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SAS member doesn't find UA clothing factories on trip

SAS member Arne Eckstrom said his recent trip to Nicaragua did not directly locate where clothing sold in UA bookstores is made because the factory business system is not clear cut.

His initial intentions were unsuccessful, when he saw that factories made clothing under a variety of brands.

"That ended as something not as easy as I thought," he said.

Eckstrom said he found that each maquila - foreign factories in Latin American which make export clothing - contracts to different American clothing companies all the time.

"One misconception I had was Wal-Mart might just contract with one factory," he said. "What I found was these contracts were much more fluid."

Eckstrom, who is fluent in Spanish, talked to workers on his visit to Managua, the country's capital. The factories were located on a strip called the Free Trade Zone.

"These contracts change a lot, there is a decent chance Nike had a contract with one of the factories in the Free Trade Zone," he said.

Eckstrom, a neuroscience graduate student and last year's Students Against Sweatshops president, went to investigate factory working situations in the Third World country from Mar. 10 to 20.

Along with a group of 19 college students from around the country and one Rolling Stone reporter, the group also met with factory owners, the American ambassador, the Nicaraguan Minister of Labor, union representatives and the workers themselves.

He also spent the night at two maquila workers' homes. Eckstrom described one of the homes as a dirt-floor shack with water and electricity shutting off sporadically during the day. He said he could see the country's poor conditions as soon as he stepped off the plane.

"It's a very, very impoverished country, the first thing you experience are kids without shoes knocking at your taxi door, begging for 10 cents," Eckstrom said.

Duke University's SAS chapter organized the observation trip in conjunction with Witness for Peace - a non-political group similar to Amnesty International.

Eckstrom said these constant contract changes call for more need to locate factories.

"That argues strongly for systems like the WRC (Worker Rights Consortium)," Eckstrom said. "This is one of the reasons we need full disclosure."

SAS set Friday as the deadline for UA President Peter Likins to read the 75-page book he was given and make a decision to stay with the Fair Labor Association or to seek an alternative factory monitoring system, such as the WRC.

The book describes Nike's relationship with human rights, independent factory monitoring and includes an FLA critique.

Noah Knauf, vice president of the Associated Students Appropriations Board, said he opposed the $150 ASUA gave Eckstrom to finance the trip.

"In my opinion, it violated our bylaws," he said. "The information obtained would ultimately influence the affairs of the Senate."

Knauf added this is the first time ASUA has given money to a graduate student. However, he said it was good that Eckstrom got the funds.

"I'm happy to see he got the money," Knauf said.

Eckstrom got $250 from the University of Arizona Human and Labor Rights Task Force plus funds from Witness for Peace and his family's friends.

UA law professor Andrew Silverman, a Task Force member, said giving Eckstrom the money wasn't a problem for the Task Force.

"I'm in favor of anyone going and looking at the conditions, educating themselves and passing on the information to others," he said.