Sep 7, 2015
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U.S. and European multinational corporations search the world for ever cheaper sources of goods, pitting developing country workers in a competition based on who will accept the lowest wages, the least benefits, the most miserable working conditions. People of faith provide a crucial moral compass and clear voice that values human life, healthy communities, and real development over shareholder profits. By holding these workers and their families in the light, we can offer international visibility and a voice for the voiceless in the global economy.
Barbara Briggs, Associate Director of the Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights, first joined that organization in 1989 after two years working as a researcher and translator with unions in El Salvador. Briggs has co-led dozens of research trips and delegations to Central America, Bangladesh, India, and Jordan. She has played a key role in the Institute’s press exposés and education work, including public speaking and tours of young factory workers across the U.S. to meet with unionists, students (often the workers’ same age), and religious communities. She believes strongly that workers in developing countries—facing dangerous conditions, long hours, forced overtime, and below-subsistence wages—are doing everything they can to learn and win their fundamental rights. It is up to us, as people of faith, consumers, and citizens in the world’s largest market, to press our corporations and government to assure respect for the human rights of the workers who produce the things we buy.
Briggs first visited Pendle Hill in 1978, when she was a student at Swarthmore College.
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