Sweatshop Debate Students Seek Changes In Clothes-Licensing Deals

Sweatshop Debate Students Seek Changes In Clothes-Licensing Deals
[CHICAGOLAND FINAL Edition]
Pamela J Appea
Washington Bureau. Chicago Tribune Chicago, Ill.:Mar 27, 1999. p. 10
Subjects:
Demonstrations & protests, College students, Unfair labor practices, Work environment, Clothing industry, Licensed products, Activism
Locations:
United States, US
Author(s):
Pamela J Appea, Washington Bureau
Article types:
News
Dateline:
WASHINGTON
Section:
NEWS
Publication title:
Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Mar 27, 1999. pg. 10
Source Type:
Newspaper
ISSN/ISBN:
10856706
ProQuest document ID:
40062720
Text Word Count
764

In response, some colleges and universities are adopting measures intended to remedy sweatshop conditions at overseas apparel factories. Seventeen colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale and Duke, earlier this month announced they would join a new factory-monitoring group, the Fair Labor Association, which has established a code of conduct for apparel producers in addition to providing measures for monitoring plants for violations.

Full Text (764 words)
(Copyright 1999 by the Chicago Tribune)

In a burst of campus activism, college students around the country are staging sit-ins and other protests in hopes of ending "poor and inhumane" working conditions at factories licensed to produce clothing bearing their school names.

In response, some colleges and universities are adopting measures intended to remedy sweatshop conditions at overseas apparel factories. Seventeen colleges and universities, including Harvard, Yale and Duke, earlier this month announced they would join a new factory-monitoring group, the Fair Labor Association, which has established a code of conduct for apparel producers in addition to providing measures for monitoring plants for violations.

The anti-sweatshop movement has gained momentum with successes on campuses such as Georgetown University, where students in February occupied the president's office for 85 hours before reaching an agreement for the university to exercise stricter control over its apparel licensing, including disclosure of plants producing university-branded apparel.

Anti-sweatshop action also has increased in recent weeks at universities such as the University of Arizona, University of North Carolina and UCLA. Student activists say they are "actively" negotiating with school administrators over apparel-licensing provisions that include "livable" wages, protection against child labor and sexual harassment, and measures permitting factory workers to unionize.

"Many of us are proud of our universities and can't live with the idea of seeing our mascots dragged through the mud by our universities' collusion with sweatshop labor," said Thomas Wheatley, 24, a sociology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin- Madison and member of the Madison Anti-Sweatshop Coalition.

Students at the University of Michigan, after a 51-hour president's office sit-in, claimed victory earlier this month when the administration endorsed a code of conduct and said it will require licensees to provide full disclosure of manufacturing locations.

However, Michigan sophomore Peter Romer-Friedman, 19, a founder of Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality, said many Michigan students think they have not yet reached a "complete agreement, but rather a down payment to an agreement," because the university has not accepted a timeline on obtaining livable workers' wages.

In the past several years, public awareness on sweatshops has spurred student activists who say they are motivated by the desire to uphold a truly "global economy" in which factory workers have fair and safe conditions.

According to Tico Almedia, 22, a senior at Duke University, public awareness of factory conditions became a pressing issue after the media spotlighted Kathy Lee Gifford's popular clothing line--which reports revealed were made in a Honduran sweatshop--and conditions at plants producing Nike products.

The student activism has support from organized labor, including UNITE, the textile and apparel workers union, which often has sought to draw attention to abusive working conditions at foreign apparel manufacturing plants that supply U.S. retailers.

Stanley Ikenberry, president of the American Council on Education, said the Fair Labor Association provides an effective way for colleges and universities to address sweatshop code-of-conduct issues. The association, developed with the encouragement of the White House and the Labor Department, is composed of several human- rights groups and some prominent manufacturers such as Nike Inc. and Reebok International Ltd., whose practices have been criticized in the past.

The FLA code of conduct prohibits forced labor, discrimination and child labor in internationally based factories or free-trade zones, where collegiate apparel is produced. "We will enter into licensing agreements only with companies that meet FLA standards," said a spokesperson for Princeton University.

In his letter to the education council's membership of 1,800 colleges and universities, Ikenberry said that while the Fair Labor Association accord is "not a perfect agreement, it does lay the foundation for creating a practical and enforceable monitoring system that will help improve working conditions."

The colleges and universities affiliating with the Fair Labor Association are the University of Arizona, Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Duke University, Florida State University, Harvard University, Marymount University, the University of Notre Dame, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Smith College, Tufts University, Wellesley College and Yale University.

But some student activists, including Nora Rosenberg, 19, a Brown University sophomore, are skeptical that the Fair Labor Association will produce results.

Charging that its code of conduct is "inherently flawed," Rosenberg asserted that the agreement embodies a "conflict of interest" that may enable the association's corporate board members to influence how their plants and suppliers are monitored.

Under the Fair Labor Association's proposed code of conduct, selected factories will be inspected at announced times to receive the Fair Labor Association's stamp of approval. Rosenberg said that FLA board members may be able to influence the selection of supposedly independent factory monitors.

