NEWS!

Living Wages Full Disclosure of All Factory Locations Independent Monitoring (not by consultants paid by corporations).	Fifteen young women were beaten so badly they were hospitalized?  WHY - in a Nike/Reebok sweatshop in Mexico they demanded NO MAGGOTS in their food, and an independent VOICE. After they won their rights, the Nike has chosen not to take more orders from this factory.   The Kukdong Story

CURRENT NEWS NMSU:

• On July 1, 2002, NMSU's President  signed on to the WRC agreement. The following is background on the initiative begun by NMSU USAS students and faculty. 

• Apparel contract with university loaded with sweaty questions.

• August 1, 2001 -Are sweatshop goods sold at NMSU bookstore?

• October 5, 2001 Second Meeting of USAS club of NMSU. Officers Elected.
  

• October 8, 2001, Published in Round up: "Pistol Pete and sweatshop apparel in the New Mexico State Bookstore:" (or click here if the NMSU web site is not working) Guest Column by David M. Boje, Professor of Management. Do NMSU a favor - send a short (300 word max.) letter to Roundup Editor roundup@nmsu.edu stating your support to get NMSU to adopt monitoring of sweatshop factories selling products and apparel in our bookstore. Thank you.

  • Original Version - September 6, 2001, First Letter to the Round up: Goliath, Pistol Pete, and Sweatshop Apparel in the NMSU Bookstore, a Guest Column submitted by David M. Boje, Professor of Management. - Rejected - too long and it arrived September 11th.

• Letter to the Editor published Monday October 15, 2001, published in The Round Up (New Mexico State University) Opinion, p. A 11. "Clarifying misguided sweatshop claims" by Sam Brown, Executive Director of Fair Labor Association (FLA). NOTE: Sam Brown's letter raises an important issue for NMSU.  We may well be selling garments licensed with the NMSU logo (at bookstore and worn by NMSU women's volleyball team) that are manufactured by corporations who are not affiliated with FLA, and are not using FLA-approved monitors to assess the code of conduct compliance of factories making our garments.  Please investigate.

• Boje's October 29th reply to Sam Brown, Response to FLA Director about sweatshops  (Back up copy). Sam Brown accuses me of getting it wrong. Read my reply and you will see that I stand by my letter of October 8th and it is Sam Brown who is earning his corporate PR money. 

• Letters to the Round Up campus paper of NMSU regarding the exchange between Sam Brown of FLA and Dr. Boje, advisor to USAS of NMSU. Please Write a letter to the Editor roundup@nmsu.edu E.G.

  • October 29, 2001 Letter to the Round UP (back up copy of Letter to Round Up Editor) by Professor and Dr. Usha Haley, Professor of Management, The University of Tennessee, Knoxville

  • October 29, 2001 Letter to Round Up Editor by Professor Alexis Downs, Professor of Management, University of Central Oklahoma.

  • NMSU Campus Radio taped an interview with Dr. Boje on USAS and the FLA versus WRC at NMSU debate on October 29, 2001.

  • October 30, 2001 Professor Christine Eber Letter to Round Up Editor

Status Report - November 11th the USAS of NMSU met to reply to the proposal from the bookstore. The news is encouraging and all signs for cooperation look good. Here is the basic plan of action:

• On November 9th Professor Christine Eber (Anthropology) and Professor Boje (College of Business) met with Ron Benson, who heads up the bookstore. USAS of NMSU agreed to work on the following tasks:

  1. Recommend a code of conduct template for the bookstore to consider adopting. There is a first draft.

  2. Review the codes of conduct of a list of all garment corporations (defined as a firm that subcontracts to factories in US or other countries) providing with licensed NMSU logos (once approved all factories would abide by standards or not get bookstore contracts).

  3. Where codes of conduct are not specific about (a) living wage, (b) right to organize, (c) child labor age, (d) days off policies, (e) safe and healthy work environment, and (f) overtime policies --- then the bookstore will request additional clarity.

  4. Collate a list of all factories subcontracted to provide garments to the garment corporations, who then provide them to NMSU. The purpose is to ascertain what monitoring activity is conducted at each factory? (Is there a FLA-certified audit that had happened or not?).

  5. Work with two associations, the ICBA and the CLC (Collegiate Licensing Company) to compare their codes with the codes of the garment corporations. Contact between Dr. Boje and ICBA has been fruitful. 

  6. We would like a system where faculty, students and administrators can check out factories that have problems reported by workers or by monitors.  We do not want a boycott. We want to try to work with factories and garment corporations to see if conditions for the mostly young women workers can improve. If they can not improve we would recommend contract termination or non-renewal.

