Students battle sweatshop epidemic

By Vanessa Renderman
Features Editor

In a documentary video, a woman works at a sewing machine, her back hunched over a shirt that she’s sewing buttons on. She’s been there for six hours and will be there for six more.

A heap of finished light blue plaid shirts sits next to her on the work table.

Officials from the factory searched her as she walked into the factory earlier that day. They weren’t looking for weapons or drugs — they were checking to make sure she wasn’t smuggling in food or candy.

She is allowed only two bathroom breaks during her 12-hour workday.

Men and women in other parts of the world and even here in the United States spend hours in hazardous conditions, and students at Purdue and on campuses around the country have been making efforts to expose unfair labor conditions in the garment industry and the epidemic of sweatshops.

The ultimate goal of the anti-sweatshop movement is to end unfair working conditions. That means workers need to be paid enough money to survive; working hours need to be reasonable; workers need to have the right to form unions; female workers need to have more rights and factories need to be inspected by independent monitors.

Full public disclosure is what students are focusing on; they want their universities to force companies that produce apparel with the university name to reveal factory locations where that apparel is produced.

There are two monitoring organizations that are most prominent, the Worker Rights Consortium and the Fair Labor Association.

The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) is a non-profit organization that was designed by United Students Against Sweatshops in cooperation with workers and human rights groups.

According to the consortium’s Web site, the consortium "consists of a system to verify and inspect conditions in factories producing apparel for colleges and universities."

The organization focuses on communication between factory workers and labor rights leaders.

"The WRC seeks to open up conditions in the apparel industry to public scrutiny and respond to the needs of the workers sewing licensed products for institutions of higher education," according to the site.

There are requirements for a code of conduct that all universities must approve within their own institution before they can join the consortium.

The universities must disclose information about wages, working hours, health and safety. The consortium works directly with factory workers, dealing with their complaints.

The consortium’s governing board will consist of 12 members. Six representatives will be from the WRC Advisory Council: three from United Students Against Sweatshops; and three from the administrations of schools that have joined the consortium.

Technically, the consortium has not been founded. The official founding day will be April 7.

Schools that have already joined the consortium and have committed funding include Brown University, Loyola University — New Orleans, Haverford College, Bard College, Oberlin College, Indiana University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Smith College, Macalester College, New York University, Transylvania University and Loyola University — Chicago.

On the other hand…

The Fair Labor Association (FLA) is an organization that monitors factories to make sure that the workers are doing labor in decent conditions. There is a board of 13 members, mostly comprised of company representatives and human rights groups’ representatives.

Anti-sweatshop student activists don’t favor the association because they feel like with its set-up, factories won’t be fairly monitored. Several human rights groups that formerly belonged to the Fair Labor Association have removed support.

On April 14, 1997, the Apparel Industry Partnership created the idea of the Fair Labor Association.

The preliminary agreement for the Fair Labor Association's charter document, which was prepared by Apparel Industry Partnership, was finalized Nov. 2, 1998.

The charter explained how the association would be governed, the participation criteria for companies, accreditation criteria for external monitors and the monitoring process.

An amended charter agreement was prepared in June, 1999. It went into more detail and included guidelines for dealing with third party complaints and also included special country guidelines.

According to the American Council on Education Web site, the Fair Labor Association requires companies to conduct internal monitoring of their factories every year. Companies are required to disclose all factory locations, and monitors have to submit an annual public report about each company.

The cost of joining the Fair Labor Association is 1 percent of the previous year's licensing revenues, the same cost as joining the Worker Rights Consortium.

• It all began in April, 1999, when members of Purdue Students Against Sweatshops sent a letter to Purdue president Steven Beering expressing the opinion that Purdue should not join the Fair Labor Association, but should find an alternative.

Part of the letter stated, "At first glance, the problem of sweatshops can seem insurmountable. However … we have learned that even a relatively small group of people, such as a university community, can come together to begin to improve conditions in sweatshops."

In the letter, the students said the decision to not support the Fair Labor Association was based on problems with the association’s charter document.

"Probably the most relevant (problem) is that all of the universities affiliated with the FLA will have only one vote out of 14 on the FLA’s decision-making board."

This was just the beginning.

Since then, there have been meetings, memos, guest speakers, protests, demonstrations but not a single sit-in at Purdue.

• In Seattle, when protesters tried to delay the World Trade Organization talks, Purdue Students Against Sweatshops — because it is a part of United Students Against Sweatshops — supported the protesters’ efforts.

• Closer to campus, they sewed from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. to simulate the average factory laborer’s workday; this was during the United Students Against Sweatshops’ week of action.

Other campuses around the country held rallies and similar "sweat-ins." The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill sewed for 24 hours.

• The next sweatshop-related event was a speech on campus by Medea Benjamin, co-founder of Global Exchange, a non-profit human rights organization.

She talked about the role of student activism in the anti-sweatshop movement, stressing the importance of full public disclosure. Obtaining full public disclosure means companies are required to reveal the locations of the factories that produce their goods.

For a while, companies said they didn’t have to disclose that information because it is considered trade secret.

• During the fall semester, Beering appointed the Merchandising Committee, which was comprised of several administrators, faculty members and three student representatives.

The purpose of this committee was to establish a code of conduct by which all of Purdue’s licensees would be required to abide. The committee was given a Jan. 31 deadline to submit a recommendation to Beering about a code of conduct for workers who make Purdue-licensed merchandise.

