PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

It's Time for UPitt to join the WRC
by Hal Smith Wednesday, Mar. 23, 2005 at 3:18 PM
rakovskii@yahoo.ca 412-648-4104

Students in Solidarity Press Release: Does UPitt get its clothes from Sweatshops. It probably does if its only way of certifying that it's not is the poorly named "Fair Labor Association."

Have you ever wondered when you looked at the "made in Pakistan" tag on University of Pittsburgh clothes, “Did this come from a sweatshop? When the manufacturer outsourced US jobs to Asia, was it only so that it their workers could toil under bad conditions for pennies?”


Unfortunately answers to these kinds of questions could be hard to come by so long as Pitt belongs to the poorly named "Fair Labor Association." After all, what's fair about a "labor" organization with an executive board of 6 corporate representatives, 6 NGOs (half of them corporate-funded), and only 3 board members for more than a hundred educational institutions? The main labor and church participants, called "UNITE" and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility both left because the association would not reconsider its position on wages and workers' rights to organize themselves.


Besides the fact that the corporations being monitored by the FLA are the same ones who run it (eg. Nike) there are other inherent flaws. The FLA does not prevent excessive working hours, require wages that will keep a family from destitution, or require public disclosure of factory conditions. In fact, the small print allows factories to apply for "de minimis" status where they basically don't have to follow any rules. Only 10% of a company's factories have to be monitored annually, and the corporations can even choose which ones they will be.


A study by Dr. David Boje, a management professor at New Mexico State University showed that his university, affiliated with the FLA, sold $40 sweatshirts from sweatshops where workers received 2.00 per sweatshirt. GAP, which funds one of the “nonprofit” organizations on the FLA executive board, pays Salvadoran workers $.27 per pair of jeans. Not to be outdone, Nike pays workers in that country $.11 per sweatshop sweatshirt.


Recently many universities are realizing that the FLA is not much of a “labor” organization. While Pitt is currently a member, others like the University of Iowa and Georgetown University have joined the Workers Rights Consortium while retaining or dropping their FLA membership. Unlike the FLA, the WRC demands full public disclosure of working conditions, "living wages" and hours, and is controlled by universities, labor rights scholars, and United Students against Sweatshops, a student group.


With this in mind Students in Solidarity, a Pitt student group that supports workers rights, is campaigning for the university to join the WRC. At the University of Minnesota, SGA president Matt Clark said, "The popular opinion was to sign on to the WRC," the university's president "listened to the students and signed on."


We believe this can happen at Pitt too. Last November SIS held an anti-sweatshop fashion show, attended by about 250 students. Then in February we met with vice Chancellor Jerome Cochran. He did not believe joining the WRC was a “good business decision.” We think that joining a labor organization should be based on compassion, not “business decisions.” In any case, membership in the FLA costs just as much as the WRC.


On Thursday March 31, Students in Solidarity will host an Anti-Sweatshop Dance-a-thon on the patio between the Panther Central lobby and the Walk Bridge at 11:45 AM. SIS also asks residents to please call Chancellor Nordenberg (412-624-4200), particularly on Thursday, and request that Pitt join Carnegie Mellon and Duquesne University- already members in the WRC.

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