By
Shana Heiser
Arizona Daily Wildcat
UA panel needs to discuss issue further before reacting
More inspection of the Mexican Kukdong factory is needed before the UA or Nike takes action, even after the Workers' Rights Consortium released the report of last week's fact-finding mission.
University of Arizona adjunct law professor Jerry Morales joined five WRC representatives in an analysis of the factory's strike, in a section of the report titled "Grounds for Immediate Action by Affiliated Universities."
However, Patti Ota, senior associate to UA President Peter Likins, said a panel - including Morales and a WRC representative or SAS member - would meet soon to discuss the factory.
"The idea is to put a panel of maybe five different people together to share what they know about this situation," Ota said. "That won't directly affect the people down there (in Mexico)."
Students Against Sweatshops members, though, say they want to change the workers' lives at Kukdong now instead of putting it off.
"Requiring another investigation is a delay," said SAS spokeswoman Rachel Wilson. "The momentum is lost, and the workers kind of give up if things are delayed too long."
The report was shocking to SAS members, Wilson said, with examples of workers being beaten with hammers and given pay below the Mexican minimum wage.
"It not only confirms what we've been saying all along, it goes beyond it," she said.
Eight hundred of the 850 Nike workers in Atlixco, Mexico walked out earlier this month in protest of the factory's failure to abide by labor laws.
Last week's WRC trip to the factory was not intended to change the situation immediately, Ota said.
"The mission was probably not so much a fact-finding mission maybe as one that went down there to provide their support," she said.
Though Morales was not well-versed in the politics of the WRC and the Fair Labor Association, the university is glad he went along, Ota said.
"He really understands Mexican labor law and is Spanish-speaking," she said. "Some of the other people were not Spanish-speaking and probably didn't understand the Mexican labor law."
SAS members worry Nike will cancel the contract with Kukdong instead of dealing directly with the issues across the border, Wilson said.
"If big corporations like Nike find out about labor abuses in their small factories, the easiest thing for them to do is cancel their contract and go to another factory," she said. "They can just keep hopping from factory to factory."
Wilson added that the labor problems never seem to get resolved, but instead people continue to lose their jobs.
In an effort to educate UA students, SAS members will pass out fliers on the UA Mall tomorrow and talk with people about the Kukdong factory.
"We think there's been enough substantial evidence of wrongdoing that it's time for action, not more investigation," Wilson said.
