By Anthony Shelley

The Daily

Students in an international studies task force working to ensure that UW clothing is sweatshop-free have encountered several roadblocks, despite a trip to Guatemala to witness the labor conditions firsthand.

The students produced a 63-page report outlining their findings as a culminating project, which they presented to UW President Mark Emmert, in an effort to persuade the administration to expedite their efforts, according to uweek.org.

UW apparel is produced with cheap labor in Guatemala and other countries, such as Pakistan, China, Honduras and the Philippines. The 16-student Guatemala task force revealed labor abuses, some of which were outlined in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in a story published last month.

Exploitative labor practices included employees working overtime without pay and employers using threatening tactics to discourage employees from talking to the media, according to uweek.org.

“UW is in the process of finding the best way to address these particular abuses,” the task force members collectively wrote in an e-mail.

With heavy attention focused on Guatemalan sweatshops, the UW is being pressured to help improve the living wage and labor rights of garment workers who provide the UW-branded sweatshirts, hats and jackets sold to students and fans.

However, the road to creating a completely sweatshop-free campus is proving tedious in some aspects, and roadblocks continue to stunt further efforts.

While in Guatemala, the students were only allowed access to factories whose owners gave them permission to visit.

“Workers who did not speak to us or were hesitant to do so were often doing so out of fear of losing their jobs or getting in trouble by management,” the students wrote.

Last year, the UW signed on to the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP). Through task force research, the DSP is believed to target the root causes of labor rights violations in garment factories, but its effectiveness is undetermined since the program itself has yet to be implemented.

Emmert said sending personnel to monitor garment factories for labor violations is basically impossible.

“The UW purchases goods and services from hundreds, if not thousands, of suppliers all around the world,” Emmert said. “It would simply be impossible for us to provide staff members to visit all of them and to constantly monitor their behavior. No university could do so.”

This may explain why it is crucial for the task force to exist in the first place, though awareness of these labor issues has grown in the past year. Along with the group, organizations like Seattle’s United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) have worked for years to pressure colleges and their brand partners to make changes.

Last year, the USAS Coordinating Committee organized a march against Macy’s and Talbots for alleged workers’ rights violations in Guatemalan factories, which garnered considerable notice from Seattle newspapers.

USAS has been involved in many campaigns, including a 22-month struggle of the Washington Post’s mailers to win a decent contract and an attempt to end to the Post’s wage system, which allows older white workers to obtain wage rates double than that of their minority counterparts for doing the same work, according to the USAS.

“The existence of the organization United Students Against Sweatshops … has allowed for coordination of anti-sweatshop activism on a national level,” task force members said. “We think it is significant that attention to the issue of sweatshops is largely due to the efforts of college students — more specifically, labor-focused student groups such as the UW’s Student Labor Action Project.”

[Reach reporter Anthony Shelley at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]