UH Students Against Sweatshops paid a home visit to President Renu Khator to demand an answer to a long-awaited question Monday.
The students congregated outside of the closed gates of the president’s home, 1505 South Boulevard, in an effort to seek her decision on whether the University would sign on with the Designated Suppliers Program and ensure safe working conditions for factory workers of UH-brand apparel.
For sociology freshman Brendan Laws, closed gates and unanswered questions were no surprise.
"We are not realistically expecting to hear back from her today," said Laws after noting that numerous messages, letters and e-mails had already been sent to the president. "She’s due to come out. She needs to make a decision."
The UH Apparel Task Force, which was formed after Khator’s March 3 request to evaluate the student group’s concerns of sweatshop labor, investigated whether UH uses sweatshop labor for its logo apparel.
Though the committee has not finalized the report, the recommendation, which was submitted to Khator June 16, concludes there were no findings of sweatshop-sourced university-brand clothing.
After comparing Barnes ‘ Noble’s affiliates with the Workers Rights Consortium list of factories in violation of workers’ rights, Apparel Task Force Student representative and Student Government Association Senate member Stephen Quezada said the University has taken reasonable steps to ensure workers rights.
"We found no direct evidence that UH was either knowingly or unintentionally engaged in the sale or licensing of trademarked products manufactured under sweatshop conditions," Quezada said.
Apparel Task Force Chairman and professor of economics Steven Craig said, in his personal opinion and not on behalf of the committee, the issue of sweatshop labor on the university level is primarily a public relations matter that has minimal impact on the global economy.
"All of the universities are too small to affect the global labor market and the economic conditions of sweatshop workers," Craig said.
He also said Barnes ‘ Noble is incapable of knowing the conditions of each of the factories."Barnes ‘ Noble has a good code of conduct, as good as you can hope for, but there are limits to what they can know at all times," Craig said.
History doctoral candidate and UH Students Against Sweatshop founder Timothy O’Brien said the student group would maintain its proactive approach to the global issue of factory workers’ conditions.
"We’re only trying to solve the issue of selling University logo clothes from sweatshop factories," O’Brien said.
