Anti-sweatshop group upset at U.'s decision on WRC, FLA

Penn's anti-sweatshop student group is reacting angrily to the University's recent decision to keep Penn out of two controversial labor monitoring groups, raising questions about both the decision and the motives they say guided it. According to members of Penn Students Against Sweatshops, which brought the issue to the forefront of campus debate earlier this year by leading a nine-day sit-in of College Hall, the University is not working hard enough to choose a monitoring organization -- and is ignoring their preferred group, the Worker Rights Consortium. Last week, University President Judith Rodin sent letters to both the WRC and the rival Fair Labor Association saying that they have failed to make the changes that Penn requested as a condition of its membership. Rodin's letters were sent out on the advice of a specially convened committee examining the issue. The committee includes three PSAS members. The committee said the decision stemmed from unsatisfactory replies from both organizations to University requests that they augment the representation of colleges and universities on their respective governing boards. The WRC governing board has six university representatives among its 12 members, while just one of 13 seats on the FLA board is occupied by an academic representative. "The thing about the WRC not having enough representation is total bullshit," College freshman and PSAS spokeswoman Anna Roberts said. "It has everything to do with politics -- [the WRC governing] committee has 50 percent university representation." Sweatshop monitoring has been a major issue of discussion since February, when PSAS members staged a nine-day College Hall sit-in. They maintain that the FLA is ineffective in monitoring labor conditions, and demand that the University switch to the newer WRC, which will hold its founding conference this Friday in New York. PSAS representative and committee member Michael Hearn, a College sophomore, said that while he favors the WRC, he agrees that the only way for the committee to ultimately make a decision is to stay outside either organization for the time being. Still, Roberts insisted that the committee was not making enough of an effort to join a monitoring organization. "For a committee to come out saying that [the 50 percent collegiate stake on the WRC board] is not enough university representation shows that the committee wasn't created to figure out what was really better for workers, students and Penn," Roberts said. "I'm really upset about the committee decision, and I think most of us are," she added. But according to Committee Chairman Howard Kunreuther, the decision was reached by committee members after great deliberation. "There was a consensus from the committee," said Kunreuther, chairman of the Operations and Information Management Department. "[The PSAS members] have a right to have whatever feelings they want. We deliberated the issue and that is what we came up with."

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