Rodin, protestors finally reach agreement

While the FLA and WRC share the same goal of stopping sweatshop labor, their approaches differ considerably. Although University President Judith Rodin agreed last night to pull out of the Fair Labor Association, the key issue of debate between the administration and the Penn Students Against Sweatshops protesters remains unresolved. Will Penn re-enter the FLA -- a non-profit, labor rights organization made up of corporations, human rights groups and 131 colleges and universities? Or will it join the Worker Rights Consortium -- a student-led group of international labor rights organizations as well as five colleges and universities that the protesters have advocated? Or perhaps it will just join both -- a decision that Ivy League peer Brown University made last October. Although both the FLA and WRC share the same goal of improving working conditions in Third World countries, they differ in both their overall philosophy and approach. "The WRC is an organization that is morally sound. We have good principles and good morals," WRC coordinator Maria Roeper said. "Some people think the FLA is made up of companies that are primarily concerned with saving face -- not improving conditions," she added. Currently affiliated with the growing WRC are Brown, Haverford College, Bard College, Loyola University and Oberlin College, which joined yesterday. Meanwhile, FLA Executive Director Sam Brown said that his group is the most effective way to create change by establishing a code of standards and checks for all companies. "We have developed these standards in a very careful way so we know they can be enforced," Brown said. Both the FLA and the WRC have similar sets of working conditions, with different enforcement policies and levels of public exposure. The FLA has established a Workplace Code of Conduct that provides a minimum standard for labor conditions, to which all members, their licensees and contractors must comply. The code prohibits child and forced labor as well as discrimination in any form, including discrimination against women, and calls for the establishment of a third-party complaint system for workers. It also limits the number of work hours in a week and provides guidelines for both a minimum wage and overtime compensation. The FLA plans to address the issue of a "living wage" after further studies are completed. The WRC, on the other hand, does not require specific codes of conduct, but recommends that all WRC schools adopt their own code based on its model. Its plan calls for full public exposure of workers' rights abuses, protection of women's rights and calls for the establishment of a "living wage" after further study. Roeper also said the model plan calls for a third-party complaint system and will offer educational programs to encourage workers to speak up about conditions. Enforcement of those policies remains the greatest area of dissent -- although neither organization has actually begun to monitor labor practices. The FLA plans to use external and internal monitors, starting in the fall. Brown said that internal monitors -- who will work with factory management -- will be better able to ensure decent conditions and fair wages. "We know there are bad guys, but we don't have to catch them one at a time," he said. "What we have to do is fix the problem in a systematic way." But Roeper said that the FLA's use of internal monitors is exactly what make its enforcement ineffective. "They allow the companies to pick which factories get monitored, and they allow the companies to say when they get monitored," Roeper said. According to Roeper, the WRC calls for external, independent evaluation and will publicly expose all companies it finds violating workers' rights. The FLA requires its internal and external monitors to provide their reports to the FLA, which will prepare a public report.

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