From: Molly McGrath (molly@usasnet.org)
Date: Tue Sep 10 2002 - 19:55:30 EDT
Please forward - general update on the Worker Rights Consortium's activities! They're now at 105 college and university members!
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To: Primary Contacts/WRC Affiliate Colleges and Universities
From: Scott Nova, Executive Director
Date: September 10, 2002
Re: General WRC update - September
I write to update you on recent developments at the WRC. This update will cover the following topics:
*Organizational Development
-financial audit
-new fiscal year budget
-new university affiliations
*New WRC Staff
-Director of Research and Investigations
-Program Associate/Asia
-Administrative Director
*Organizational Governance
-new members of Governing Board and Advisory Council
-2002 annual meeting of the WRC University Caucus
*Factory Assessments and Remediations
-ongoing assessments/remediations
-new and pending assessments
As always, please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like to discuss any of this information.
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ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND FINANCES
-Independent Financial Audit: The WRC underwent its first independent financial audit this summer. The audit, of the 2001 Fiscal Year, was conducted by the accounting firm of McQuade Brennan. The auditors found that the WRC's records, in all material respects, fairly represent the organization's financial position, in conformity with accepted accounting principles. In other words, they found no problems or discrepancies and confirmed that the WRC is accounting appropriately for all financial activities. If you would like an electronic copy of the audit report, please let me know.
-Fiscal Year 2003 Budget: The WRC's fundraising success over the last year (including our $415,000 grant from the U.S. State Department and a $100,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation), along with growing university participation, has allowed us to expand our budget substantially. At the June 3, 2002 WRC Governing Board meeting, the Board approved a budget for Fiscal Year 2002-2003 of $807,000. This budget provides for a full-time staff of seven in Washington along with temporary contract staff in countries where the WRC is carrying out factory research. (Information on recent additions to the WRC staff is provided below.)
A larger budget and more staff will allow us to substantially expand the WRC's work - meaning, primarily, a major increase in the number of full-scale factory assessments and remediation projects in the coming months.
-College and University Affiliations: The WRC now has 105 college and university affiliates. The most recent affiliates include New Mexico State University, Middle Tennessee State University, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, McMaster University and Villanova.
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WRC STAFF EXPANSION
The WRC has added three new staff members:
-Director of Research and Investigations - Ashwini Sukthankar: Our new Director of Research and Investigations is Ashwini Sukthankar. Ms. Sukthankar will coordinate WRC factory assessments and remediation efforts and related research projects. A native of India, Ms. Sukthankar is an attorney with an extensive human rights and labor rights background. She has taught and conducted research at the National Law School in Bangalore, focusing on a number of human rights issues, including child labor and trafficking in children, and has worked with India's National Human Rights Commission. Ms. Sukthankar has worked with community organizations in India to address the impact of Indian economic development strategy on apparel workers and other workers in the industrial and agricultural sectors. She has also worked with the Indian women's movement on the development of a uniform civil code to promote both greater gender equity and stronger protections for religious minorities. Ms. Sukthankar has field experience in Africa as well as South Asia. She is fluent in four languages - English, Hindi, Marathi and French - and can also converse in Bengali, the primary language in Bangladesh. She earned her J.D. at Harvard Law School. Ms. Sukthankar's knowledge of international human rights and labor law, and her extensive practical background in human rights and labor rights work, will be great assets to the WRC as we continue and expand our efforts.
-Program Associate/Asia - Agatha Schmaedick: Also joining our staff is Agatha Schmaedick, who will serve as a Program Associate, aiding senior staff in both outreach and factory monitoring efforts. Ms. Schmaedick will concentrate on Asia, and especially Indonesia, where she has substantial field experience - involving research on working conditions in the apparel industry - and extensive contacts with non-governmental human rights organizations. Agatha is fluent in Bahasa Indonesian, the primary language in Indonesia and Malaysia, and her skills and field experience will strengthen substantially the WRC's capacity in the field.
-Administrative Director - Anne O'Rourke: The WRC has also created the position of Administrative Director - to manage the WRC office, coordinate communications with the university community, manage the design and distribution of WRC publications, coordinate the WRC intern program, and assist with fundraising, among other tasks. The WRC has hired Anne O'Rourke to fill this new position. Ms. O'Rourke comes to the WRC with sixteen years' experience in non-profit administration at a number of respected national organizations, including the National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and the Economic Policy Institute. With the addition of Ms. O'Rourke (who joins our Business and Financial Manager, Erin McGrath, on the business side of WRC affairs), the WRC can ensure that we maintain and enhance our solid administrative infrastructure, as our program work expands.
-The addition of these three staff members gives the WRC six full-time staff (along with consultants and overseas contract staff). We plan to add an additional program position later in the year (this person will assist senior staff with the WRC's work in Latin America).
-One WRC staff person has departed: Maria Roeper, whom many of you know. Maria made an extraordinary contribution to the work of the WRC and we will miss her.
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ORGANIZATIONAL GOVERNANCE
-New Governing Board Members: The WRC has several new board members. Jim Brudney, of Ohio State University, was elected by the WRC University Caucus (which represents the administrations of WRC affiliate schools) to the seat previously held by Horace Mitchell of the University of California. I want to thank Vice-Chancellor Mitchell for his extraordinary work in helping to found and shape the development of the WRC over the past two years. Professor Brudney, who teaches law at Ohio State, will serve a two-year term. In addition, Doug Shaw, Associate Director of Public Relations at Georgetown University, was re-elected by the University Caucus to a two-year term. The WRC also has three new student board members: Audrey Avila of Loyola University, Nancy Stepan of Indiana University and Matt Aber-Towns of Grand Valley State University. Departing student board members include Ginger Gentile of Columbia, Suzanne Webb of the University of Kentucky and Trina Tocco of Western Michigan University. All devoted many hours of work to the organization and I want to thank them for their excellent service.
