I read The Daily Cougar’s editorial entitled, “Progress in fight against sweatshops trivial.” In this article, the journalist writes about how Knights Apparel has made great strides in raising salaries for the workers, so concerned students can now rest easy.
First of all, while it is good that Knights Apparel is now paying their workers wages that they can live on, it is not a stride but a step.
But this is only one factory. What about all the other factories that pay workers next to nothing for long hours, prevent them from asking for more rights, and demand that they work in awful conditions?
Instead of The Daily Cougar saying you can relax because everything is fine, it should have encouraged us to ask ourselves how we can convince other companies to follow Knights Apparel.
The writer titles the article as, “Progress in fight against sweatshops trivial;” I, among many others, strongly disagree. At the Fair Labor Action Committee (FLAC) we know there is no quick fix for sweatshops, and that it will be difficult to rid the world of slave wages in our lifetime.
Does this mean we should give up? Absolutely not.
There are many social evils that people fight against their entire lives, such as racism, sexism, religious discrimination, and human trafficking. Does The Daily Cougar think that fighting against these evils is trivial, too? We should always fight for basic rights that human beings deserve.
Susan McGregor is an English literature major.
I'm glad to see that some students still care about human rights issues at the University of Houston. Throughout the years I was a graduate student at UH, the Daily Cougar almost always trivialized actions by Students Against Sweatshops, a group I founded, whenever we did educational events and other things to bring attention to the sweatshop issue. The editorial that Ms McGregor writes about above is more of the same.
The editors of the Daily Cougar would be wise to act as a watchdog for students and the university community instead of being a mouth piece for Renu Khator who takes a $75,000 raise while paying janitors and food service workers poverty wages. You don't have to travel to Mexico or any other country where UH logo clothes are made to see sweatshops, just take a look at workers conditions on campus and ask them if their conditions are trivial.
Please note the race of most janitors and food service workers also that is very relevant particularly in a state that was founded as a nation just so Texans could keep their slaves.
Timothy J. O'Brien, PhD
The International Labor Rights Forum :: http://www.laborrights.org/ :: created SweatFree Communities :: http://www.sweatfree.org/about_us :: in 2003.
For a listing of all Sweat Free Communities and activist groups across the world visit … http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/sweatshop…
Students or members of the Greater Houston community can become members of these groups.
It is doubtful that anyone can trivializes the study of how people are compensated for their labor since those issues have been studied and discussed since before the time of Christ.
The UH library has hundreds of publications and information on how to contact faculty members across the campus who study compensation finance or compensation economics or global business administration or international politics.
For modern compensation models check out the hundreds of studies of compensation models for Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream and similar groups.
http://www.benjerry.com/company/sear/2008/sear08_…
And for industrial compensation modeling check out Lincoln Electric and their most unique and thoughtful model of compensating employees.
http://www.lincolnelectric.com/corporate/about/ab…
You have all the resources right there on campus and you are the envy of millions of college students who only have Google.
And besides, preparing a course paper on how employees are paid at Ben & Jerry's for example, is just plain interesting and fun.
Only students and life-long learners can categorize a scholarly area of study as 'trivial' after they of course… know all about it.
Good luck.