VII. RESEARCH QUESTIONS

Research Question 4: What is the relationship between Fair Labor Association (FLA) and Workers Rights Consortium (WRC)?

This study group will focus on the monitoring efforts of FLA and WRC by sampling colleges and universities with and without FLA and/or WRC agreements. They will decide a sample of universities from various nations that do and do not have FLA and or WRC agreements.  There study will include travel to these universities for dialog with faculty, students, and staff.

Review - There is currently competition between two monitoring organizations, the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) to see sign up universities and colleges. Some choose to be part of both.  As of September 16, 2000 FLA has signed up 142 universities as affiliates and WRC has signed 139 affiliated universities. 

This campaign has implications for Reebok, Gear For Sports, Jansport and other firms who license and sell garments bearing university logos at major universities have been the target of a wave of student protest. The University of California system alone has $52 million in apparel sales. A growing collective of college and university student and faculty groups around the world are questioning the origin of university licensed apparel. In March [1999], Notre Dame became the first university to hire an independent firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), to monitor conditions at licensed factories. It also created a task force to study the issue and recommend a policy to deal with labor abuses. This latest request was a recommendation of that Task Force. Student activists praised the move, calling it a reversal of the administration's previous position (Logan, 1999).  This is the biggest groundswell of student social consciousness the US has seen since the Vietnam campus demonstrations of the 1960s and 1970s and the anti-apartheid movement of the 1980s. The New York Times, USA Today, Los Angeles Times and other major publications have written articles about it. Duke University, for example, was home to the first student anti-sweatshop protest. Kahle helped implement University of Oregon, Resolution US9900-10B for membership in the Workers Rights Consortium ( WRC). Other researchers have favored the FLA or been critical of FLA. The study group would need to include members of both views. 

Studying the history of FLA and WRC, as it has created a "culture" (values with respect to monitoring) in relationship between US management, foreign (third world especially) management, and factory workers has been suggested as an issue for research. 

Another issue to consider in re. corporate policy commitments and their enactment is how well do various proposed approaches to monitoring them function either to improve company practices or to inform stakeholders? One could look at industry systems of compliance monitoring (writ broadly to  include any kinds of communication that seem relevant), and the academic  critique you are proposing as another. In addition, there are a number of  approaches to social and other kinds of auditing that are offered by  commercial and non-profit entities, those that vend their services directly to  the company being audited, those that rate company performance for other kinds  of stakeholders including investors, and those that certify companies to some kinds of third party standard.

The research question has implications for Europe and other nations outside the U.S. and Canada. For example, in Europe one subgroup members suggests we try to engage a group of students to investigate the activities of European anti sweat shop campaigns (e.g. Anderi-Hilfe, Misereor, Unicef Germany) and, more specifically, some of the issues of study group 3 with respect to European firms (e.g. Benetton, Hennes & Mauritz, Otto, Adidas). Thereby we might be able to compare the corporate practices, at least as far as their approach to ethical conduct and independent control of working conditions is concerned.

This study group would not travel to third world factories. It would however travel to study the situation on US, Canadian and European campuses. Inclusion of the voice of students, faculty, and staff at these universities as well as an audit of where garments are made is essential.  Methods would include ethnographic, historical and other approaches. 

A set of recommendations and findings will be made available by this study group.

Study Group Four Volunteers to Date (Press on name-link to see statements and relevant publications):

Items suggested by readers of this proposal for Study Group Four

According to a recent article in the Boston Globe "Ninety percent of students believe that logging on to real-life successes, like United Students Against Sweatshops, can be effective in motivating them to engage in the political process: (June 5, 2000, Monday ,Third Edition, Op-ed section; Pg. A13).