Interim UH President John Rudley’s full-page attack ad in Thursday’s edition of the Daily Cougar requires a response because it was directed at our group, Students Against Sweatshops. Rudley’s first point is that SAS "demanded" that the University pay the Worker Rights Consortium 1 percent of fees obtained from licensing the UH logo to apparel manufacturers. SAS requested in February that the University join the consortium and sign on to the designated supplier program, which was proposed by the national group, United Students Against Sweatshops. Former UH president Jay Gogue then ordered John Rudley and UH General Counsel Dona Hamilton to form a committee to address the sweatshop issue.
Rudley’s characterization that WRC fees of 1 percent are "exorbitant" is misleading because UH’s fee would only be $1,000. With a UH system budget of more than $950 million $1,000 is trivial, especially since it will ensure apparel workers’ health and safety. UH would be paying for a service that ensures safe working conditions. According to its Web site, 174 universities are members of the labor rights consortium. Members include Columbia University, Penn State, the University of California system and Harvard – all academically superior to UH.
The author of the error-riddled ad also stated that UH for years has "supported" the Fair Labor Association, a non-profit organization aiming to end sweatshop conditions around the globe. Yet according to FLA’s Web site, UH is not a member of the organization, nor is Barnes and Noble. We can state that we support many causes, but if we don’t donate our time or financial resources, then our support is all talk and no action. The ad’s claim that UH holds all its apparel vendors to the same policy as the FLA code is ludicrous because the University has no enforcement mechanism. If you don’t inspect factories how can you hold anyone to a labor code?
The FLA has serious problems. One fundamental difference between the FLA and the WRC is the governing members of each organization. The WRC is an independent monitoring agency made up of university administrators, students and independent labor experts. The WRC was formed in 1999 when students at Duke University brought national attention to the sweatshop issue as it related to college apparel. Multinational corporations formed the FLA in the late 1990s. It was beholden to powerful multinational apparel companies and was formed by the same companies whose sweatshop labor practices inspired the need for campus anti-sweatshop policies in the first place. Six apparel industry representatives sit on the FLA’s board of directors, any three of whom could veto most major FLA organizational decisions – such as whether or not a company can remain a member – through the FLA’s voting system.
The FLA’s primary paymaster remains apparel companies, and most FLA monitoring is performed by profit-based monitoring firms. Compare that to WRC, which has no corporations involved and generates its budget from university members’ dues and grants.
The FLA denies students a meaningful role, while the WRC has students sitting on its board. Expecting multinational firms to police themselves is like asking the Houston Police Department to clean up its own crime lab scandal. The WRC’s independent nonprofit inspection is needed to ensure that workers are toiling in sweatshop-free conditions, unlike the for-profit minimal inspection the FLA offers. Workers are afraid to be truthful with FLA inspectors who are working for their employer.
Instead of spending money on propaganda, the University administration should keep its promise to SAS by speaking with other college administrators, and then sitting down to discuss their findings with us.
A true democracy advances when the parties in power actually do the research and carefully study the issue, not when they make promises and then spend money to obscure the facts.
Keele, An English sophomore, can be reached via at [email protected]
