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From the issue dated April 7, 2000
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We Need Immediate, Practical Solutions
By BAMA ATHREYA
In recent weeks, colleges and universities have been asked to choose between two programs -- the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium -- that would help them ensure that the clothing and goods that carry the college logo are produced in accord with fair labor practices.
For example, Brown University and the University of Iowa have chosen to join both the F.L.A. and the W.R.C.. In the past several months, however, five major universities -- Georgetown University, Indiana University at Bloomington, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison -- have yielded to student demands that they not participate in the F.L.A. Several of those institutions are my alma maters, and I regret the action that they have taken. By choosing to endorse one program and reject the other, they are making an unfortunate and unnecessary decision. I, too, have been a student activist -- both as an undergraduate at Penn and as a graduate student at Michigan. In the mid-1980's, I was part of the movement to encourage university administrators to divest holdings in companies doing business in South Africa; like Penn students today, I participated in sit-ins and sleep-ins at College Hall. In the early 1990's, students at Michigan protested United States involvement in the Gulf War; I joined and supported those protests. I am a committed human-rights advocate. For a Ph.D. dissertation on the emergence of Indonesia's labor movement, I lived in an urban slum there and conducted fieldwork among local factory workers. I worked closely with underground trade unions and other labor-advocacy groups, during a period when such activity was often punished by arbitrary arrest and detention, and sometimes torture. In Cambodia, from 1996 to 1998, I directed labor-education programs for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. I spent most days with young female workers in the country's garment industry, giving them the information and tools they needed to organize trade unions and represent their own interests. Today, despite its poverty and political turmoil, Cambodia has a thriving trade-union movement, one of the few in the world active in the garment industry. In short, my assessment of initiatives to improve the conditions in sweatshops comes largely from direct experience living with workers in countries that pay low wages and have repressive labor policies. I am entirely sympathetic to the goals of the students who oppose sweatshops. The problem of sweatshops is an urgent one, and we desperately need new strategies. But those strategies must suggest immediate, workable solutions, and they must provide practical tools to the activists in developing countries. That is why I support the Fair Labor Association and strongly believe that colleges and universities should not jettison it in favor of the Worker Rights Consortium. The Clinton administration started the F.L.A. initiative in 1996, bringing concerned human-rights and labor activists together with representatives of the apparel industry to jointly develop solutions to the sweatshop problem. Today, the F.L.A. enjoys broad support among all those groups, as well as from the U.S. government. The program is ambitious in scope, requiring participating companies to verify labor conditions in 100 percent of their factories worldwide, as well as demanding that a minimum of 30 percent of the factories be inspected by independent monitors within the first three years. The F.L.A. is now operational and will begin accrediting independent monitors within the next few months. The W.R.C., on the other hand, is still in the formative stage. Students and trade-union representatives developed the program proposal late last year, and will refine it at a conference on April 7. The W.R.C. does not, at this point, plan to monitor factories on a continuous basis or to verify where good conditions exist. It plans to rely on surprise visits to identify factories that are engaging in bad practices. And it is a year or more away from setting up such a system. It intends to provide a channel for trade unions and other advocacy groups -- commonly referred to under the rubric of "non-governmental organizations" -- to lodge complaints about poor labor practices in factories that produce university-licensed merchandise. Georgetown, Indiana, Penn, Michigan, Wisconsin, and other universities have heard a good deal of misinformation from students in recent weeks about the failings of the F.L.A. and the strengths of the W.R.C. In particular, critics of the F.L.A. have inaccurately characterized its program and the reasons that colleges should not join. I would like to set the record straight: * The F.L.A. is not a "company-controlled" initiative. From the beginning, non-governmental organizations, such as trade unions, have had an equal voice with manufacturers and retailers in directing the association and its actions. Six industry representatives, six N.G.O. representatives, one university representative, and a chair -- currently Charles Ruff, a former White House counsel -- serve on the board. Moreover, a separate committee that includes representatives of trade unions in the United States and developing countries, as well as of human-rights groups, advises the N.G.O. members of the board. * The F.L.A. will not require the use of for-profit accounting firms as monitors. In fact, many local non-governmental organizations in producer countries will probably serve as monitors. One F.L.A. partner, Liz Claiborne, has worked closely with my own International Labor Rights Fund -- an independent research-and-advocacy organization -- and a local consortium of respected human-rights advocates to monitor one of its factories in Guatemala. Another partner, Reebok International, has worked with well-regarded social scientists and labor-rights advocates in Indonesia to conduct an audit of its footwear factories there. The independent N.G.O. reports on both of those operations are available to the public. To help local labor advocates continue to expand their roles, several of the universities participating in the F.L.A. are supporting training programs run by the labor-rights fund. In addition to establishing programs in Guatemala and Indonesia, we are working with advocacy groups in El Salvador, Honduras, and Taiwan to guarantee that they will be fully capable of obtaining accreditation as F.L.A. monitors if they so desire. (The training program does not obligate any participating organizations to work through the F.L.A.) Universities can select such local advocacy groups as their preferred factory monitors, ensuring that the monitoring is not a "company controlled" process. * The F.L.A. conforms to internationally recognized standards. Despite