The directors of two leading national anti-sweatshop organizations will present "Sweatshops Around the World: Reports from the Field" at Cornell University Tuesday, Oct. 1, at 8 p.m. in Barnes Hall.

The program, which is free and open to the public, will feature Auret van Heerden, executive director of the Fair Labor Association (FLA), and Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). Henrik N. Dullea, Cornell vice president for university relations, will introduce the speakers.

Cornell was a founding member in both organizations, which work to improve the rights and working conditions of workers in the United States and around the world.

The event is sponsored by Cornell Students Against Sweatshops, the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, the Department of Textiles and Apparel in the College of Human Ecology and the Office of the Vice President for University Relations.

Dullea is a member of the FLA's University Advisory Council executive committee and also serves as Cornell's representative to the WRC. The 17-member FLA committee is made up of representatives of universities nationwide and licensing companies. The FLA currently has affiliations with 176 U.S. colleges and universities, 33 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and more than 1,200 companies. The WRC currently has affiliations with more than 100 colleges and universities in the United States, along with many leading human rights organizations and labor unions. Its web site is http://www.workersrights.org/ .

"Students across the country have spearheaded the demand to eliminate substandard working conditions in factories producing apparel that bears the imprint of American colleges and universities," said Dullea. "Both the FLA and the WRC play important roles in this effort, and Cornell is delighted to welcome to campus the leaders of both organizations for an update on working conditions around the world."

The FLA's van Heerden joined the organization in July 2001. He was a two-term president of the national Union of South African Students, before the country's democratic government was formed. As an anti-apartheid activist in South Africa, he was forced into exile in 1987 after long periods of solitary confinement and torture, according to the FLA web site http://www.fairlabor.org/ . He joined the International Labour Organization (ILO), based in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1989 and worked against apartheid in its Equality of Rights Branch. He later served as "labour attache" in the South African Permanent Mission in Geneva after the election of the country's first democratic government in 1994. He returned to the ILO in 1996 to coordinate an action program on social and labor issues in export processing zones.

Nova is the first executive director of the WRC, which was founded in April 2000. A specialist on international trade and investment issues, he is the former executive director of the Citizens Trade Campaign (CTC), a national coalition of human rights, religious and labor groups that supports the inclusion of internationally recognized human and worker rights standards in international trade agreements. He also served as executive director of the Preamble Center, based in Washington, D.C., a research and public policy organization.