Editorial: Sweatshops and Freedom of information
With the Faculty Senate's official creation Monday of an advisory committee to monitor labor issues, a significant step in the battle over sweatshop labor has been ended. While only time and perseverance will alter the labor conditions faced by apparel employees, the ratification of the Likins-Students Against Sweatshops agreement is a practical victory for labor advocates.
What the Faculty Senate committee gives the students of SAS and, more importantly, the university community, is the opportunity to monitor the labor practices of UA's corporate partners and a place to publicly discuss those practices.
What the monitoring committee and the Fair Labor Association standards Likins signed off on do is make appalling labor practices a part of the information available to consumers. Thus, consumers, with more information, will be able to make decisions about how they spend their money and whether they will spend money with companies that violate the rights of workers. It is the kind of transparency that business resist generally, because consumers, ultimately will dictate whether the kind of cheap labor an apparel company uses is cost-effective. Negative publicity can cause change and the anonymous mass of apparel company employees should be the long term beneficiaries.
Perhaps SAS' biggest failure was in not playing up the consumer information angle of their argument, an aspect that makes the reality of sweatshop labor more tangible to the general public. That said, establishing the Faculty Senate committee is major victory, as it will engage more of the campus community in the labor dialogue and keep university policy on this issue in the public eye. One presumes that if Likins were to back away from his commitments to withdraw from the Fair Labor Association if certain conditions do not improve, a committee of record will make that betrayal public. Institutionalizing the monitoring committee gives labor issues a permanent place on the university community palette.
Additionally, President Likins appears to have emerged from another campus controversy essentially unscathed and perhaps, with his reputation further enhanced. The community does not see the agreement reached this weekend as a capitulation. And truly, if Likins is as fair-minded as so many want to believe, signing on to a plan that calls for a Fair Labor Association committed to establishing a "living wage," equal rights for female employees, disclosure of factory locations and unannounced inspections is not a huge step. The agreement, and its withdrawal deadline, should be part and parcel in creating a truly fair labor association. An association that allows businesses, institutions, labor advocates and consumers to have real and open dialogue.
In business, as in life, secrecy is not healthy. A policy of truth is the best, most effective policy.
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