student criticisms that its code of conduct for manufacturers is too weak, a side-by-side comparison of the F.L.A. code of conduct and monitoring protocols and a W.R.C. code of conduct that was circulated last year reveals very little difference in standards. For example, students and others have criticized the F.L.A. code for allowing manufacturers to require workers, on a weekly basis, to put in 48 hours of regular work and up to 12 hours of overtime. The same formulation, however, appears in the W.R.C. code. Critics have also charged that the F.L.A. code allows children as young as 14 to work in apparel factories. But the child-labor provision in the W.R.C. code is nearly identical to that in the F.L.A.'s -- and both are based on the International Labor Organization's convention on child labor. As for an appropriate living wage, without an international consensus on what constitutes such a standard, no monitoring program can guarantee that all people will be paid that much. In the absence of any internationally agreed-upon language on wages, a formulaic approach to setting wages risks putting those determinations in the hands of U.S.-based researchers and activists. That may potentially harm workers, by undermining their bargaining power -- or, worse yet, encouraging companies to relocate to countries where the living wage is determined to be extremely low. The students themselves have realized that fact. In response to student demands, a conference at the University of Wisconsin at Madison last November determined that further study was needed before a living-wage provision could be put into effect. The U.S. Department of Labor just released the complete data from a study on wages and basic needs that it conducted for the F.L.A., which plans to examine the data and their implications. * If colleges and universities join the F.L.A., they can choose to go beyond its standards. They should be aware that they can demand -- and some have demanded -- that their licensees adopt stricter standards than those that the F.L.A. defines. For example, 40 higher-education institutions now require their licensees to reveal the names and locations of their factories overseas. Other universities could participate in the F.L.A. and adopt similar conditions for their individual licensees. Now, a few words about the weaknesses of the W.R.C.: * The W.R.C. has no current plans to undertake systematic factory monitoring, and it opposes certification of "good" factories. As its plans now stand, local advocates, either trade unions or non-governmental organizations, will report on bad conditions in factories only on an ad-hoc basis. They will not provide information to consumers about factories with good labor practices. Because the program requires no continuing monitoring, such reports will probably be sporadic and inconsistent from country to country. The program will tend to focus on only those factories or companies in areas with strong trade unions or other advocates likely to generate the reports. Unfortunately, such advocates are still few and far between. The garment industry has extremely low rates of unionization; fewer than 5 percent of all garment workers worldwide are unionized. In addition, while some N.G.O.-advocacy groups are strong in some developing countries, they are weak or nonexistent in others. Therefore, countries with no independent N.G.O. presence, such as China, will generate no negative reports. Manufacturers that produce apparel in China or other locations to which it is difficult for human-rights groups to gain access will be assumed to be "good" companies, simply by virtue of their not having been investigated. And manufacturers will not be rewarded for running genuinely good factories. If a spot check reveals that a factory is complying with the W.R.C. code, then what? The program provides no incentive to continue to monitor that factory, or to follow up with its workers. * The W.R.C. does not yet have in place a plan either to provide advocates worldwide with the resources or training necessary to permanently strengthen their role as watchdogs of industry, or to investigate or monitor conditions in countries where non-governmental organizations and trade unions cannot play that role. Unless and until it does, the W.R.C. will not be able to ensure the uniform strengthening of labor standards in all factories or all countries. Any attempts to enforce a living wage, for instance, will probably drive production from countries where the W.R.C. and its allies are strong to areas with no local advocates. The strategy of penalizing companies found to be in violation of W.R.C. standards, with no reward for good behavior, will also encourage companies under scrutiny to "cut and run" from locations where reports have exposed violations. In short, we will risk moving the problem from one country to another -- not solving it. * The W.R.C. is still evolving. Therefore, it is premature for colleges and universities to opt to participate in that program rather than the F.L.A. While students have criticized the presence of corporations on the F.L.A. board, its structure and governance functions are at least clearly defined in public documents. The F.L.A. has a university representative and a separate university advisory council. We don't yet know the governance structure of the W.R.C. -- although we may have a better picture after April 7. Students developed the program, but what role they will play in its actual administration is uncertain. Despite its weaknesses, the W.R.C. quite rightly espouses a goal of giving students -- and, more broadly, others in colleges and universities -- greater say in the conditions under which university-licensed goods are produced. The goal is an important one and deserves support. However, higher-education institutions should resist pressures to choose between participating in the evolving W.R.C. discussions and the F.L.A.'s monitoring program. Institutions and students can, and should, support both initiatives. Last year, the F.L.A. invited United Students Against Sweatshops, a student group that had helped form the W.R.C., to join its board. The student organization declined -- a regrettable response. Although not perfect, the F.L.A. will persist, and the program needs student voices within it to ensure that it continues to improve and learn from any mistakes. Colleges and universities should support student advocacy on the sweatshop issue, but they should also encourage students to engage positively with the F.L.A. in the development and execution of its programs. Worker empowerment is important, but activists in developing countries need more help than just one approach can provide. Bama Athreya is a director of Asia Programs at the International Labor Rights Fund, which is a member of the Fair Labor Association, and serves as a representative on its board.
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