-The WRC has also added two new members to our Advisory Council - Terry Collingsworth, Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), and Carolina Quinteros, of the Monitoring Group of El Salvador (GMIES), a leading non-profit monitoring organization. We look forward to working with them.
-The WRC conducted our 2002 annual meeting of the University Caucus in May at Georgetown University. More than thirty colleges and universities were represented. The meeting included a detailed review of the WRC's work and organizational development over the previous year; the discussion, amendment and approval (by subsequent e-mail vote) of a set of Bylaws for the Caucus; and a decision to establish a committee to address the needs and priorities of smaller schools and non-licensing schools within the WRC. We are now in the process of assembling this committee. If you are interested in participating, please let me know. Minutes of the May University Caucus meeting are available on the WRC website at the following address: www.workersrights.org/meeting_UCaucus_051002.pdf
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ONGOING INVESTIGATIONS
-PT Dada (Indonesia): The WRC has been working steadily with the management of PT Dada Indonesia, the management of the factory's parent company in Seoul, key buyers (primarily Adidas and Top of the World) and workers at the factory to advance the remediation of problems identified in the WRC's March report. As you know, the licensees agreed at the time of the publication of the WRC report to support the WRC's key recommendations and, at subsequent meetings with Dada management, the factory also pledged to make the recommended changes. There has been very substantial progress in the ensuing months on the key issues at the factory (you will receive a detailed progress report from the WRC shortly). The WRC is continuing to monitor the factory closely, aided by a team of Indonesian labor rights experts, working as consultants to the WRC. The team members are Lucky Rossintah (a human rights attorney with Lembaga Bantuan Hukum, the leading Indonesian legal aid institute) and Fransiskus "Aso" Supiarso (a professor of industrial relations and social welfare at the University of Indonesia, in Jakarta). They conduct worker interviews on an ongoing basis and are able to visit the factory, unannounced, twice a month, under an agreement with Adidas and the factory management.
All in all, we are very pleased by the progress at PT Dada and particularly by the efforts of Adidas and Top of the World to promote remediation at the factory. Adidas has been heavily engaged through their Asia-region compliance staff - and both companies deserve much credit for the positive changes that have taken place at the factory. The key now is for Adidas and Top of the World to remain engaged and to see the remediation through to completion. We are confident that if the licensees fulfill their responsibility to remain engaged and promote respect for worker rights, PT Dada can build on the strong positive changes that have already been implemented and successfully complete the remediation process.
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-BJ&B (Dominican Republic): As you know, the WRC has conducted an assessment, and ongoing monitoring, at BJ&B, a factory that produces baseball caps (including university logo caps) in the Dominican Republic, supplying both Nike and Reebok. The WRC has not yet issued a factory report on BJ&B - a product of the way remediation efforts have developed at the factory. The initial urgency of the crisis at BJ&B (involving unfair dismissals of worker-leaders) meant that immediate remedial action was essential. The WRC encouraged licensees to act (beginning in December), based on preliminary information we had gathered, because waiting for the issuance of a formal report would have meant unacceptable delays in the effort to reinstate workers. Since that point, and despite some serious incidents that required aggressive intervention, the WRC has been reasonably satisfied with the overall progress of remediation on a number of issues at the factory and with licensees' efforts to encourage remediation. We have therefore delayed issuance of a report pending successful completion of remediation efforts.
The WRC has been intensively involved with the remediation process at BJ&B. Our efforts have included regular, sometimes daily, contact with BJ&B management and with the management and attorneys of BJ&B's parent company, Yupoong (based in Seoul), as well as regular contact with officials of the BJ&B union. WRC staff has made repeated visits to the factory and to the community of Villa Altagracia, where the factory is located, in order to meet with management and to conduct ongoing worker interviews. We have also worked with the licensees, both directly (including a meeting between myself and representatives of Nike, Reebok and Adidas in July) and indirectly, through cooperation with the Fair Labor Association. (The FLA has been involved constructively in the BJ&B remediation effort since early this year.)
The WRC has worked successfully with BJ&B and Yupoong management to secure concrete remedial action at a number of important junctures and will continue to do so, as needed. The work at BJ&B has not always been easy or smooth, but at this juncture there is cause for optimism about the successful completion of the remediation process.
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-New Era (New York): You have received a number of recent updates about the WRC's work at New Era. As I noted in a message to WRC affiliate schools last month, we will be visiting the factory this week, conducting follow-up research so we can release a second report on New Era in late September, assessing present conditions at the factory.
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NEW AND PENDING ASSESSMENTS
-Cambodia: The WRC has formally initiated an assessment of an apparel factory in Cambodia. At the moment, the name of the factory is not public. This confidentiality is necessary, as it will be in a significant number of cases, because important elements of the WRC assessment are being conducted on an unannounced basis. I expect to be able to inform you of the name of the factory in the near future.
-Pending Assessments: The WRC is presently reviewing worker complaints concerning six additional factories, including facilities in El Salvador, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Thailand and Indonesia. It is likely that assessments will be launched in some of these cases in the next several weeks. I will keep you posted.
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Scott Nova
Worker Rights Consortium
5 Thomas Circle
Washington DC 20005
voice 202.387.4884
fax 202.387.3292
www.workersrights.org
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Molly McGrath
Development Director
United Students Against Sweatshops
888 16th St. NW, Suite 303
Washington, D.C. 20006
(202) 667-9328 - office
202) 361-8305 - cell
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