Report says U. should join both FLA and WRC

The sweatshop cmte.'s recommendations were given to Rodin yesterday. The Ad Hoc Committee on Sweatshop Labor yesterday recommended that Penn provisionally join both the Worker Rights Consortium and the Fair Labor Association to monitor factory conditions for its apparel, marking the culmination of more than two weeks of negotiations. The committee, charged with developing a code of conduct for Penn-logo manufacturers and evaluating the merits of different monitoring organizations, gave its unanimous recommendation to University President Judith Rodin a day earlier than the initial deadline of February 29. Rodin charged the committee with these specific tasks about two weeks ago, after 13 members of Penn Students Against Sweatshops staged a nine-day sit-in in her office, demanding that the University pull out of the FLA and join the WRC. The full report, which includes the proposed code of conduct for Penn, has not yet been made public. "We believe that, without question, effective monitoring of licensee factories is crucial to ensuring fair labor practices," Committee Chairman Howard Kunreuther said in a statement yesterday. "With that principle in mind, we believe that both the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium have potential in that regard, but we have a number of concerns about both organizations," said Kunreuther, the chairman of the Operations and Information Management Department said. The FLA is much more established than the WRC, though neither has actually begun to monitor factory conditions. But human rights activists have attacked the FLA for including the apparel companies on its board of directors, which they say makes it biased and ineffective. Less than half a dozen schools are members of the fledgling WRC, compared to more than 100 for the FLA. But the WRC's ranks have been growing in recent days, with three Big 10 schools announcing last week their intent to join the organization if certain conditions are met. Kunreuther explained in the statement that the level of college and university representation in the groups' governing boards was a primary concern. Still, joining either the FLA, WRC or both remains a decision left to Rodin, who said in a statement yesterday that she would respond to the proposal promptly. "I will give it all due consideration and I will do so quickly in the spirit of the committee's efficient work and the importance of the issue," Rodin said in her statement yesterday. Rodin formed the committee last December as a response to the repeated demand by PSAS that the University withdraw from the FLA and join the WRC. Penn joined the FLA last spring and was a member until February 16, when Rodin withdrew from the monitoring organization after the College Hall sit-in. According to Kunreuther's statement, the recommendation is contingent upon the two organizations addressing the committee's greatest concern -- the level of college and university representation on their governing boards. "The report recommends that the University ask the FLA and the WRC to increase college representation on their governing boards," said Jennifer Baldino, a member of the committee and Rodin's director of external affairs. College sophomore Mike Hearn, a PSAS member who also served on the committee, called the group's recommendation a "consensus" and a "compromise." But Hearn added that he did not foresee Penn joining the FLA in the near future. "Personally, I think the FLA isn't in a situation where it will be able to meet the concerns of the committee," he said last night. And PSAS members said that above all, they wanted to see the University become a member of the WRC instead of joining both monitoring organizations. "Our position since the sit-in has not changed, except that we are trying to work with this committee," College senior and PSAS member Miriam Joffe-Block said after the committee released its proposal. "We still feel the WRC has more potential to be an effective monitoring organization," she added. The committee's proposal to sign on with both organizations comes just months after Brown University announced it would do the same. But Nicholas Reville, a student anti-sweatshop activist at Brown, said he was not happy with his university's membership in both and discouraged Penn from following this same course of action. "For colleges and universities, the FLA is an inappropriately designed model," said Reville, a junior at the Providence, R.I., school. "The best way to improve the FLA is to withdraw, to say that we'll come back when their standards are better."

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