Fight against exploitation continues
To the editor,
The student movement for greater university and corporate responsibility is on the move again. Recently, as reported in the Daily Wildcat, large numbers of students at Duke, Georgetown and the University of Wisconsin are protesting to make it clear that universities need to improve their relations with corporations.
The University of Arizona has promotional contracts with several companies, such as Nike and Champion, that have miserable working conditions in their subcontracted overseas factories. Contrary to the pretty images they paint for themselves, common conditions of the plants include unlivable wages (often below the legal minimum), 12-hour work days, terrible indignity on the job, company and military repression of labor organization, and routine sexual harassment.
As numerous reports detail the horrific abuses of working conditions in the making of apparel products, the multinationals' lack of action becomes strikingly apparent. Clearly the multinationals have the market clout to change things; the sad reality is that they benefit by this repression.
Also, it is evident by President Likins' lack of response to these labor reports that the university administration is not serious about the sweatshop labor used to make its athletic apparel. In fact, this is exactly why Likins is reluctant to accept anything other than the current, unenforceable agreement.
On this pressing issue, Students Against Sweatshops and Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice are now publicizing a joint meeting to be held on Wednesday, February 17 at the Social Sciences building, room 126.
The meeting is a planning session for an appropriate action to this pressing issue: We need a stronger code of conduct.
The main improvements that we need are the full disclosure of factories linked to the University of Arizona and also the setup of independent monitoring of the working conditions in these factories.
Corey Mattson
History senior
Students Against Sweatshops
Arne David Ekstrom
Neuroscience graduate student
Students Against Sweatshops
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