The Student Government Association approved legislation Jan. 16 to calling for the University to affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium and sign on to the Designated Suppliers Program.
"I don’t think we should exploit people to generate revenue," At-Large Graduate Sen. Timothy O’Brien said.
O’Brien said he started the UH chapter of Students Against Sweatshops to fight for workers’ rights and sweatshop free labor conditions. O’Brien heard of the WRC through Students Against Sweatshops.
The WRC is a nonprofit organization that aims to increase public awareness of factory conditions around the world and to keep colleges and universities informed about the conditions of the factories that manufacture any items that display their names and logos.
"I don’t see why we are not getting (fair-trade approved products) in the first place," nutrition senior Rebecca Goyen said.
As of Jan. 9, the WRC has 177 affiliated colleges and universities. O’Brien said that because not many schools have signed on to the DSP, it is still not in practice.
"Right now the DSP is hypothetical," he said. "It may never be implemented."
If UH affiliates itself with WRC, the University would have to "adopt manufacturing Codes of Conduct adopted by colleges and universities, ask licensees to provide the WRC with a list of names and locations of all factories involved in the production of their logo goods and pay annual affiliations fees, which are either $1,000 or 1 percent of gross licensing revenues," according to the WRC Web site.
The university Code of Conduct that UH would follow contains a list of rules any affiliated university must follow, including standards regarding employee wages and benefits, child labor, working hours, health and safety, women’s rights, abuse and overtime compensation.
In order to gain approval, the SGA bill will go through the University Coordinating Commission, which oversees the process by which an organization’s suggestions are approved by faculty and staff to get feedback on its impact to the University. Recommendations are later approved by the administration.
Students said that while ending bad working conditions would be ideal, not enough people are interested in the cause.
"I hope it is passed, but I’m not sure enough people would speak up or even know about the subject," psychology senior Kelly Golden said.
Other students said that administrators are not interested in getting involved with WRC.
"The University will probably just blow it off," University Studies sophomore Carson Blackmon said. "I don’t think (the SGA bill) is a major concern for them."†
Last week’s SGA legislation also recommended that UH sign onto the DSP, a WRC program designed to increase the enforcement of the university Codes of Conduct. The DSP aims to protect the rights of factory workers that manufacture any apparel or textile items with college or university logos.
According to the WRC Web site, universities that sign the DSP are required to use independently verified supplier factories that allow workers to organize, bargain and be paid a living wage. The affiliated universities are required to verify the supplier factories to make sure that they have safe working environments and respect workers’ rights.
"I think it is a good idea, anytime you could get out of buying from providers who use sweatshops," history sophomore Matt Summers said. "The bill probably won’t go through, big business is always going to try to make a profit."
The WRC Web site says that the DSP will be implemented in annual phases after an initial grace period of six months. It also states that in the first year the DSP will require "25 percent of each licensee’s collegiate apparel (to be) sourced from DSP factories." The amount will be increased to 50 percent in the second year and to 75 percent in the third year.
For more information on the WRC, visit www.workersrights.org.
Additional reporting by Mike Damante and Mayra Cruz
