UH Students for Fair Trade

UH Students for Fair Trade is now the Fair Labor Action Committee (F.L.A.C.)

blaws — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:12:42 +0000

Looking towards the future, UH Students for Fair Trade, along with former members of UH Students Against Sweatshops, has become the Fair Labor Action Committee (F.L.A.C.).

We still hold our dedication to workers’ rights and the Fair Trade cause, but we want a more open ended title to be more inclusive of other labor struggles.

Check out our website: fairlaboruh.wordpress.com

And we’re on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=308613923288&ref=ts

Second Workers Appreciation Day!

blaws — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 04:51:19 +0000

This past Friday (Dec. 4), we had our second ever Workers Appreciation Day. This is part of our Campus Community Solidarity Campaign to build better relationships between workers and students on campus in order to work towards common goals. We aim to show respect and gratitude to the workers on our campus whose work too often goes unappreciated, disrespected, and most certainly underpaid. Our goal is to build relationships that are strong enough to work past these issues and bring concrete improvement to the lives of the people responsible for keeping UH running.

Once again, we got a bunch of free food from Aramark, and gave it back to the workers they, and other parts of the UH system, exploit. Aramark food-service workers came out, as well as people from the Custodial, Landscaping, Plant operations, Housekeeping and other departments. It was a bigger success than the last one, due to our fliering and other outreach leading up to it, and we had more workers than we could handle for a while. Workers seemed happy to get out of the cold and have some breakfast, and many signed up to be informed of the next one.

Look forward to more in the future.

Article about Fair Food published in the Daily Cougar

blaws — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:55:29 +0000

Our member had an editorial published about the tomato industry and the power students have to make a change.

We hope Aramark can take a look, and stop dragging their feet on making a deal with the CIW to support farmworkers.

check it out at: http://www.thedailycougar.com/guest-commentary-next-time-think-before-you-eat-1.2111435

Rally for Fair Food at Kroger

blaws — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:31:06 +0000

To kick off our campaign to get Fair Food in grocery stores, University of Houston Students for Fair Trade (SFT) and friends gathered last Sunday November 22nd in front of the Kroger on Montrose and Hawthorne.

We went to raise awareness about the human rights crisis facing Florida’s tomato farm workers today with Kroger customers and management. We also requested that Kroger, the second largest grocery retailer in the country, to make an agreement with the Coalition of Immokallee Workers (CIW) to pay one penny per pound more to workers and take action against abuses in their supply chain.

We spread almost 200 handbills inside Kroger then a group of us held signs and props up for drivers on Montrose (a very busy street) and incoming costumers. We received honks answering our “honk for fair food” or “honk if you like ethical tomatoes” signs.

SFT spoke about this human rights crisis going on in Florida for too long now and how we, as tomato consumers, have a responsibility and the power to support farm workers. When they weren’t speaking, the rest loudly chanted “Right store. Right Price. Fair food? Not quite.”

After an hour or so, the general manager of the store came out and wanting to talk to us. We were going to approach her, but she asked us to stay in the sidewalk. Two members walked up to her and gave her a letter which expressed the rally’s concern.

She took it and said she would give it to a higher manager.

This action went well, and we hope Kroger does the right thing, but we’ll be back if they don’t. This is just the beginning!

Film Screening Update

blaws — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 21:32:10 +0000

We had our big event, the screening of Immokalee: From Slavery to Freedom on October 15 at 7pm. Over 40 people came to the film screening. Our member Chris did a presentation of our group at the beginning as well as a great closing speech, and of course Lucas and Marc are excellent speakers and handled all of the audience’s questions very positively and professionally (even a very ignorant one directed at Lucas).

We had a great time with Lucas and Marc out here, and they definitely gave a nice boost to our local campaign.

We would like to give a big thank you to our sponsors, Do Something (dosomething.org) and Campus Progress (campusprogress.org), as well as the professors who gave us permission for classroom presentations and sent their students to the screening: Rita Griffin, Marc Zimmermann, Simon Bott, Hilario Molina, Lorenzo Cano, Jarron Saint Onge, Suzanne Buck, and Eduardo Aleman.

Actions on October 15

blaws — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:45:29 +0000

On October 15, while Lucas and Marc were in town, we had an informational rally in front o the M.D. Anderson library, then delivered letters to the Aaramark office, the Chancellor/President office, and the business office.

The letter was about our efforts to communicate with Aramark about fair food, who have not responded either to the last email or to the two letters we sent them. The administrators seemed very responsive.

Lucas Benitez and Marc Rodrigues give Classroom presentations.

blaws — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:10:16 +0000

On October 14 & 15 as a continuation of the national week of action, Lucas Benitez, from the CIW and Marc Rodrigues, from the SFA, came to UH to work together with UHSFT to educate UH’s students about the tomato campaign and why it is so important for schools with Aramark contracts like UH to support it. Lucas and Marc gave 5 classrooms presentations ranging from ten minutes to half an hour illustrating how we have a lot of power to further this cause since we’re coming up on a contract year for Aramark. The presentations were very successful as more than 200 students became aware of the issues regarding Immokalee tomatoes. Many were very responsive and several asked how they could get more involved in the campaign and with our on-campus group.

March and Table Tents for the national week of action

blaws — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 18:42:28 +0000

From October 5-9, the Student Farmworkers Alliance had a national week of action for the Dine with Dignity campaign (getting food service providers Sodexo and UH’s own Aramark to pay a penny per pound more for tomatoes).

On the 7th and 8th, we put informational table tents all over the dining rooms in our University Center and Satellite, informing students of the issue, and asking them to call and email Aramark and ask them to take action. These got a big reaction from managers who called and complained about them to the reservations office.

On the 8th we handed out a bunch of informational fliers and had a march and letter delivery to the Aramark office, which finally led to them communicating with us. We also got a nice picture and blurb in the Friday issue of The Daily Cougar.

For an update on what other SFA affiliates have been doing around the country, check out : http://sfalliance.org/FSCfall09.html

Member does radio interview on Pacifica Radio station, KPFT

blaws — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 16:05:47 +0000

Recently Christopher Ramsey was interviewed on Pacifica Radio Station KPFT in Houston. He was invited to the Voices at Work program to talk about what Students for Fair Trade is doing in solidarity with the CIW and SFA and to promote our event this Thursday October 15 at UH in the Houston room. More info on that is available on our events page. Not only did Mr. Ramsey make his freshman appearance on radio, he managed not to stutter or say “uhh” too many times, and in true Third Coast form, was able to drop the term “H-Town” into the interview. We hope to see all of you all at our event this Thursday and can’t wait to put the pressure on Aramark to sign on with the CIW!Interview on KPFT

New Resident District Manager for Aramark at UH.

blaws — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:14:16 +0000

Today, we discovered that Mr. Alisdair McLean is no longer listed as the Resident District Manager for UH Dining (Aramark). Mr. McLean was somewhat less than an allie to UH Students for Fair Trade, but under his reign we were able to get Fair Trade Tea, and coffee (the coffee now adding up to just over 63% of total coffee sales). Mr. Tony Urso is now listed at the top of UH Dining, and we hope he is one to work with us rather than against us towards our goals of ethical food and labor on campus.