Universities across the UK spend £10 billion a year on the things that students use day-to-day, such as garmnets and elctrical goods. Much of this money goes to big companies with appalling records of human rights abuses in their supply chains.
The University of Sheffield is proud to be a affiliated to the Workers' Rights Consortium (WRC), which monitors sweatshops in the garment industry, and ensures and protects the rights of workers within that industry. However, many workers in the electronics industry face violations of their rights everyday. These are the same people who make the computers we use everyday at university. We want to change this, and help create an electronics industry where workers are paid a fair living wage, working in safe conditions, and free to join unions and improve their lives.
The Electronics Watch is an independent organisation that monitors the global electronics industry and works to achieve better lives for workers in sweatshops that produce electrical goods. Since the University invests each year roughly £4.5 million in companies such as Dell, HP and Apple- who all subcontract to factories with disgracefully high rates of suicides and leukemia induced through working in appaling conditions- it is the unversity's social responsibility to take action. Sign now to ensure that The University of Sheffield affiliates to the Electronics Watch and eradicates the abuses within its supply chain.
