Two sweatshop groups at odds on monitoring

Student activists have demanded that Penn join the new WRC. When members of Penn's chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops held a sit-in and forced a meeting with University President Judith Rodin on Tuesday, the students demanded that the University join the Worker Rights Consortium, a new group which supporters say would do more to prevent licensed university-logo apparel from being made in sweatshops. The WRC represents an alternative to the Fair Labor Association, a coalition -- of which the University is a member -- charged with monitoring factories to ensure that they offer fair working conditions. Students at universities across the country complain that the FLA -- a group comprised of apparel companies, human rights groups and universities -- is a flawed and ineffective organization which will do nothing to support the struggle of sweatshop employees working under inhumane and oppressive conditions. Currently, Brown University is the only school in the country to have joined the WRC, though it has remained a member of the FLA as well. The WRC is supported by several human rights and labor groups. Supporters of the FLA say that the organization is a good start for a long process that will eventually guarantee better conditions for workers in developing countries in Asia and Latin America, where many garments sold in the United States are made. The FLA's critics, however, say the WRC is more supportive of workers' rights and free from the influence of apparel corporations. "They come from two totally different approaches," said Maria Roeper, a senior at Haverford College and a member of the group of students and human rights organizations working to form the WRC. "We make it a priority to be consulting with workers and working with them," she added. Roeper, a harsh critic of the FLA and its code of conduct -- the document which specifies which rights are guaranteed to factory workers -- said the FLA's code does not guarantee workers the right to join labor unions or receive a living wage and does not guarantee special rights for women, who are often fired for becoming pregnant or are forced to use contraceptives. Roeper also criticized the FLA for not requiring public disclosure of factory locations or of reports issued by FLA-approved factory monitors. However, Justine Nolan, the business and human rights coordinator of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, an FLA member group, disputed many of Roeper's claims. She said the FLA's code of conduct does specifically protect workers who want to organize a labor union and an anti-discrimination clause in the code covers "all types of discrimination against men and women." The group's charter, she added, specifically notes that a discussion of a living wage requirement "is still on the table." On the issue of disclosure, Nolan said the FLA would know the location of every member's factories and that a summary of monitoring reports will be issued annually. "You've got to have some trust in the credibility and integrity of the FLA," she said, noting that the "substance" of all monitoring reports would be disclosed each year. Roeper also criticized the FLA's monitoring system, which she said will allow apparel companies to choose when their factories will be monitored and which FLA-approved group will conduct the monitoring, and will monitor only a small percentage of factories. The WRC, she said, would be "supporting workers in their struggle" by following up on claims of poor working conditions as well as having unannounced inspections of factories. Nolan, however, said, "All [FLA] monitors must do announced and unannounced visits to factories." Nolan added that she hoped planned factory inspections would be followed up by unannounced visits to ensure that the facilities are not cleaned up just for the known inspection. The FLA itself, she said, "will be in a state of continual improvement," adding that she thinks the WRC "is a complementary program," not a competitor of the FLA. Roeper, however, views it differently. "It's not OK for a university on the one hand to be a part of the Worker Rights Consortium? and on the other hand support corporations covering up sweatshop abuses," she said.