Various non-profit labor organizations, including the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and the non-profit U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP), are attempting to end a six-month standoff with Russell Corp. by contacting retailers, sports leagues and professional teams with
their concerns about Russell’s alleged “severe violations
of labor rights” in Honduras, the labor groups confirmed to SGI.

The letters, dispatched earlier this month to retailers JC Penney, Sears, Kohl’s, Dick’s Sporting Goods and The Sports Authority; the NBA, NCAA and Little League Baseball and the NFL’s St. Louis Rams, Washington Redskins, Atlanta Falcons and Carolina Panthers asking that they individually condition their business with Russell “on the company fully respecting worker rights.”

Thus far, there has been no official response to the April 8 correspondence from any of the addressees or Berkshire Hathaway-owned Russell, but USLEAP Executive Director Stephen Coats says the letter’s intent is clearly asking the parties to exert some pressure on Russell. Russell Executive
VP Gary Barfield was traveling and couldn’t be reached for comment.

The impact of Russell’s Oct. 2008 announcement that it would shutter its own Jerzees de Honduras factory has been bubbling up for months. In early Oct., a month before issuing a 36-page report on its findings and recommendations on the matter, The Workers Rights Consortium contacted college and universities with its concerns and evidence that the Caribbean factory was more likely being closed due to union organizing by workers and less with the economic factors cited by Russell. To date, that
report has prompted 32 U.S. colleges to terminate their business relationships with the brand, up from 19 earlier this month. The pro labor organizations says Russell has had a long history of problems in the Caribbean region that allegedly include illegal firings, failure to pay millions in legally-mandated severance to workers in El Salvador and Honduras and a two-year campaign “to crush any unionizing efforts by workers.”

USLEAP, Sweatfree Communities, Maquila Solidarity Network and USAS, which signed the letter to retail and pro sports business leaders, contend Russell has “refused to take meaningful remedial action” to the issue despite the “university community’s strong stand and the scrutiny this case received.”

For its part, Russell has publicly tried to organize a fact-finding trip to Honduras, where it’s said to be the country’s largest private employer in the garment-making segment. But its critics counter that isn’t helping the fate of the workers from Jerzees de Honduras, who are said to be facing blacklisting and dire economic consequences with some worker leaders facing death threats. “Given the history of violence against labor rights advocates in Honduras, where a senior leader of the labor movement was assassinated just last year,” the letter closes, “these threats must be taken seriously, and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and the U.S. Dept. of State have become involved in this case.”

From a business perspective, meanwhile, one has to wonder if Russell’s prolonged labor issue in Honduras will have any hangover effect on the region’s vast apparel making industry in the months ahead.