Letter to the Editor, Monday October 15, 2001, published in The Round Up (New Mexico State University) Opinion, p. A 11.
I am
writing to express my concern over the online article "Pistol
Pete and Sweatshop Apparel in the New Mexico State Bookstore,"
published in the Qct. 8 Round Up written by David Boje. While
Mr. Boje says he has spent a considerable amount of time investigating
monitoring practices, it is clear that he has not spent time reading
the widely available material on the Fair Labor Association. The
article is misleading and unfortunately contains a number of false
statements.
First,
Mr. Boje is misinformed about the living wage issue with respect to
both the FLA and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) of which he speaks
so highly. Neither the FLA nor the WRC currently has a living wage
provision as a requirement. The FLA has taken the lead obtaining
information which will contribute to a sensible discussion about wage
levels. See, for instance, the Department of Labor study on wage
levels requested by the FLA and posted on our Web site www.fairlabor.org.
The FLA remains actively interested in this vital issue. In the
meantime, the FLA requires employers to pay the local minimum wage or
the prevailing wage, whichever is higher. This may fall short of ideal
but when fully enforced will be an enormous improvement for hundreds
of thousands of workers.
Second,
Mr. Boje misrepresents FLA's comprehensive monitoring system. He
writes that the FLA allows consulting and accounting firms paid by the
corporate manufacturers to monitor facilities -a completely erroneous
statement. He goes L to use the colorful but false description
independent monitors as “foreigner in suits" who are mistaken
for "corporate staff."
The
FLA currently has approved nine monitoring organizations for
FLA-accreditation -none of which are consulting or accounting firms.
They range from non-profit organizations to labor standards monitoring
firms.
FLA-accredited
monitors are most definitely not "foreigners in suits." They
must have demonstrated capacity to monitor in the local environment,
language and culture, and are accredited only in countries where they
can do so -such as COVERCO, a non-profit that is accredited in
Guatemala, and Phulki, a non-profit (accredited in Bangladesh.
Mr.
Boje's false representations of FLA’s monitoring system and FLA’s
accredited monitors are not only wrong, but also insulting to the many
dedicated labor and human
rights non-governmental organizations that work with us.
Third,
perhaps the root of Mr. Boje's false statements about FLA-accredited
monitors stems from his lack of understanding about the FLA’s
comprehensive system of monitoring. He refers to FLA’s approach as
"touring" some, not all factories, in pre-announced visits,
once a year or less.
Even
the most cursory review of FLA’s Monitoring Guidance and Compliance
Benchmarks (a1so on the Web site) would make clear that a factory
inspection is intensive and complex - hardly a tour. All factories are
subject to internal inspection by companies that contract for
production and 30 percent of these are externally monitored to verify
- or disprove - the findings from internal, inspections.
The
FLA system also includes a third a party complaint mechanism to allow
individuals to bring concerns directly to the FLA and to ensure
follow-up on these concerns. The FLA system requires remediation where
non-compliance is found.
All
external inspections are unannounced, except in extraordinary
circumstances based on a decision of the independent monitor, reviewed
by the FLA. The participating company has no role in this decision.
And the FLA makes the final decision on where independent external
monitors will go.
The
FLA requires a long-term commitment to address patterns of
non-compliance. Anything short of such a long-term strategy is bound
to be a fleeting inquiry into labor conditions, not a programmatic
approach to changing them.
Finally,
while Mr. Boje says he has been investigating this matter for the past
two years, he clearly did not take the time to "investigate” or
merely even read about the FLA’s university licensee program before
he wrote about it. The FLA specifically requires all university
affiliates to have their licensees join the FLA. If there is an NMSU
licensee that has not indicated their intention to join, the
University is committed to terminate that licensee.
We
welcome ongoing discussions fu about independent monitoring and
different approaches to managing factory conditions and the lives of
workers. We only ask that the discussions are well informed and that
the information presented is accurate.
SAM
BROWN EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR FAIR LABOR ASSOCIATION