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Date of publication: April 26, 2010

Source: Retriever Weekly

Author: Sarah Solomon, Stefanie Mavronis, Jesse Haas, nd Aditi Bhaskara

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This semester UMBC has taken a step towards ensuring that products with UMBC logos bought from the Bookstore are not produced with sweatshop labor. It has, in the past, been impossible to know what the conditions were for a worker making these items because the production and assembly of UMBC apparel is often contracted or subcontracted to factories overseas, about which the original vendor may not release information. However, many large vendors for university apparel have been found contracting to factories in which there are sweatshop conditions, and so UMBC has made a decision to better assure the rights of workers making university apparel.

In 2009, UMBC decided to affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and has this semester approved the Code of Conduct for its logo apparel manufacturers. This issue has been deliberated since Fall 2007 by the Fair Labor Standards Advisory Group (FLSAG), a group appointed by President Hrabowski after Solidarity Coalition (SoCo), a student organization, brought the issue up with the UMBC administration. FLSAG, chaired by Assistant to the President Lisa Akchin, included representatives of the Professional Staff Senate, Graduate Student Association, Student Government Association, Solidarity Coalition, the Administration & Finance Division, and the General Counsel's Office.

The Worker Rights Consortium is an independent labor rights monitoring organization founded in 2000 which works with universities to help enforce their Manufacturing Codes of Conduct. Currently, 185 colleges and universities are affiliates of the WRC, including the University of Maryland, College Park.

When a university affiliates with the WRC, the university creates a code of conduct that protects rights for workers who make the university's logo merchandise. According to the WRC, the code of conduct should provide basic worker protection in the areas of wages, hours of work and overtime compensation, freedom of association, workplace safety and health, women's rights, child labor and forced labor, harassment and abuse in the workplace, non-discrimination, and compliance with local law. The UMBC Bookstore is now planning to have a trial order placed with a WRC-approved vendor with some merchandise available this fall, and to have the new Code of Conduct fully implemented for all merchandise for Fall 2011 orders.

The WRC conducts investigations of the conditions in factories based on worker complaints and on a proactive basis, and issues reports about conditions in these factories. Conducting investigations based on a worker complaint mechanism is what makes the WRC unique, allowing workers to make confidential complaints about the conditions in their factory. If the factory is not in compliance, for example if workers are being required to work more than 48 hours a week or are being paid below the local minimum wage, the WRC will work with the vendor and factory towards compliance. If that is not possible, UMBC can require that the vendor stop working with that contractor or factory, or can terminate the licensing contract with that vendor altogether.

Multinational apparel corporations make huge profits selling clothes with college names and logos, while they persistently violate the rights of garment workers who make their products. Globalization has led to the rise of export processing zones (EPZs) in poor countries. These industries are heavily dependent on cheap and unskilled labor, and women often comprise between 70-90 percent of the total labor force in EPZs throughout Asia, Latin American and Sub Saharan Africa. Workers are systematically denied their rights to regular pay and regular working hours, permanent contracts, safe and non-hazardous work environments, and freedom of association. Sexual harassment in the workplace, and workplace-related sexual violence, is a particularly egregious and widespread form of discrimination against women. Forced sexual relations and pregnancy tests, which become a pre-condition for employment, significantly reduce a woman's ability to demand a living wage and break out of poverty. In response to a series of media exposés of sweatshop conditions in the garment and footwear industries, as well as increased pressure from concerned groups and individuals, major corporations and universities began to adopt codes of conduct to assure consumers their factories were protecting workers' rights.

However, the WRC does not ensure sweatshop free conditions for university logo apparel. For example, the WRC cannot continuously check the conditions in every factory, the code of conduct may not be enforced by the university, or a factory may not have the projected future income to comply. To address these issues, the Worker Rights Consortium has put forth the Designated Suppliers Program. The Designated Suppliers Program (DSP) is a comprehensive program for enhancing the enforcement of university codes of conduct. Under the DSP, universities would buy university logo apparel from specific supplier factories (designated suppliers)which are independently verified to protect their workers' rights. Although the DSP is not yet in operation while waiting on an antitrust opinion from the Department of Justice, it has been endorsed in principle by over 40 universities.

UMBCs Solidarity Coalition, an umbrella organization for activists of all kinds who seek to protect the rights, welfare, and dignity of all members of the UMBC community, will be hosting the Baltimore stop of the Sweatshop Workers Speak Out! Tour on Thursday, April 29th at 6PM in the Library Gallery. This event is also sponsored by the International Labor Rights Forum, the UMBC President's Office, IWW, Women Involved in Learning and Leadership, Gender and Women's Studies, and Media and Communication Studies. Speakers will include a Bangladeshi garment factory worker who will speak about the conditions in her factory, Kalpona Akter, a representative from the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity, and Zehro Bano, the General Secretary of the Home-based Women Workers Federation of Pakistan.

Many of us have learned about sweatshops, but it is rare to have the opportunity to speak with the workers themselves and understand first-hand our role in the larger global issue. Although the WRC cannot assure sweatshop-free apparel, UMBC has moved towards safeguarding the labor rights of those involved with its merchandise. The Sweatshop Workers Speak Out! event will make known the official adoption of UMBC's Manufacturing Code of Conduct.