[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 109 (Wednesday, August 5, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1559-E1560]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               VARIOUS ITEMS OF INTEREST TO TODAY'S YOUTH

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                          HON. BERNARD SANDERS

                               of vermont

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, August 5, 1998

  Mr. SANDERS. Mr. Speaker, I would like to have printed in the Record 
statements by high school students from my home state of Vermont, who 
were speaking at my recent town meeting on issues facing young people 
today.

 Statement by Karl Cloney, Jessica Martin and Jonah Monfette regarding 
                          Healthy Alternatives

       KARL CLONEY: Karl Cloney, from North County Union High 
     School. Our topic is healthy alternatives.
       The Newport area recently has suffered the loss of four 
     teenagers killed in a drunk driving accident on the way back 
     from partying in Canada. Recently, there was a town forum 
     held to respond to this tragedy. The community came together 
     to discuss the issues and some ways to create healthy 
     alternatives.
       JESSICA MARTIN: Our group came together to propose a 
     project to start an area teen center. The center will be a 
     safe place for teenagers to socialize in a healthy manner. We 
     further propose that we buy a space as a long-term investment 
     in area youth and the community as a whole. We are looking at 
     a size that would be large enough for a cafe for snacks to be 
     served, a dance floor, and a space for a pool and ping-pong 
     tables, some arcade games and video games. We also want an 
     outside area for volleyball, skate-boarding, and roller 
     blading. We would solicit funds as well as acquire grants and 
     utilize state and federal funds set aside for alcohol-free 
     events and activities and teenagers. We would like 
     AmericaCorps and Vista personnel to staff the center full 
     time. This would make our personnel more cost-effective and 
     would include local, state and federal resources.
       We would create a board of directors made up of parents, 
     teens, business people and community leaders to oversee the 
     center. Students would work in the center. This would give 
     the teens responsibility, job skills, and the ability to work 
     with adults to create their own place. The center would be a 
     healthy alternative to hanging out on the streets to see our 
     friends.
       Our yellow ribbons symbolize the death of our young people, 
     and also symbolize our hope and commitment to find healthy 
     alternatives within our own community.
       JONAH MONFETTE: The teen center could be put where the 
     Department of Employment and Training is now. It is moving to 
     the new building being built in Newport. It is an industrial 
     building with space outside, and we want to buy the space so 
     that it would be permanent.
       Newport has high unemployment. The teen center would 
     provide job skills for students helping with full-time staff.
       The COURT: Thank you very, very much.

   Statement By Brian Hodgson and Jessica Riley Regarding Child Labor

       BRIAN HODGSON: In our world today, there are 250 million 
     people toiling in sweatshops around the globe, 250,000 
     working right here in the United States. These workers endure 
     long hours in filthy, unsafe factories and plants for 
     subsistence wages paying them barely enough to keep them 
     alive.
       A typical sweatshop contains unsafe numbers of people 
     packed into poorly lit, dusty, disease-ridden workplaces, 
     with no sufficient ventilation or running water. Supervisors 
     yell, scream, threaten and curse at the workers and put 
     constant pressure on them to work faster. For all their 
     suffering, workers are rewarded with paychecks reflecting 
     hourly wages of 20, 37, as low as six cents, often with 
     unexplained fees and tolls removed from the take-home amount.
       Any workers who dare to speak up, to complain about their 
     working conditions or pay, are fired. If the workers try to 
     defend themselves, to meet, to learn their rights, or 
     organize a union, their employment is almost always illegally 
     terminated. The most fundamental human and employment rights 
     of these workers are being violated on a daily basis.
       One million of these workers are children, sold or rented 
     out by their parents, in countries such as India or Pakistan, 
     into a life of hard, bonded labor at the hands of clothing 
     and rug producers. Children who should be in school are 
     working long hours in unsafe, abusive conditions. To these 
     children, education is a fantastic privilege, and life a 
     daily struggle.
       The move to Third World countries, where the minimum wages 
     are steadily dropping and where environmental and worker 
     regulations are nonexistent, has become an all too common 
     trend in big business. Some of the most heinous abusers of 
     this form of labor produce staples in our everyday lives.
       At a Disney sweatshop in Haiti, a worker who handles 375 
     Pocahontas shirts an hour is paid the minimum wage of 28 
     cents an hour, or $10.77 a week, while the Disney shirts sell 
     at Wal-Mart for $10.97 each. A pair of Nike sneakers that 
     sell in the U.S. for $140 cost the corporation $3.50 in 
     offshore labor expenses. That is about a 97 percent profit.
       These exploitative companies could easily afford to pay 
     their workers a living wage, but greedily choose not to.
       JESSICA RILEY: At the Student Progressive Coalition in 
     Brattleboro Union High School in Brattleboro, Vermont, we 
     have taken positive action against these practices. Devoting 
     our time to these issues, we have gathered hundreds of 
     signatures on a petition to the National Labor Committee 
     calling for President Clinton to end sweatshop practices. We 
     took part in the promotion of and attendance at the National 
     Day of Conscience that took place here, in Burlington, on 
     October 4th. We have educated our community through a candle-
     lit vigil, as well as taken our knowledge into an elementary 
     school to inform students there. Our letters have also 
     stimulated the local paper to editorialize on the issue. It 
     is almost impossible to walk down the halls of the community 
     center without viewing an informative poster or hearing an 
     issue being discussed amongst the crowds.
       By making the community more aware of this one virtually 
     unknown issue, we help to create a more conscientious 
     consumer. But awareness is only one part of the action 
     needed. We also need the power of your law to help with the 
     issue.
       Mr. Congressman, the approval of your bonded labor bill is 
     a huge and welcome step

