Student labor activists detail new code

Months of work by students and human rights groups involved in the national anti-sweatshop movement came to fruition yesterday in New York when United Students Against Sweatshops released their "Workers Rights Consortium."

The policy is an alternative to the White House-sponsored Fair Labor Association's code of labor standards. The FLA is a coalition of corporations and human rights groups created to monitor the apparel industry. The groups came together in the wake of the 1996 scandal following the first time labor activists discovered sweatshop conditions in factories producing a line of clothing for talk show host Kathie Lee Gifford.

On Monday, Brown University became the first school to sign on to the WRC. The University of Michigan has not made a decision on the policy but an advisory committee is reviewing the code and hopes to make a recommendation to University administrators by May.

Along with basic human and labor rights statements, the WRC outlines plans for an independent monitoring system using human rights organizations.

LSA junior Peter Romer-Friedman, a member of the campus Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality, said that under the WRC, if one of a company's factories is found to have sweatshop conditions, the entire company loses WRC endorsement and the company jeopardizes its contract with a university that has signed onto the WRC.

The WRC requires universities who sign onto the code to call on their apparel manufacturers publicly to disclose the locations of their factories, so they can be inspected for labor violations.

The threat of contract termination and "public pressure to comply will force companies to improve conditions," Romer-Friedman said.

Romer-Friedman, who worked with other student labor activists across the nation this year to develop the policy, said the WRC is the best monitoring system currently available.

"It is a working document and is not rigid like the FLA," said Romer-Friedman, adding that the student-driven WRC is more realistic and applicable than the FLA.

The release of the WRC kicks off anti-sweatshop rallies, protests and other events scheduled to be held on more than 100 college campuses today.

In protests on college campuses this year, anti-sweat-shop activists have contended that the corporate-controlled FLA will hide labor violations in factories.

At the University, SOLE is hosting a forum tonight at 7 in Hutchins Hall where Charles Kernaghan, National Labor Committee executive director, and garment workers from El Salvador are scheduled to speak on sweatshop conditions discovered in apparel factories.

Tonight's event in Ann Arbor is the first stop for Kernaghan and the garment workers on a national tour of college campuses to raise awareness of sweatshop factory conditions.

In 1996 and again this year, Kernaghan and the NLC discovered labor violations in Gifford's factories in Central America.

On Monday, Brown University President E. Gordon Gee announced that Brown would be the first university in the nation to sign onto the WRC, but would still maintain its membership in the FLA.

But Gee said that Brown will eventually commit itself to one code. "It should be very clear to everyone that I do not find the progress made to date by the FLA to be satisfactory," Gee wrote members of Brown's Code of Conduct Advisory Committee. "We will choose the organization that makes the greater effort to work collaboratively with the other and that better preserves Brown's ability to make choices that protect the workers' rights in accordance with our code of conduct," he wrote.

The University of Michigan committee, comprised of students, faculty and members of SOLE, will take a careful look at the WRC at its meeting Friday.

Although Public Policy Prof. John Chamberlin, chair of the University's Anti-Sweatshop Advisory Committee, said he has not seen the final draft of the WRC, he said the policy"looks like an interesting proposal."

"It is a serious proposal and obviously they have put a lot of work into the policy," Chamberlin said, adding that the committee will take a careful look at the proposal and other policies, including the FLA. "I don't want to rush into anything." Romer-Friedman said that since the University reports the most profits from licensing royalties, it should consider following Brown's lead and sign onto the WRC.

"SOLE realizes that the advisory committee needs to make its own decision on the WRC, but it is University President (Lee) Bollinger and General Counsel (Marvin) Krislov's duty to implement a strong policy," Romer-Friedman said.

Scott Greathead, who works with World Monitors Inc., a New York-based business and human rights consulting firm, said all of the current monitoring proposals have different ways for monitoring and ensuring fair labor practices in factories. "The interesting thing is that none of these plans are perfect," Greathead said, adding that there is room for compromise among them.

In March, 30 SOLE members occupied Bollinger's office for 51 hours, calling on the administration to support stronger worker rights in factories producing apparel for the University. The activists vacated Bollinger's office after negotiating an agreement with the administrators.

10-20-99