Newark has 'no sweat' policy on uniforms - along with an anti-sweatshop curriculum, Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Newark, New Jersey will no longer buy school uniforms from vendors who produce goods under sweatshop conditions - Brief Article

National Catholic Reporter, Oct 31, 1997 by Patricia Lefevre

As much as some middle and high school pupils hate donning a uniform, they don't have to sweat "what to wear" each morning. That was until last month when the Newark archdiocese inaugurated the nation's first "No Sweat" initiative.

The archdiocese will no longer do business with clothing and athletic vendors who produce their goods in sweat-shops that violate fair labor practices, exploit workers and pay less than the minimum wage. In May it gave the names of 17 suppliers and eight large manufacturers used by its Catholic schools to state and federal officials to check whether they conform with labor laws.

The campaign includes teaching an anti-sweatshop curriculum to the 24,500 students in seventh through 12th grades in archdiocesan schools. The curriculum is designed to help pupils become smart consumers while instructing them in Catholic social teachings and values, the history of U.S. labor laws and abuses in the clothing trade.

The archdiocese is also preparing a 1998 curriculum on sweatshops for its 38,500 grade school pupils.

Unless consumers can persuade manufactures who use sweat shops to "stop and comply with labor laws, then we are all accomplices if we continue to use them," said Newark Archbishop Theodore McCarrick at a news conference Oct. 16 in Newark. McCarrick, whose mother was a New York City garment worker, was joined by U.S. Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, State Labor Department Commissioner Fred Lopez and Bruce Raynor, executive vice president of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees.

"No child should wear clothes that are made by workers who are robbed of their own childhood," said Herman, who said she hoped the Newark program would be copied in other communities.

School uniforms are a multibillion-dollar concern nationwide, said archdiocesan labor liaison Msgr. John Gilchrist, who designed the initiative with federal enforcement officers. "Imagine if Catholic schools ... force suppliers to confront this issue. Imagine if public schools follow suit. Think of the football, basketball and cheerleading uniforms."

Although New Jersey has lost more than 50,000 apparel jobs to foreign firms since 1965, it still counts nearly 28,000 laborers in the trade. About three-quarters of the state's 1,200 registered garment firms are located within the archdiocese. It is thought that there are as many as 300 unregistered clothing companies operating from kitchens, garages and basements within the see's perimeter.

Krystle Nova, 12, of St. John Nepomucene School in Guttenberg, N.J., told the Newark Star Ledger that she stopped wearing her Nike jacket after learning about conditions in the company's overseas factories. She plans to replace her Nike sneakers too, she said, but added; "It's a sacrifice.

"All the kids used to wear Nikes, and we love their stuff. But we hope that if the company sees they are losing consumers over this issue, they'll change," she said.