WHAT: COMMUNITY SUPPORTERS MEETING

WHO: Garment Workers Center, Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates

WHEN: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 2002


3 to 5 pm

WHERE: Central American Resource Center (CARECEN), Romero Hall, 2845 West 7th Street (at Hoover), Los Angeles, CA

Over 100 community supporters are anticipated to mark the one-year anniversary of two emerging campaigns for immigrant workers’ rights in a town hall meeting. Supporters will discuss the larger context and national implications of the Forever 21 and Assi Market campaigns, as well as learn about the latest directions of both efforts. Because they involve companies that do business throughout the United States, the locally-based campaigns also carry larger implications for the national mainstream.

This time a year ago immigrant workers in Los Angeles launched two major efforts to better their livelihoods – one at Koreatown’s Assi market and the other at the popular women’s clothing store Forever 21. In the process they are challenging the economic and racial status quo in the city’s underground ethnic economies, as well as beginning to redefine the modern labor movement.

Last November the Garment Workers Center launched a boycott of Forever 21, a national women’s retail store, after it was discovered that Forever 21 contracted with numerous manufacturers that employ workers under sweatshop conditions. The store has consistently refused to take responsibility for its role in maintaining an exploitative garment industry.

Workers and community members recently called for a boycott at Assi market, located on 3525 8th Street in Koreatown, after owner Daniel Rhee attempted to crush year-long unionizing efforts by suspending nearly 60 workers, most of them Latino. The workers were placed on indefinite non-disciplinary leaves of absence on the basis of Social Security Administration’s “no-match” letters. Since August 1 workers have been picketing the market daily and calling for a consumer boycott. This is the first unionization effort in the history of LA’s Koreatown.

Korean Immigrant Workers Advocates and the Garment Workers Center are community organizations that advocate on behalf of immigrants and workers.