[[Page E1560]]

     in the fight to keep foreign items made by use of child labor 
     being kept out of the country. He must not let the issue die 
     with that. We need the U.S. to put money into the United 
     Nations for inspections of shops around the world, as well as 
     more money into the U.S. Department of Labor to increase 
     inspections and sanctions right here at home. We also need 
     laws that include prevention of any sweatshop products from 
     being imported into the country.
       BRIAN HODGSON: Although none of us on this earth actively 
     choose to support these institutions by buying products 
     without thinking of the effects, we do support them. If we 
     keep buying these tainted goods, if a company involved with 
     sweatshop labor continues to make a profit, then they will 
     not give a thought to what they are doing, and these 
     violations of justice will go on. We must take the time to 
     research safe labor organizations. We must take the time to 
     look at clothing labels. We must make sacrifices in order 
     that these violations do not continue. By being educated, we 
     can help workers in other countries and in our own get the 
     rights they need and deserve.
                                  ____


 Statement by Neale Gay and Liz Rocheleau Regarding Education and Wages

       NEALE GAY: My name is Neal Gay and this is Liz Rocheleau.
       Let us start by thank you for your time. We will be 
     discussing what we consider to be a wage problem plaguing the 
     United States. In this land of opportunity, dreams cannot be 
     realized as socioeconomic, classes are divided into two 
     groups, the haves and the have-nots. We do not need a faction 
     that is able to control the wealth and prosperity of an 
     entire nation due to their personal and immense wealth. We 
     readily admit that those with higher education may be better 
     suited for management jobs; chances are they worked hard to 
     attain dreams, like becoming CEO of a billion dollar company. 
     But those that work under them are not given an opportunity 
     to earn much more than a living wage.
       LIZ ROCHELEAU: Since 1979, blue collar workers earning a 
     wage at or after the 20th percentile have seen their wages 
     drop an astonishing 11.8 percent. These wages are still going 
     down, and even though minimum wage has increased numerous 
     times in recent history, inflation makes this increase not at 
     all worthwhile. Even more interesting, though, those earning 
     a wage in the top ten percentile are the only ones who have 
     seen an increase at all. We see this as a case of the rich 
     getting richer, and the middle class and the poor quickly 
     descending the economic scale.
       NEALE GAY: Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist 
     Manifesto, ``Of all the classes that stand face to face with 
     the bourgeois today, the proletariat alone is a really 
     revolutionary class. The other classes decay, and finally 
     disappear in the race of modern industry. The proletariat is 
     its special and essential product.'' If we take this as true, 
     that the worker has more worth than the industrialist due to 
     their work, then shouldn't the worker get a reasonable 
     compensation for his output?
       LIZ ROCHELEAU: We are not talking about a revolution. We 
     understand that the Federal Government can't put a cap on 
     what people earn, since capitalism grants private industry. 
     What we want to know from you is: What has the government 
     done to make wage distribution just, and what are their plans 
     for the future?
       Congressman SANDERS: All right. Very interesting.

       

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