From: Shahar Sapir (shahar@emailx.net)
Date: Wed Jul 10 2002 - 16:34:33 EDT
---------Please Forward Widely---------------
Minutes from June 3rd Board Meeting.
100 affiliates. 7 since last board meeting
Stanford. Athletes there are petitioning the administration to join the WRC. Stanford athletic said that they will only join academic, research organizations. Is interested in having a discussions/forum on campus about manufacturers and examine these issues.
Reebok / Kukdong (Mex-Mode)
Reminder--Reebok is pulling out of Kukdong, supposedly due to business necessity.
Nike has continued to do business after Kukdong instituted positive changes. Reebok is not planning on placing any more orders there b/c the are “trying to reduce the number of factories they have and consolidate products made in each factory” (make more than one product in each factory). Scott’s view: plan to talk to Reebok further.
University Caucus Update:
Annual meeting hosted by Georgetown with a turnout of about forty. Discussed bylaws and had a good discussion with Scott about investigations and New Era.
Was it good for the WRC to put resources into a domestic investigation?Continuing discussion from last years meeting on what schools should do in reaction to WRC actions.
Horace Mitchell, University of California - Berkeley is not going to run for a board position again. This was his last board meeting. Douglas Shaw, Georgetown University - will run again. Total number of schools represented was about half of WRC affiliates. Big licensing schools were largely represented. Discussion on how to bring smaller schools to the table.
Research to be done by:
Jill Esbenshade, Associate Professor of Sociology, San Diego State University.
Some members of the advisory council were in on a meeting about researching. Nike was there too. Meeting of the Advisory Council, members in attendance: about eight.
They agreed to a structure that will allow them to keep better contact with members in other countries. Maybe get a rep. from the IRLF to the A.C. A working group of the AC to help the WRC brainstorm about what research will be helpful.
NEW STAFF
WRC just hired a new staff person, a lawyer who will start the first of July. She is from India, where most of her work (community activism/human rights work) has been. She also participated in the living wage sit-in at Harvard, where she is just graduating from law school.
Ashwini will join the staff July 1.
Maria is leaving at the end of June, which will create the need for staff restructuring.
Two senior officers are now filled. Add two junior program staff to support work of director of research and outreach. Maria’s tasks will be divided off onto all four people. There will also be one administrative position, someone to work with Scott to communicate with constituencies.
The WRC will also hire overseas field consultants. They will be local staff that are felt would help with outreach and direct follow up monitoring of factories. They will probably not be permanent hires, but will be contracted out for a specific amount of time.
For example: Three people in Indonesia doing two things: monitoring remediation progress at factories through interviews and tours. Briefing employees of the WRC actions.
NEW ERA
Scott Nova, Mark Barenberg, (Member of AC, Professor of Law, Columbia Law School) and Greg Salinski (sp?) met with New Era at their New York offices in April. New Era decided to meet with them. The meeting began with New Era giving them a bunch of documents. Gave almost all requested documents to WRC. New Era responded to many issues raised. One of the demands was to prevent sewing fingers by embroidering machines. Key-lock mechanisms were used in between changing machines. However, the key-lock mechanism is at the end of a very long machine, hence, using the mechanism is time consuming. Since the workers are paid by piece-rate, they don’t end up actually using the safety device, because of loss of pay.
Why did the Company move production to Alabama?
WRC thought that perhaps it was worker retaliation.
PT/DATA
Scott was there in April. There has been some good progress in some areas:
No more “homework.”
However, little or no progress in other areas. Scott is optimistic in their being a fair contract negotiation.
Marcella David, (Board Secretary), University of Iowa has been elected as Chair of University Caucus. This is because these positions are rotated, which means that Suzanne Webb (graduate of) University of Kentucky has relinquished her seat.
Which brings us to:
Goodbyes : (
As mentioned above, Maria Roper will be moving on. She will be leaving her position as a WRC staff person at the end of June. You might have noticed that about 4 –5 people are replacing her. This on its own, speaks to the invaluable service she has provided the organization. Thus, she will never truly be replaced, and will always be missed.
We also bid farewell to two board reps: Ginger Gentile, who has recently graduated from Columbia University, and Suzanne Webb, who has recently graduated from University of Kentucky. They both served USAS and the WRC well. They really helped structure this position, and molded it to become what it is and will be. They are awesome, kick-ass RockStars who we hope never really will leave USAS. Unfortunately are leaving their Board Rep positions. We will miss you both.
On a lighter note, Nancy Steffan and Audrey Avila will be coming in as new board reps. They will certainly do a wonderful job, and will serve USAS well.
Next Board meeting: Saturday October 12th.
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