By
Tasha Thomas
March 7, 2007
Thought lately about who made that purple Husky sweatshirt you like to wear? How about those soft gray slippers, so nice on a lazy weekend morning, or the sporty cap you wear to ball games?
Last week, the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) used the stories of real-life sweatshop conditions to launch its campaign for fair trade UW apparel at an event sponsored by the International Labor Rights Fund.
About 30 students and community members gathered to hear testimonies of former Wal-Mart employees and their experiences around the globe with sweatshop practices.
“Look at your shirt,” said Marina Skumanich, coordinator for the Washington Fair Trade Coalition. “Chances are it’s made outside of the U.S. By buying that shirt, you’re part of the global economy.”
While all of the stories came from workers contracted through Wal-Mart, the group stressed the importance of consumer responsibility for all brands, not just the large ones.
“While Wal-Mart is definitely the largest, it doesn’t mean it’s the only one [using sweatshop practices],” Skumanich said. “It’s definitely the worst, but it’s not alone.”
Senior Rod Palmquist, a representative for SLAP, emphasized the responsibilities of college students in particular to “take ownership of knowing where their clothes come from and that they are ethically made.”
In order to ensure every article of clothing that bears the UW logo has been constructed ethically, SLAP has petitioned the University to adopt the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), an agreement sponsored by the nationwide United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS).
The program aims to secure at least 75 percent of all UW apparel from factories with workers’ rights, including living wages (salaries high enough to support the standards of living depending upon the country) and the right to unionize.
Contracts with collegiate apparel generate huge profits for athletic apparel companies such as Nike and Reebok, Palmquist said.
If universities added the DSP to their contracts, there could be two possible outcomes: either the apparel companies would absorb the increased costs, or they could pass the cost along to consumers. The price increase is estimated between 1 and 6 percent per article of clothing, a small cost to students but enough to double the monthly wages of a factory worker in El Salvador.
The group targets students because they influence university policy, Palmquist said.
“There are 150 factories producing UW apparel,” he said. “The majority operate under sweatshop conditions. We could make a major change just by sourcing our apparel to specific factories and counter the whole ‘cut and run’ attitude many major brands have.”
The “cut and run” strategy refers to the practice of larger corporations to close down factories that prove to be problematic, mostly by workers pressing for the right to unionize.
Colombian factory worker Beatriz Fuentes spoke about her own experiences with the “cut and run” tactics at Splendor Flowers, a Dole-owned cut-flower plantation that supplies Wal-Mart.
Communicating to the audience through the help of a translator, Fuentes recounted the hardships she faced while attempting to unionize workers in her factory. After months of secretive meetings and organizing, Fuentes and her co-workers were able to register as a union, only to find that their factory had organized one as well.
Within months, Dole decided to close the factory.
“It was still a positive thing overall,” Fuentes said. “Now many workers have found jobs in other factories, and they are spreading the word and idea of unions there.”
Kotagarahalli Ramaiah Jayaram, an organizer for the Garment and Textile Workers’ Union, discussed similar hardships and working conditions in a garment factory in Bangalore, India.
After witnessing several accounts of physical abuse and unethical practices, Jayaram decided unionizing was the only way to affect change.
“Students have buying power,” he said. “They can put pressure on these companies to change.”
Keshia Caldart, a senior, said although she had heard much of the information before, she enjoyed learning about real experiences.
“Hearing it all firsthand just brought it home for me,” she said. “Learning about what we can do as individuals is really important, but we need something collective … that lots of individuals can contribute to on the same day to make an effect.”
Palmquist hopes SLAP will be able to provide that opportunity.
However, the University has been slow to respond, he said.
“We’ve requested a deadline [for adopting the DSP] of April 27,” he said. “If they haven’t reached any decision, students will need to really show that they care and want their university to do the ethical thing — say that our school needs to stop.”
Reach reporter Tasha Thomas at news@thedaily.washington.edu.
2 Comments
#1 Mark
on March 7, 2007 at 8:17 a.m.(Location Unknown | Unverified Name)
"If universities added the DSP to their contracts, there could be two possible outcomes: either the apparel companies would absorb the increased costs, or they could pass the cost along to consumers."