Group: Immigrants Missing Aid Benefits

GROUP: IMMIGRANTS MISSING AID BENEFITS
[CHICAGOLAND FINAL Edition]
Pamela J Appea,
Washington Bureau.
Chicago Tribune
Chicago, Ill.:Mar 11, 1999. p. 11

Subjects:
Welfare reform, Aliens, Federal legislation
Author(s):
Pamela J Appea, Washington Bureau
Article types:
News
Dateline:
WASHINGTON
Section:
NEWS
Publication title:
Chicago Tribune. Chicago, Ill.: Mar 11, 1999. pg. 11
Source Type:
Newspaper
ISSN/ISBN:
10856706
ProQuest document ID:
39636023
Text Word Count
303
Article URL:
http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?RQT=309&VInst=PROD&VName=PQD&VType=PQD&Fmt=3&did=000000039636023&clientId=9269

Abstract (Article Summary)
The 1996 welfare reform law imposed restrictions on access to welfare by legal immigrants and refugees. But the authors of the report, Urban Institute researchers Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel, said the decline in welfare use by non-citizens and refugees was due more to the "chilling effect" of recent policy changes than to shifts in eligibility due to welfare reform.

Full Text (303 words)
(Copyright 1999 by the Chicago Tribune)
Welfare reform has caused "confusion and fear" among immigrants, reducing their use of public aid for which they were eligible, a new study says.

Immigrant households' use of public benefits sharply decreased in comparison with non-immigrant households from 1994 to 1997, according to an analysis of census data by the non-partisan Urban Institute, which released the study Tuesday.

The 1996 welfare reform law imposed restrictions on access to welfare by legal immigrants and refugees. But the authors of the report, Urban Institute researchers Michael Fix and Jeffrey Passel, said the decline in welfare use by non-citizens and refugees was due more to the "chilling effect" of recent policy changes than to shifts in eligibility due to welfare reform.

"Welfare reform seems to be playing a significant role in discouraging immigrants from using health, nutrition or other benefits despite the fact that most immigrants remain eligible," Fix said. "It appears that these chilling effects originate in confusion and fear among immigrants and lack of understanding on the part of providers over who is eligible for benefits."

The release of the study comes as the Clinton administration prepares to defend budget requests to further extend health, nutrition and cash benefits to the most vulnerable legal immigrants, in particular children, pregnant women and disabled people who recently entered the U.S.

The study found that, from 1994 to 1997, welfare use by non- citizen households fell by 35 percent while citizen households' use of public benefits declined by 15 percent. The report also found a similar drop in non-citizens' use of Medicaid and food stamps.

However, rates of welfare use by non-citizen households remained higher than that of citizens both before and after passage of the 1996 welfare reform law--in large part because non-citizen households are more likely to include children and be poor, the report said.

Sexual Abuse Of Women on Prison Called an Epidemic

Sexual Abuse Of Women on Prison Called an Epidemic

Pamela J Appea, Washington Bureau.
Chicago Tribune.
Chicago, Ill.: Mar 5, 1999. pg. 5
Full Text (395 words)

Stepping up its attack on human-rights violations in this country, Amnesty International charged Thursday that widespread sexual abuse of female inmates is "virtually a fact of life" in U.S. prisons.

Amnesty's report cited court records and accounts by female inmates of sexual abuse by prison guards, including being sold to male inmates for sex, groping pat-down searches, rape and prurient viewing of women while dressing and showering.

"These degrading and dangerous abuses reflect an epidemic of violence against women and the continued second-class status of women in the U.S.," the report said.

Amnesty International said that, although it is difficult to estimate how many women are victims of sexual abuse or assault, the number of women in U.S. prisons and jails has more than tripled since 1985, to 138,000, increasing the likelihood that a greater number of women will be subject to human-rights abuse in a prison system primarily designed for male inmates.
Amnesty claims that 12 states lack laws prohibiting prison guards from having sexual contact with female inmates. Coercive sexual abuse was the report's most frequently cited abuse, said Christine Haenn, media director for Amnesty International in Washington.

The report cites the case of a female inmate at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago who alleged in a federal court hearing last October that she was forced into a sexual relationship with a staff member in return for contraband hair products and food.

The woman said she was groped and fondled by another employee on a number of occasions after the first employee bragged about what he had done. One of the employees has been reassigned to a job where he has no contact with female inmates, Amnesty said.

Amnesty's report also said the penal system's medical system and prenatal resources for female inmates are inadequate. It said shackles are sometimes used during hospitalization, including childbirth, by various institutions, including Cook County Jail.

The report recommends that prisons place women with infants in halfway houses so they can be with their children for at least part of their prison term. Illinois permits qualified inmates--those without a history of violent behavior or severe mental illness--in residential programs for up to two years.However, only 15 slots are available for this program.

In 1997, the report states, at least 120 pregnant women were incarcerated in Illinois state prisons, and 51 babies were born to prisoners.