Dundee-Crown students take on Sears

A dedicated group of more than 30 students meets every day from 10:30 to 11:15 a.m. at Dundee-Crown High School. It's a study hall period for the students, but they spend it talking about issues of social justice, not homework or the latest gossip.

Lately, these students, part of a group called the Youth Labor Committee (YLC), have been talking about Sears Holdings Corp., based in Hoffman Estates.

Friday the students and their allies will meet at the company headquarters at 3:45 p.m. to demand accountability from Sears. With signs ready and speeches practiced, the YLC hopes to have 100 people with them.

“The key is to raise awareness,” said Mike Kelley, a Dundee-Crown senior who prepared a speech for the event.

Kelley works in another local clothing store. He said as he folds clothes at work and notices imperfect seams clearly sewn by people rather than machines, he can't help but imagine the workers who made them. He thinks of people toiling in sweatshops for just pennies a day and said he is disgusted.

Kelley said his speech is a call to action for Sears, for fellow students to work with the YLC and improve the lives of foreign workers.

“We can't take a day off because they can't,” Kelley said.

The YLC formed in August with the help of economics teacher Bruce Taylor. Taylor said the group decided on Sears Holdings Corp. as its first corporate target in an accountability campaign because the headquarters are so close to Dundee-Crown.

Emily Voyles, 15, is a sophomore who also prepared a speech for Friday. She will lay out the three demands the YLC has for Sears:

First, to give the names and addresses of all the factories used to produce Sears products around the world. Second, to ensure all workers making goods for the company have a right to organize a union. And third, to guarantee all of these workers earn wages high enough to house, clothe, feed and educate their families.

Voyles said the goal is to pressure Sears to guarantee workers' rights.

“Not that they stop using sweatshops, but that the conditions get better,” Voyles said.

Chris Brathwaite, a spokesman for Sears, said someone would be happy to discuss the company's global compliance program with the students. But, he said it is unlikely the company would share names and addresses of all the factories in its production line.

“We have had, for a long time, a very strong and stringent worker rights set of guidelines,” Brathwaite said.

Information about the global compliance program is available at searsholdings.com.

Will Goldberg, a Dundee-Crown senior, said the written commitment is not enough.

“We want to work with them and we want them to work with us to help enforce and make those statements become reality,” he said.

Goldberg has always been a socially active person, but he found many of the groups he has worked with treat outcomes rather than causes of problems. He sees the efforts by the YLC as more profound than that. He said the changes they are asking from Sears will allow workers to better their own lives.

“The simple fact is there is more that can be done,” Goldberg said.

More information about the YLC can be found at ylcnet.org.