(U-WIRE) NEW HAVEN, Conn.-To many Yale University Students, there is something more important than midterms.

Tuesday night, about 100 students gathered to hear Charles Kernaghan of the National Labor Committee and two Salvadoran factory workers, Eva and Sonia, speak about the conditions under which Yale apparel is made. Yale Students Against Sweatshops and other groups organized the 8 p.m. speech at the Yale Law School Auditorium.

The meeting opened with a video called “Something to Hide,” which documented the conditions in which the two women worked.

One of the speakers, Sonia Beatriz Lara, 23, worked in the factories since 1994 and was recently fired for talking to Columbia University students about the conditions in El Salvador’s factories.

This is only one of the many workers’ rights that the 70,000 workers in 225 factories lack in El Salvador and other third-world nations, organizers said.

“There is no way for workers to get together to defend our rights,” Lara said. “Also, we had to work from 6:50 in the morning until 7 at night, without a break-nothing more than lunch. Starting last April we had to work all day, including Saturdays and Sundays. If we didn’t work on Sundays, we had to stay all night on Saturday, until 5 a.m.”

Overtime was not optional.

“They told us we had to work hard-until we died,” she said.

This often ended up at almost 72 hours of overtime every two weeks, but the workers had to accept the extra hours if they wanted to keep their jobs, she said.

According to Kernaghan, who spoke for the National Labor Committee at the meeting, the wages that workers like Eve and Sonia receive are below a humane minimum, and therefore, violate their rights.

“Minimum wage in El Salvador is a hoax,” he said.

The government considers food the only item necessary for life when calculating the minimum wage, excluding clothing and shelter, Kernaghan said. He added that the legal minimum wage, the equivalent of U.S. $4.79 a day, is only 28 percent of the cost of living in El Salvador.

These numbers are the reason that students at Yale are pushing for a “living wage” for workers.

Activists said the first step towards establishing a living wage is to disassociate from the Fair Labor Association, whose practices and minimum wage establishments are unacceptable.

This push is a reflection of a national movement led by the United Students Against Sweatshops, one of the associations supporting Eva and Sonia’s visit.

Yale is the first stop on a 30-college tour that Eva and Sonia are making to kick off the anti-sweatshop campaign.

This campaign has gained force at Yale recently, with 1,700 Yale students signing a petition demanding the three objectives of the USAS to be enacted by the University: public disclosure of the location of factories producing Yale apparel, the opening of these factories to independent monitoring and a living wage for all employees at these factories.

Yale President Richard Levin promised Monday in a letter to Yale SAS that the University would officially require public disclosure of the factories, but he made no mention of the other two objectives.

Kernaghan emphasized that students can help.

“Corporations’ greatest fear is that the students will take interest in this issue,” he said. “They can make a huge difference.”