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UNI Global Union has received the Frances Perkins award for public service at the annual conference of the Labor and Employment Law section of American Bar Association. The award was presented to Deputy General Secretary Christy Hoffman because of UNI’s work to create the Bangladesh Accord.  

In her remarks, Christy commented “This agreement would not have been possible without the work of IndustriALL, our sister global union in manufacturing, and the many NGOs - which are dedicated to exposing sweatshop conditions that lie behind the labels of the affordable clothes that we wear. It took the deaths of  over 1100 people to send a wake up call to the world of $5 T-Shirts. 

"Here in the US, the Triangle Shirt Waist Factory fire in 1911  gave birth to hundreds of laws and regulations upon which our entire system of fire safety has been built over many years.  Our aspiration is that the Accord, like Triangle, will  also serve as a basis for transformational change to the way companies take responsibility for their global supply chain."

Frances Perkins (the first woman to hold a cabinet level position in the US government), was FDR’s legendary secretary of labor who helped to establish most of the laws which currently protect working people in the US- such as minimum wages, social security and the 40 hour work week.  She turned her attention to worker safety following the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911 , the “pivotal moment” in her life,  after which she became the  executive secretary for the Committee on Safety of the City of New York.  So it was quite fitting that the award was given for work on the Accord.