No Sweat and the IWW Launch International Solidarity Webinar Series
Workers’ solidarity doesn’t stop at national borders. That’s the thinking behind a new webinar series from No Sweat and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), bringing trade unionists together from across the globe to share organising experiences, learn from one another’s struggles and victories, and strengthen the international solidarity needed to challenge exploitation in global supply chains.
At the beginning of the year, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the UK nationally affiliated with No Sweat.
No Sweat has long been recognised by individual local branches such as Clydeside, the first IWW branch to affiliate with No Sweat. Separately, the IWW nationally has used No Sweat to produce its merchandise and was a signatory to the Myanmar Military Never in Fashion campaign statement, joining trade unions and labour rights organisations in calling on global fashion brands to cut financial ties with the Myanmar military and support garment workers’ rights following the 2021 military coup. Building on this support, Sheffield Branch brought a motion to the national union and, in February, the IWW Delegates’ Executive Council approved national affiliation with No Sweat.
Building on the new affiliation, the two organisations will be co-hosting a series of webinars starting Monday 27th July at 18:00 on Zoom.
The aim of the series is to ‘Meet the Union behind your T-Shirts’, with the goal of strengthening international worker solidarity through discussion.
The first meeting will introduce representatives from the Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union (TTCU), an independent, women-led trade union in India, made up primarily of Dalit women. The union has grown from around 250 members a decade ago to approximately 11,000 today. Around 80% of its members are garment workers, including those who make No Sweat T-shirts.
We’ll start with some background and an explanation of the Dindigul Agreement, a set of legally binding agreements signed in 2022 between the TTCU, Eastman Exports, global clothing brands and labour rights organisations, covering more than 5,000 workers at Natchi Apparel and Eastman Spinning Mills.
The agreement was brought about following the murder of garment worker Jayasre Kathiravel in 2021, after months of sustained harassment and intimidation by a male supervisor. The atrocity triggered a strong mobilisation of local and international organisations, led by the TTCU together with its allies, which ultimately secured negotiations with Eastman Exports.
This resulted in the 2022 agreement between unions, labour rights groups, manufacturers and global clothing brands. It created union-led monitoring, independent complaints mechanisms and enforceable accountability measures to protect workers from gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH), while also tackling caste-based discrimination and strengthening freedom of association.
It is widely seen as a landmark example of workers organising collectively to win dignity, safety and a voice at their place of work.
While the background of the agreement will be discussed for context, the focus of the webinar will be primarily on what is happening now that the agreement has been signed and will explain how the concessions won through it are being maintained.
We will then go on to discuss organising women workers in India more generally, giving examples of the work that TTCU does outside the factory, and ask these union leaders what we can do in the West to help build international solidarity in 2026 and beyond.
This is the first in what we hope will become an ongoing series of conversations with trade unions from around the world. By creating opportunities for workers to speak directly to one another, we aim to deepen understanding, share organising experiences and strengthen the international solidarity needed to challenge exploitation across global supply chains.
We hope you’ll join us.