Students to strip for labor rights

The Penn chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops will hold a rally on College Green today to protest the use of sweatshop labor in factories that manufacture Penn apparel -- and students and community members are planning to undress in protest of exploitative and secret labor conditions in factories. "We are joking about full public 'dis-clothes-ure' for ourselves? in order to demonstrate the importance and our support for full public disclosure of factory information," said College senior Miriam Joffe-Block, a USAS coordinator. The rally -- encouraging students to "Unbutton at the Button" -- will take place at 1:30 p.m. following a speech by an Indonesian labor rights activist in the Christian Association. At issue is Penn's reluctance to force the companies that produce apparel to release the locations of their factories. The University remains one of only three Ivy League schools who have not taken any steps to do so. "Penn is perpetuating this kind of exploitation? [and allowing] abuse and harassment of workers to happen under [the University's] name," said Yale junior Jessica Champagne, also a USAS coordinating committee member . On Tuesday, when University President Judith Rodin spoke at Yale, Champagne and other members of Yale's USAS chapter presented Rodin with a letter -- jointly signed by both Yale and Penn students -- expressing concern over conditions in factories that produce Penn apparel. Last spring, students at six universities held sit-ins in support of full public disclosure of factory locations where official collegiate merchandise is manufactured. All of the universities involved replied by putting pressure on the manufacturing companies to disclose their information by a certain date. And last Thursday, Nike released a partial list of its factory locations to five universities, including the University of Michigan and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the two best-selling college logos with which Nike has exclusive contracts, according to Georgetown University senior Laura McSpedon, a coordinating member of USAS. McSpedon called Nike's release a "really huge step" in their fight. "It puts us in a rare power position because we can say to companies, 'Nike did it, why can't you?'" she added. The heated sweatshop issue has led students at more than 100 colleges and universities across the country to join USAS in the past two years to protest labor conditions at factories where official school apparel is produced. The organization's goal, according to McSpedon, is to remind university administrators that they need to take the responsibility to ensure that workers receive fair working conditions. "[Universities] have a role to play in this system," McSpedon said. "We have to take some really proactive steps to get rid of [the current conditions]." USAS members, McSpedon explained, are opposed to the Fair Labor Association -- a group of corporations and monitoring agencies that watch conditions in garment and other factories -- and call it ineffective. Currently, McSpedon said, 150 colleges, including Penn, are members of the FLA. In response, USAS met with former and current sweatshop workers to determine its own alternative to the FLA, the Workers' Rights Consortium, which will be officially released next Tuesday in time for the National Day of Action next Wednesday.