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.
