From: Kirk Anthony Scirto (ks002h@mail.rochester.edu)
Date: Mon Mar 25 2002 - 20:59:29 EST
Hey USAS,
It sounds like all New York State colleges under the SUNY and CUNY systems
are on the verge of joining the WRC!!! Check out the article below and
please email me as to how U of Rochester students can help make this
legislation happen! peace,
Kirk Scirto, No Sweat U of Rochester
The Ithaca Journal
Monday, March 25, 2002
Campuses bring muscle to sweatshop protest
Legislature on verge of strengthening schools' ability to refuse to do
business with firms
By MICHAEL GORMLEY
The Associated Press
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ALBANY -- In public campus stores statewide, sweat shirts with school
logos can go for $36, a polo shirt costs $31, and a trendy hooded pullover
sweat shirt rarely used for sweating fetches $48 or more.
But in places such as Puebla, Mexico, where the fashionable Nike and
Reebok college sweat shirts have long been made, the worker pulled down
about 65 cents an hour. Workers also complained of verbal abuse and said
several employees were fired after a cafeteria boycott over the quality of
the food.
Those conditions are slowly changing in a large part due to the efforts of
the Worker Rights Consortium, a nonprofit organization that enlisted 94
colleges and universities in its fight against sweatshops.
The effort is in line for a major boost. The state Legislature is poised
to change state law to allow the State University of New York's 64
campuses and the City University of New York's 20 campuses to refuse to
deal with sweatshop products.
Under the legislation, SUNY and CUNY campuses would be allowed to declare
that a firm that uses sweatshops to make products is unqualified to do
business with the college, even if that company submitted the lowest price
in a competitive bidding process.
"The strength of the organization depends on the participation of colleges
and universities," said Scott Nova of the Washington, D.C.-based Rights
Consortium. "If the State University or City University systems as a whole
joined, that would obviously greatly increase our strength, as would
individual schools if they joined."
State lawmakers say there's strong support for the bill.
"It will give a tool where a community can publicly react and bring
economic might to say, 'You aren't a qualified provider because you have a
shoddy record,"' said Assemblyman John McEneny, an Albany
Democrat. "Otherwise, we're subsidizing sweatshops -- the worst possible
scenario."
In Puebla, the Worker Rights Consortium prompted changes in the plant and
in making the union more responsive.
"Workers now have a direct and effective negotiator, their union, which is
enabling them to improve working conditions -- in terms of dangerous areas
of the plant, ventilation, lighting, breaks, cafeteria food, treatment of
workers by supervisors and in other ways," said Huberto Juarez Nunez, a
professor of Economics at the Autonomous University of Puebla in
Mexico. He mediated the worker dispute.
"Workers now have a clause in their contract that links salaries to the
earnings of the company," Nunez said. "Never before in Mexico, in any
manufacturing industry, has there been such a clause."
Ithaca College has avoided sweatshop manufacturers since 1998, when the
college required vendors to sign a "code of conduct." A comparison of
apparel in its campus store shows the same prices as those at SUNY schools
that have not yet taken that stand. Ithaca joined the Worker Rights
Consortium in February.
"Ithaca College has long promoted the notion of 'social screening' in
cases where our business activities could be seen to have a direct
relationship with abuses of human rights," said college President Peggy
Williams.
The breakthrough shows how pervasive the problem is in college apparel,
much of which is made at least in part in Mexico or Asia.
"It's very difficult not to buy a sweatshop item," said Tina Post of
NYPIRG. "It's endemic."
She and McEneny said experience so far has shown little if any added price
when manufacturers avoid sweatshops or improve conditions.
"There would be a higher economic cost in a student boycott," McEneny
said, noting the growing support of the movement on campuses.
The college bill has strong sponsors: Assembly Labor Committee Chairwoman
Catherine Nolan, D-Queens, in the Assembly and Senate Labor Committee
Chairman Guy Velella, R-Bronx, in the Senate.
Gov. George Pataki is an opponent of sweatshop labor and would "certainly
look forward" to reviewing the bill if the Legislature sends it to him,
Pataki spokesman Joseph Conway said.
On the Net: www.workersrights.org
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