If the prices get passed on to the consumers they will just purchase their apparel at off campus stores such as The Dawg Den. Did you think of that outcome? Lost revenue.
Furthermore, I'd like to see a source quoted for:
“There are 150 factories producing UW apparel,†he said. “The majority operate under sweatshop conditions...."
It'd be great if we knew where that came from or if it was just pulled out of thin-air.
#2 Rod Palmquist
on March 8, 2007 at 2:27 a.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
Dear Mark,
The issue of sweatshops is both complicated and very simple -- complicated in details, and very clear in morality. On the details front, I can see where you're coming from in your post, but you are mistaken in the "lost revenue" analysis.
The two outcomes I referred to apply to all apparel bearing the UW's name -- regardless of where these articles of clothing are sold. In other words, it doesn't matter if the clothing is sold in the UW Bookstore or The Dawg Den.
This is because the University has control over the use of its name and logo. What happens is this: a brand, such as Nike petitions our school for the right to be able to market clothing with the UW's name. Nike then sub-contracts the production of these goods to separate corporations (this is to obscure their accountability for factory conditions). These sub-contractors then further sub-contract orders to individual factories (which, outside of developed countries are sweatshops). The clothes are then produced and shipped to the US for Nike to sell in the collegiate market. These clothes are sold at places like Niketowns, college bookstores, and places like The Dawg Den.
Therefore, if the UW were to put restrictions on the use of their logo by say adopting something like the DSP, brands would be forced to source apparel from factories that guarantee workers rights, IF they want to be able to market husky garb. These ethical costs (which are really corrections to a failure of the pricing mechanism to account for social factors of production) would then apply to UW clothing sold in both the Bookstore and places like The Dawg Den.
If the UW were to adopt the DSP and if brands passed costs on to consumers, an economics professor at UMass Amherst estimates that at most, this would represent an increase of between 1-6% of the total cost of a good. See: "http://www.workersrights.org/press/InTheseTimes_StudentsvsSweatshops_8-9-06.pdf".
So, for a $25 UW hoodie, this would represent at most, an increase of $1.50.
The argument for not passing the costs on, is based on the fact that the costs of implementing the DSP are roughly equivalent to about 1% of Nike's total advertising budget. Unfortunately I don't have a source for this right now, but I will look for one and post it. But yeah, in other words, the costs are so small, that it is possible that the brands wouldn't disturb current market prices.
Regarding the issue of sweatshops. In 2000, the UW signed on to an entity called the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). The WRC is a monitoring agency that investigates abuses at factories producing collegiate apparel. If you look at their website (www.workersrights.org) and specifically at their reports, you will find testimony supporting my claim that the VAST majority of UW apparel (and all other garments for that matter) is produced under sweatshop conditions.
On a personal note, I went to Guatemala this past summer and visited with women who were part of the ONLY garment union in the entire maquiladora industry. The presence of this union meant that the workers of this factory had much more power and leverage over their management than any other maquiladora in the country. Despite this, the gains that they made were fairly small -- they had to FIGHT for bathroom breaks, less working hours, and the right to drink from a water-fountain during work. These gains are related to specific conditions in the workplace, NOT wages (they didn't have the power to bargain for a living wage - this is how skewed economic relations are in Guatemala). My most candid memory was of a women who asked her manager to be able to drink water, was refused, and fainted. The woman was pregnant, and ended up losing her child on the way to the hospital. So yeah, these unionized women still worked under horrible conditions and were better off than the majority of maquiladora workers in the country.
Finally, you are right to be skeptical of the 150 figure -- this is incorrect. In fact, over 3,150 factories produce UW apparel. In joining the WRC, the UW was required to force brands to disclose exactly what factories they were sub-contracting production orders to. The WRC keeps a database of these factories for each individual school, and if you go to the following link, you will see that there are exactly 3,161 factories that produce UW apparel. See: "http://www.workersrights.org/search/index.asp?search=results&school=University+of+Washington" (scroll down to bottom of page, which displays records out of 3,161).
-Rod Palmquist
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