So, as all of the activism was going on, committee work was being done behind the scenes.

Then came second semester.

• The first demonstration of the spring semester was held in January and involved oatmeal. Members of Purdue Students Against Sweatshops covered a car in oatmeal as a metaphor for the Fair Labor Association, saying the association clouds the issue of workers’ rights.

Another car was clean and had signs on it supporting the Workers’ Rights Consortium.

There was other symbolism behind the oatmeal. The week of the oatmeal demonstration at Purdue, anti-sweatshop student activists at the University of Pennsylvania had been occupying the office of their president in an effort to be heard.

The mascot of UPenn is a Quaker, hence the oatmeal.

But many passers-by did not understand the symbolism of the oatmeal, and had to stop and ask.

• A week later, the oatmeal demonstration was followed by a two-day fast in which more than 50 anti-sweatshop organizations nationwide participated.

• And then there’s the paperwork. As the Jan. 31 deadline approached, the committee that had been established in the fall worked to complete its proposal for Beering.

Members of the committee even admitted they worked more efficiently in the spring semester than in the fall.

After overcoming some miscommunication between students and administrators on the committee that was based on scheduling problems, they submitted two reports to Beering.

The majority report covers guidelines for labor conditions from employment standards (living wages, acceptable working hours, safety, women’s rights and other issues) to disclosure and verification of licensee compliance with these guidelines.

The student members on the committee submitted a minority report to supplement the majority report. Although the students agreed with most of the majority report, the point of contention was the recommendation to form another committee.

That second committee would look at the Fair Labor Association and the Workers’ Rights Consortium to determine which monitoring system Purdue would like to have for its licensees.

But that’s not what the students wanted. They felt they had done enough research into the Workers’ Rights Consortium that would make it the only option for Purdue.

• So they held a press conference about the decision. The Fair Labor Association, they said, was like corporations watch-dogging themselves. For Purdue Students Against Sweatshops, the only fair labor monitoring service is the Worker Rights Consortium.

• Although administrators did not respond to that particular press conference, Beering responded to the majority and minority reports. He sent a letter to the committee and also wrote letters to the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium. The letter to the committee said Beering had looked over the recommended code of conduct — which he approved within 48 hours — and said the committee’s recommendations had to be reviewed by business staff and legal counsel.

In Beering’s letters to the leaders of the Fair Labor Association and Worker Rights Consortium, he stated that Purdue wants to join the monitoring system that will best enforce the code of conduct.

But the students weren’t happy. Marikah Mancini, president of Purdue Students Against Sweatshops, said, "I don’t feel like the University is as committed to improving the lives of their (factory) workers as they should be."

She added, "We’ve already shown them that the FLA will not work … we’d really like Purdue to be a member of the consortium by April (for the founding day conference)," she said.

• The day after Beering sent his response to Students Against Sweatshops, Edna Bonacich, a speaker who was coming to talk as part of a lecture series, came to present her speech. It was about sweatshops and the anti-sweatshop movement, particularly the student movement. Members of Purdue Students Against Sweatshops were there and talked to her afterward.

During part of her lecture, Bonacich praised students across the nation for their efforts with the anti-sweatshop movement.

Because of student activism on campuses, more and more firms have been disclosing the locations of their factories, she said.

"(Disclosure) is a victory for the student movement," she said.

• Then came the calm before the storm. For a few days, things seemed quiet. But Wednesday afternoon, members of Purdue Students Against Sweatshops had another demonstration. This time, it was a march to Hovde Hall of Administration to present a letter and a symbolic visual to director of University contracts Doug Sabel.

They went to his office, but he wasn’t there. They read a statement to his secretary and left the cloths in his office. Later, Sabel said the students had "crossed the line" by going into his office when he wasn’t there.

The statement was a reminder to Sabel and the Purdue administration that the students wanted full public disclosure of Purdue licensee factories. The agreement to disclose that information, they stated, was made on Dec. 7.

Because Sabel was not there, the students went to Joe Bennett’s office. Bennett, vice president of University relations and chair of the Merchandising Committee, was not there at the time.

So they went to Beering’s office. He was there; they read the statement and he listened. He promised to keep working with them on the issue. The students were pleased he came out of his office to listen, even though they arrived unannounced.

• The future. Mancini said the students are scheduled to meet with Beering on March 21 to discuss the issue further. Beyond that, no one knows for sure what lengths the students will go to in order to get what they want.

Students have been dragged from sit-ins, they’ve been arrested and they’ve been effective in getting their demands.

Three Big Ten universities have already joined the Worker Rights Consortium: Indiana University, University of Michigan and University of Wisconsin at Madison.

In fact, students at the University of Wisconsin at Madison held an 89-hour sit-in at the university’s chancellor’s office. Fifty-four students were arrested at 4:13 a.m. during that sit-in, but the University listened.

At Indiana University, the proceedings went a little differently.

There was verbal communication between the administration and the student activists. Rob Larson, a representative of IU’s "No Sweat Coalition" said talks at IU have run more smoothly than at Purdue.

Duke University withdrew licensing rights from 28 companies that produce the university's apparel because they wouldn't reveal the location of their factories.

The University of Pennsylvania held a sit-in at the office of their president that lasted more than eight days.

With all of this talk of sit-ins, people are starting to wonder if it will happen here at Purdue.

"A sit-in is a tactic of last resort," said Mancini. "We are doing everything we can to win human rights for Purdue's workers in a cooperative manner first."