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Students help toward
ending worker abuse
By Dave Stephens
Assistant
Campus Editor
Purdue Students Against Sweatshops want the University's
students to discover Purdue.
That discovery, according to Matthew Popovich,
a senior in the School of Liberal Arts and a member of the anti-sweatshop
group, should lead students to realize that not all is well at Purdue.
"Discover Purdue: Have You Seen Dignity," a campaign
organized by Purdue Students Against Sweatshops, starts today as a way
to inform the Purdue community about, "the lack of dignity and respect
for many workers who produce Purdue apparel." The week's other goal
is to continue the campaign of Living Wage Purdue, a group dedicated
to increasing the pay of service and clerical staff workers.
Joachim Deguara, a senior in the Schools of Engineering,
said he hopes the week draws attention to the plight of Purdue service
and clerical workers.
"One of the questions we're asking is, 'Is Purdue
paying its workers properly, can they afford things like dental insurance?,'
which Purdue staff currently cannot do," said Deguara.
Popovich said one of the other issues that needs
to be addressed is the current situation at the New Era Cap Company,
in Derby, N.Y.
"The serious thing is that this is in New York
state," said Popovich. "This is an American company that makes baseball
caps for Purdue, for Major League Baseball and other universities."
According to Popovich, workers at the baseball
cap factory were fired after trying to form a union. New Era employees
were also forced to take a $5-an-hour pay cut after the company's union-busting
campaign, which is against Purdue's Code of Conduct.
"We want the University to add a termination clause
in the Purdue Code of Conduct for the companies that use Purdue's licensee,"
said Popovich. Such a clause, he added, would force the University to
terminate contracts with any company that doesn't meet certain requirements,
like those imposed by the Workers' Right Consortium, a watch-dog organization
made up of 86 colleges and universities. Purdue joined the organization
in October of 2000.
"The (Workers' Right Consortium) is your monitoring
agent," said Popovich. "Basically its job is to look into the problems
that are happening at factories that are producing university merchandise."
Popovich said that even though Purdue joined the
organization, the University has not taken an active role in stopping
worker abuse. Such a role, he said, would be for Purdue to add a termination
clause to its conduct code.
To get support for a termination clause, Purdue
Students Against Sweatshop's is hosting a petition drive from 10 a.m.
to 4 p.m. Thursday in front of the Class of 1950 Lecture Hall. They
will also host a rally at 9:30 a.m. Saturday on the Purdue Memorial
Mall.
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CAMPUS DESK PHONE:
(765)
743-1111 ext. 253
Campus editor:
Laura Pelner
Assistant campus
editors: Kurt Esposito,
Dave Stephens
To
send a letter to the editor, please email campus@purdueexponent.org
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