Pistol Pete and sweatshop apparel in the New Mexico State Bookstore

I am David and sweatshops are my Goliath. I am organizing a United Students Against Sweatshops chapter for the NMSU campus. There are over 200 chapters in U.S. universities. Why not here?

We can make a difference by using non-violent resistance to transform the relationship between university licensing of its logo sewn onto apparel and the women working in sweatshops around the world.

There is no better time than post-11, to resist violence by engaging in non-violence on our university campuses. You do not cure violence with more violence. Violence is no answer to sweatshop supply, distribution, and university-apparel-licensing chains, even though at the end are persistent reports of widespread violence to (mostly) young women, who work for sub-poverty wages, experience physical abuse, sexual harassment, forced overtime, and have their voice silenced by oppressive sweatshop management and corporate PR.

I believe that when any university licenses its logo to be sown onto sweatshop garments, we have an ethical accountability to learn the facts about the treatment of women who sew our university clothing. I have investigated enough of the NMSU clothing, calling the contract-factories, to say that some of our NMSU garments are made in sweatshops. Not all our items are made in sweatshops. But, if one is, then we can stand in solidarity and ask for changes. I simply call for more investigation.

I hope that we will follow the example of Duke University (and 200 other universities) who have adopted strict codes of conduct for purchasing and licensing apparel. I am sure that our bookstore staff would like to insure that we are not buying from corporations whose profits are built on the exploitation of women in sweatshops. There are great people working there.

However, when Duke hears reports of abuse of women in any factory licensed to manufacture their apparel, they send a delegation of faculty and students to the factory, wherever it may be in the world. If the university-delegation is refused entry into the factory, or if a factory is found to have major violations of codes of conduct, then that contract is canceled. In some cases, a subcontractor is given six months to clean up its act. In this way the university uses its financial purchasing power to raise the standards of the humane treatment of women workers. We can do the same.

The United Students Against Sweatshops is quite skeptical of the Fair Labor Association (FLA). New Mexico State University and some 157 other universities belong to the FLA, however there are significant and documented flaws in the FLA certification of firms doing monitoring, and with the methodology those certified monitors are using. First, FLA does not endorse paying a living wage to workers. Second, FLA allows consulting and accounting firms paid by the corporate manufacturers to monitor. Third, FLA’s approach is to tour some, not all factories, in pre-announced visits, once a year or less. Finally, NMSU is a member of the FLA, but the FLA does not monitor the non-FLA member corporations subcontracting to sweatshops, who make much of the clothing with NMSU logos on them. A final point is that workers consider foreigners in suits to be corporate staff. Therefore workers, who speak out to a FLA monitor or even to a university delegation fear they will be fired or punished, if they tell all.

I have been investigating this matter for the past two years. I found that one NMSU-contract corporation sends sweatshop factories a questionnaire, which is filled out by factory owners (not by workers or independent monitors), and that is their principal method of monitoring factory conditions. The corporation also makes occasional, announced visits. This methodology of monitoring is gross and inadequate in today’s world.

There is an alternative. NMSU can join the Workers Right Consortium who dispatches university faculty and student delegations that work with indigenous non-governmental and religious organizations to monitor factories and interview workers away from the punishing-eyes of sweatshop owners.

I call for full disclosure to the university of all factory locations, adoption of a stricter code of conduct, and a monitoring system that includes students and faculty the right to visit any factory where NMSU apparel is made.

We can demonstrate non-violent and peaceful forms of resistance to predatory, greedy, sweatshop-capitalism, and university-apparel licensing.

I chose Pistol Pete as my icon to subvert. We are one of three universities with the same mascot, Pistol Pete. In typical use, Pistol Pete is an intense, but fun-loving sports event cheerleader. I juxtaposed our gun-toting NMSU mascot, with the more serious issue of sweatshop apparel sold in the campus bookstore. In the Sept. 6 issue of the Round Up, there is a front-page color photo of Pistol Pete passing out flyers for a tailgate party for the NMSU/Oregon State football game. My posters depict Pistol Pete handing out petitions to start an NMSU chapter of USAS, and demanding that a posse be formed to find out if those varmints in the sweatshops are abusing any young women sewing his image onto sweatshirts.

This is a more ironic, Pistol Pete, passing our flyers, that says, "investigate the sweatshop relations with our bookstore." Recast Pistol Pete as the new icon of a $3 billion dollar university-apparel licensing industry, the Sheriff who investigates allegations of the mistreatment of women workers.

Showing solidarity with women in sweatshops can make a difference. During the last Spring Break, Professor Grace Ann Rosile, Ph.D. student J. Dámaso Miguel Alcantara Carrillo, and I went to Atlixco, Mexico, to investigate a Korean-owned sweatshop called Kukdong, that makes sweat-gear for quite a few universities. We were denied access to the factory. No surprise, I am banned from every Nike factory. Yet, as we talked to city officials and parents of workers, the message was clear: workers who talk to outsiders, such as us, would be fired. We therefore only interviewed two women, who had quit their job at Kukdong, and had no intent to return. Both said, they left because of the violence and vividly described how women were beaten so badly, 15 went to hospitals, and two pregnant women had miscarriages. You can see our report at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/kuk_dong_story.htm .

For the corporation, the mask is the hype of the celebrity endorsement contract, PR ads, the license agreement to the big university, and the pseudo-monitoring reports fashioned by the FLA.

For the sweatshop worker, the mask is to present a happy face to any monitor or visitor, for fear that the factory will lose its contract.

Let me finish with some good news. Those women at Kukdong did empower themselves, and did win in the Mexico courts, the right to organize, and did vote in the first ever maquiladora worker union.

It is a dangerous precedent, and we are all hoping that Nike and Reebok will continue the contract with universities to supply Kukdong (now MEXSITE) garments. We want the women to have their voice, to be able to get a living wage, and we think that can be done in actions that are non-violent.

For more information please consult http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/usas/  Report on NMSU sweatshop contracting is at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/nmsu/nmsu_products.html


David Boje is a management professor at NMSU and can be reached at dboje@nmsu.edu