Students to Protest Gap in Santa Monica
You might want to avoid the Gap store on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica this Saturday.
Students will be protesting outside the store at 1 p.m. as part of a nationwide protest over the 1,127 garment workers who died in Bangladesh recently when a building collapsed.
The United Students Against Sweatshops, labor unions and community groups are staging rallies outside Gap and Wal-Mart stores across the country, in Canada and the United Kingdom demanding that the companies sign on to the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, an international document that holds corporations legally responsible for the safety of garment workers.
Several major European retailers such as H&M, Zara and Tesco have signed on to the accord as well as a few U.S. companies such as PVH Inc. and Abercrombie & Fitch. But Gap, Wal-Mart and other U.S. retailers said they prefer to hammer out their own accord that will deal with unsafe garment factories in Bangladesh.
