"The Campaign to End Sweatshops and Child Labor" will be the title of Charles Kernaghan's talk at Cornell University Thursday, Sept. 2. Kernaghan is viewed as the leading U.S. advocate for fair labor practices around the world. His talk is part of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations' (ILR) pre-Labor Day celebration and will take place in Room 105 of the new Ives Classroom Building at 11:30 a.m.

Kernaghan is the director of the National Labor Committee (NLC), an independent, nonprofit human rights organization that aims to protect the rights of workers -- especially young women in Central America, the Caribbean and East Asia who assemble garments, shoes, toys and other products that are exported to the United States. Under his directorship, the group has helped place the issue of sweatshop abuses and child labor squarely on the national agenda.

"The decent people in this country are beginning to call for change," Kernaghan said in an interview in the Marin Independent Journal last June. He asserted that the public has become incensed at the spectacle of U.S. corporations "hunting for misery all over the globe, looking for the lowest wages and the worst working conditions, so they can move their operations there in a race to the bottomÉ No one wants to buy a product made by a child paid 20 to 31 cents an hour."

"Charles Kernaghan and his anti-sweatshop battle have been shaking up the apparel industry like nothing since the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire," observed a reporter for Women's Wear Daily, while The New York Times called Kernaghan "the labor movement's mouse that roared."

Kernaghan has led numerous fact-finding missions to Central America and the Caribbean -- most recently bringing a delegation of U.S. university students to investigate working conditions in the free-trade zones. "He has been especially adept at gathering information on sweatshops in developing countries and exposing them," said ILR Professor Richard Hurd.

Hurd said that Kernaghan was chosen to be this year's pre-Labor Day speaker because of widespread concern nationally, and on campus, that licensees of university clothing were employing underage, poorly paid workers in unsafe developing-world factories. Two years ago, Cornell became one of 14 colleges and universities that led the effort to develop a collegiate code of conduct for manufacturers of college memorabilia. Earlier this year, in part at the urging of groups such as Students Against Sweatshops, Cornell joined with a larger consortium of universities trying to ban the use of sweatshop labor in the manufacture of such clothing.

Kernaghan will be coming to campus from El Salvador, where he traveled to document workplace abuses. "We thought it would be particularly useful for ILR students to hear about working conditions in other parts of the world," said Hurd, who called Kernaghan "a compelling speaker." He also stressed that Kernaghan is an independent advocate for better working conditions worldwide, not a spokesperson for U.S. labor groups or religious groups, although he has worked with both as well as student groups in his quest to end sweatshops and child labor around the globe.

Kernaghan was named director of the NLC in 1990. He became involved in international labor rights after participating in a peace march through Central America in December 1985 to protest the violence of government-sponsored death squads. Before that, he taught at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and at the State University of New York's Harry Van Arsdale Labor College in New York City. He also was a day laborer himself, working as a furniture mover, cab driver, carpenter and shop steward (Carpenters' Union Local 608) before his academic and labor rights career.

The pre-Labor Day celebration is an annual one at the ILR School. Classes are suspended for a few hours to allow students to attend the forum and picnic that follows. For further information about Kernaghan's visit, contact Hurd at (607) 255-2765.