cultural
projects. Our leadership body is the 10-member Board of Directors
which was elected by NMASS' membership last November, with
additional members appointed by the Board this year.
The Board, which meets every month, makes decisions about
the direction of the organization, programs and the hiring
and firing of staff members. Each Board member is a leader
of a campaign or project in NMASS, and acts as a bridge between
the Board and the committee for a particular project. Project
committees are led by members who plan the strategies and
activities of each project, and work with other members to
push the project forward. These committees are accountable
to the Board. We have three paid staff members.
Contact Us
Executive Director: JoAnn Lum
Staff Organizers: Karah Newton, Michael Lalan
NMASS
PO Box 130293
New York, NY 10013-0995
(P) 718-625-9091; (F) 718-625-8950
http://www.nmass.org
e-mail: nmass@yahoo.com
Our Brooklyn Workers' Center is located in the YWCA Building
at 30 Third Avenue between State and Atlantic in downtown
Brooklyn, New York.
Find Out About Joining NMASS
Recent Accomplishments
- Making sweatshops a national issue
- Winning in 2000 the first minimum wage increase for New
York State restaurant workers in over ten years
- Forcing the garment manufacturer Street Beat to pay almost
$300,000 in owed wages to Brooklyn garment workers who were
forced to work 137 hours a week, as well as another $85,000
to NMASS and two other organizations for damages as a result
of a lawsuit that Street Beat initiated against the three
groups, which in 2000 was ruled a SLAPP suit; and winning
this January a precedent-setting decision that gives workers
the power to enforce Labor Department agreements signed
by manufacturers to take responsibility for the wage-law
violations of their contractors.
- Organizing DKNY garment workers to launch a class-action
lawsuit against Donna Karan for the illegal and inhumane
conditions the manufacturer has promoted in New York sweatshops;
and winning this year a ruling from a Federal judge who
denied Donna Karan's request for the immigration status
of the workers, stating that it was irrelevant and could
be used to intimidate
- Drawing attention in the state, national and international
arenas to the human-rights abuses suffered by injured workers
forced to work long hours and then abused and dehumanized
by the Workers' Compensation system, with our NAFTA lawsuit,
our international public hearing, and our protests
- Gaining the introduction of a bill in 2001 by State Assembly
Member Catherine Nolan in the New York State Assembly that
calls for ending delays at the Workers' Compensation Board,
raising the minimum rate of benefits, and prohibiting mandatory
overtime work
- Institutionalizing the concept of manufacturer accountability
by compelling government and other institutions to hold
garment manufacturers responsible for the labor-law violations
of their contractors and contributing to the passage in
1998 of a N.Y. State law to that effect
- Ousting a notoriously abusive management of the New Silver
Palace restaurant by building a five-year campaign to fight
for stolen tips, wages, and the reinstatement of pro-union
workers; the restaurant's workers led pickets three times
a week, even after they won their jobs back
- Creating a national network of over 7,000 working people
and youth
- Developing a multiracial Board of Directors composed
of workers and youth
- Bringing to public light the critical issue of health
for workers injured by September 11, and the government's
discriminatory policies and practices that channeled funds
to businesses, landlords and the wealthy, covered up the
toxic-air problem, and left low-income families made sick
by 9/11 out of the loop.
- Laying groundwork for an NMASS chapter on the Lower East
Side with the leadership of a new core of Latina, African
American and other women workers
- Launching a project of white-collar sweatshop workers,
ignited by the struggle of an office worker who was fired
for asking for a raise and discussing with her coworkers
and supervisor the long work hours and skipped meals she
was forced endure
- Putting forward a new perspective on workfare and welfare
reform that calls not for more handouts or cheap-labor programs,
but for the recognition of the work of raising children
and making a home
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