Harvard Students Against Sweatshops met with the university’s administrators Monday to urge the school to join the Worker’s Rights Consortium, a non-profit organization that investigates labor conditions in apparel manufacturing factories abroad.
But it is unclear whether administrators will join the organization, despite several years of effort by the group.
‘The meeting went pretty well,’ said Emma Mackinnon, a junior social studies major and Harvard Students Against Sweatshops member. ‘There’s still no clear indication if Harvard is going to take action anytime soon, but they seemed receptive to our presentation.’
The WRC works with 117 colleges and institutions including Boston College, Columbia University and Brown University retail corporations and local workers to correct problems and improve conditions within sweatshops, Mackinnon said. Harvard students were some of the first students in the nation to voice concern over the issue, but the university has yet to add its name to the list, she said.
However, the HSAS is accustomed to waiting, according to Mackinnon, who said the group has been petitioning the university for WRC membership since 1998.
‘We have been doing this for five years and Harvard hasn’t budged at all,’ she said. ‘Well, they have a little bit they adopted the code of conduct.’
In 1998, HSAS and Harvard administrators drafted a code of conduct for licensees and contractors, particularly those who produce clothing with the Harvard insignia or name. The code states Harvard will ‘work cooperatively with other universities to develop independent monitoring and compliance systems so that we can have reasonable assurances that these standards are in fact being followed in the workplace.’
In 1999, Harvard commissioned an investigative report into the conditions of the factories producing Harvard insignia apparel, and the report found sweatshop conditions in most of the factories, according to the Independent University Initiative report.
‘The report confirmed terrible working conditions, such as forced pregnancy testing, forced overtime, the presence of carcinogens among other health and safety violations and limitations on the right to organize, in every factory visited,’ according to the HSAS website.
‘The administration has done nothing to address the concerns and problems raised in this report,’ said Gabe Katsch, also a junior Social Studies major and HSAS member. ‘It’s time Harvard took greater steps to address these problems.’
Harvard is a member of the Fair Labor Association, which is ‘a non-profit organization combining the efforts of industry, non-governmental organizations, colleges and universities to promote adherence to international labor standards and improve working conditions worldwide,’ according to the FLA website.
The HSAS, however, believes membership in the FLA is inadequate, Katsch said.
‘The WRC was formed because students and representatives of labor were extremely disappointed by the outcome of the FLA,’ Katch said. ‘The FLA also uses for-profit monitors who usually have a history of working with the company that owns the establishment, while the WRC uses not-for-profit monitors.’
‘The WRC acts as a neutral and reliable source of information which Harvard can use to leverage its power as a consumer,’ Katsch said.
Mackinnon said she believes Harvard’s indecisiveness stems from continual turnover in the administration.
‘Part of what’s frustrating about this whole process is that this is the third general counsel we have given this presentation to,’ Mackinnon said.
Mackinnon said Harvard essentially would be refusing to negotiate with factories and rectify sweatshop conditions if it refused membership in the WRC.
‘This is not a money issue Harvard has assured us of that,’ she said. ‘It would cost maybe $6,000 a year and Harvard isn’t going to notice that. It’s pretty much just stubbornness over where they’re putting their name.’
Neither Harvard’s General Counsel Robert Iuliano nor the school’s senior director of federal and state relations, Kevin Casey, returned repeated phone calls for comment this week.
Like Harvard, Boston University is a member of the Fair Labor Association but is not a member of the Worker’s Rights Consortium.
The Students Against Sweatshops club at Boston University has been inactive this past year, and students seem reluctant to get involved.
‘I feel that sweatshops are shameful and represent a condescension of Westerners toward the labor of people in distant locations,’ said Judd Franklin, a College of Communication senior. ‘I couldn’t start an anti-sweatshop club here though, because I couldn’t sustain the effort of digging through BU’s immense closets that surely hide many dirty secrets.’
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