Bus Riders Union of Austin, Texas | El Sindicato de Pasajeros

The City of Austin has a policy forbidding purchase of products made in sweatshops. Metro has no such policy. It is hard to pinpoint how much of the seat fabric and worker uniform items are made in sweatshops. It is a safe bet given Metro's historical insensitivity that it is a lot.
One thing has become clearer after a report in today's Daily Texan http://www.dailytexanonline.com/state-local/bus-stops-get-new-look-1.185... Capital Metro is using children to clean the bus stops. They are not being paid. We asked one time if the adopters could have a couple leftover "I-ride" t-shirts but Metro refused In fact, according to the Texan article, they pay Metro $40 for each bus stop they clean!
This is a new low for our transit authority.
The adopt-a-stop program mimics adopt-this-or-that-road-or-street programs that started back in Lady Bird Johnson days.
These programs are notorious for giving free publicity via roadside plaquery to groups like the KKK. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adopt_a_Highway
There is no other way to describe this than child slave labor. The adopters re required to perform very specific duties with prescribed hours. They have to clean their stops twice as often as the stops cleaned by paid adult labor. It's all here unabashedly trumpeted on the CapMetro website: http://capmetro.org/riding/adopt_a_stop.asp
UT's urban design guy, Almay summed the whole notion up best with his ominous closing quote in the Texan piece: “We focus on regional, local and national issues,” Almy said. “While we train them locally and look at local issues, we are preparing them for a global practice.”