BY JACKIE LYNCH
MELBOURNE — Art met politics on August 3 when 30 people attended a public forum hosted by anti-sweatshop group Fairwear in Westspace, a gallery run by a collective of "activist artists".
The forum was held during a Westspace exhibition, entitled "Action/Recollection — Here the body is", which brought together work from Fairwear, the East Timor Student Solidarity Council, University Students for East Timor, Tuhoe Embassy Publications, the Free Timor Campaign and artists Bernard Sachs, Rainer Ganahl, Tom Nicholson and Kylie Wilkinson.
The exhibition highlighted linkages between many different struggles against economic exploitation, as well as the atrocities committed by the militias in East Timor. "Action against book burning" was one such example of activist art — the piece is a documentation of ongoing cooperative action to establish a library for the Timorese.
Fairwear, which started in 1996, is a national coalition of community activists, church groups, student associations and trade unions and works to win award wages and safe working conditions for home-based workers in the textile industry. Hundreds of thousands outworkers perform up to 100 hours of work per week and earn as little as $1 an hour, producing garments which sell for many times this amount in retail stores.
The forum was a celebration of the achievements of the campaign so far. The Textile Clothing Footwear Union of Australia's Annie Delaney explained that since 1996, over 125 companies have signed a code of practice signalling their intent to improve labour practices and pay award wages to all of their workers, including outworkers.
Several companies are still holding out against signing, however, including Nike. Nike's refusal has sparked much protest, including an action in which Fairwear activists dressed up as giant pens and stood outside the Nike superstore chanting "Just sign it" as the Olympic torch passed by.
The campaign must now ensure that these companies have changed their production practices by putting them through an "accreditation process", Delaney explained. If a company gained accreditation, it would be allowed to use a "No sweat" logo on its label.
Delaney also said that Fairwear would resume campaigning against those companies which failed accreditation. "We don't think it will be easy, we think we'll have to resume public campaigns against a whole range of companies. But we are in it for the long haul", she said.