Date of publication: October 24, 2008
Source: The Cornell Daily Sun
Author: Adrien Dumoulin-Smith '09
To do its job, government needs to shop. A firefighter needs his uniform and protective gear just as a police officer needs a holster and prisoners need clothing. Local and state governments around the country end up buying immense amounts of apparel each year from private vendors. The government is a major market player with great influence over the private sector by virtue of conducting even its most basic duties. Just as the government should not subject public employees to illegal and immoral conditions, it should not exert its power over the market to brutally exploit private workers.
In 2006, Cornell University joined forces with colleges from across the country to take steps against sweatshop labor conditions. These schools joined in supporting the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), a student initiative that aims to transform the consumer power of universities into a positive influence on labor conditions in the apparel industry by rewarding factories for improvements rather than punishing them by consistently shifting production to cheaper factories. Student action has spilled over into the public sector as people begin to realize the negative implications of fierce competition mixed with unenforced labor laws. Governments have seen the writing on the wall and are now using the DSP as a model to alter the impact of their own purchases...