New Sweatshop task force created

Some students are calling the cmte. a 'stall tactic' on Penn's part. Following nearly a year of protests by Penn's anti-sweatshop group, the University announced on Friday the creation of a new task force to develop rules for manufacturers of these products. But the move was derided by the United Students Against Sweatshops, who said the committee will prove ineffective. The Ad-Hoc Committee on Sweatshop Labor will be charged with developing a "code of conduct" for the manufacturers of University-logo apparel and will be "examining the issue of which organization, or organizations, Penn should join in order to assure that its licensees meet fair labor standards," according to a statement released by University President Judith Rodin. The committee will be comprised of three USAS representatives, one Undergraduate Assembly representative, one graduate student representative, two faculty members and representatives from several University administrative offices. "I respect the views of the members of the United Students Against Sweatshops, and I share their concern for fair labor practices," Rodin said in the statement. College senior Miriam Joffe-Block, one of the organizers of Penn's USAS chapter, said she thought the creation of the new committee was mostly a "stall tactic" on the part of University administrators to thwart her group's efforts to get Penn to leave the Fair Labor Association. The FLA is a group of apparel manufacturers, universities and human rights groups that monitors factories around the world. Student groups at many universities have charged that the FLA is an ineffective organization that gives companies too much control over the monitoring of their own factories. "We've been raising this issue for 11 months now," Joffe-Block said. "In many ways, the creation of a task force is really a stall tactic." Penn's USAS chapter had called for Rodin to have Penn pull out of the FLA by February 1, though their demand was not met. The group has said that it will now "increase the pressure" on the University to leave the FLA. Last week, USAS held a rally in front of College Hall with City Councilman David Cohen. It plans to hold more demonstrations in the upcoming weeks. The students want Penn to join the Worker Rights Consortium, a coalition of human rights and labor groups that they contend is free from corporate influence and has a more effective monitoring program than the FLA. Currently, the FLA is supported by approximately 150 universities nationwide, while the WRC has only four member schools: Haverford College, Brown University, Bard College and Loyola University in New Orleans. Wharton sophomore Brian Kelly, a member of USAS who will serve as one of its three representatives to the task force, agreed that the University was giving the appearance of stalling on the sweatshop issue by creating the task force at this time. "If it's just to evaluate a code of conduct, we can't be ensured that will change the conditions of the workers producing University apparel because it won't be enforceable," he said. According to the University's statement, Rodin will ask the committee to prepare its recommendations in time for presentation at the March 22 University Council meeting. Council's Steering Committee recommended the creation of the sweatshop task force after students from USAS presented their arguments at Council's annual open forum last December. Joffe-Block said that while she believed that the committee would likely prepare a good code of conduct for Penn's apparel manufacturers, the code could not be effectively enforced by the FLA. "We don't feel that that's the real issue," she said of the code of conduct. "The real issue is enforcement." Joffe-Block noted that Rodin said in a letter to USAS last week that the University currently has no plans to withdraw from the FLA. UA Chairman Michael Silver called the task force "a good compromise" to allow various University groups to discuss the sweatshop issue, noting that it "isn't the ultimate solution" on the issue.