GOOD NEWS - 

On April 17 2002 Professor David Boje met with the university lawyer Bruce R. Kite, Dr. Juan N. Franco Vice President/Administration, and Dr. Gladys DeNecechea Director of student affairs. We reviewed the progress of the USAS imitative at NMSU to become a member of WRC. They agreed, after this meeting to recommend that Dr. G. Jay Gogue President of New Mexico State University sign the WRC agreement. A few days ago they indicated that the president had signed and sent the application.

On July 1, 2002, NMSU's President  signed on to the WRC agreement.

I have been organizing at NMSU as a faculty member for six years. Two years ago, I stepped up the pace by finding students who would start at campus USAS group, putting letters in the university paper, and producing reports on sweatshop apparel sold at NMSU, lecturing to clubs and classes, and a web site http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/usas   Now thanks to USAS of NMSU President Teresa Bolents and VP Solisa Zamora we have an active USAS chapter.

After my October 8 2001 letter to the Round-up http://roundup.nmsu.edu/public/10*08*01/opinion/opinion2.html provoked an October 15 reply by Sam Brown of FLA, campus conversation began to escalate. We at USAS of NMSU began to meet regularly with the director, Ron Benson, of the campus bookstore (campus apparel is sold there). We also showed the UNITE film on El Salvador sweatshop and the USAS students who went there. Very powerful! After a series of info meetings and negotiations, the bookstore agreed to draft their own code of conduct for campus apparel purchase, review all factory codes of vendors, and request new information on deficient or non-transparent codes.

We thank you NMSU for your encouragement to join WRC. We are eagerly awaiting news that the application from NMSU to WRC has been sent, processed, and accepted.

Exhibits:

Living Wage Defined - http://www.workersrights.org/ and specifically to the WRC Model Code of Conduct, Section III, Paragraph C, #1: C. Employment Standards: Licensees shall comply with the following standards:

Wages and Benefits: Licensees recognize that wages are essential to meeting employees' basic needs. Licensees shall pay employees, as a floor, wages and benefits which comply with all applicable laws and regulations, and which provide for essential needs and establish a dignified living wage for workers and their families. [A living wage is a "take home" or "net" wage, earned during a country's legal maximum work week, but not more than 48 hours. A living wage provides for the basic needs (housing, energy, nutrition, clothing, health care, education, potable water, childcare, transportation and savings) of an average family unit of employees in the garment manufacturing employment sector of the country divided by the average number of adult wage earners in the family unit of employees in the garment manufacturing employment sector of the country.]

Here is a proposed living wage formula:

LEARN THE FACTS ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN FLA AND WRC (USAS):

• IF you Would like to study WRC's Critique of FLA, Click Here for PDF copy.

• MORE GOOD REFERENCE ARTICLES ON MONITORING

  	Avery, Christopher L. Avery, (Nov. 1999) Business and Human Rights in a Time of Change.
  	Ballinger, Jeff (Spring, 1999). Taking On the Global Market Machine  Time to Gear for a Revolution in Workers' Rights
  	Bernard, Elaine (1997). PRESENTATION TO THE INDEPENDENT MONITORING: A FORUM sponsored by the National Labor Committee April 4, 1997, Queens College, New York. Bernard is Executive Director Harvard Trade Union Program. Bernard's web site.
  	Boje, David M (2001a). Comparison of the Urban Community Mission (UCM) Survey Report December 1999 to the Global Alliance, Center for Societal Development Studies (CSDS) 2000 study
  	David M. Boje, Grace Ann Rosile, & J. Dámaso Miguel Alcantara Carrillo(2001b). The Kuk Dong Story: When the Fox Guards the Hen House
  	Boje, D. M. (2001c). Pistol Pete and sweatshop apparel in the New Mexico State Bookstore October 8th Opinion Column in the Round Up campus newspaper of New Mexico State University.
  	Boje, D. M. (2001d). Reply to Sam Brown "Clarifying Misguided FLA Monitoring Claims" dated October 27, 2001.
  	Boje, D. M. (2001e). Monitoring: Dependent versus Independent approaches.
  	Bob Jeffcott and Lynda Yanz (2000, Maquila Solidarity Network) Voluntary Codes of Conduct: Do they Strengthen or Undermine Government Regulation and Worker Organizing?
  	Boje (2001) Tamara Manifesto. Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science. (Vol 1 (1): 15-24.
  	Boje et al (2001)  Research Proposal in Global Manufacturing and Taylorism Practices of Athletic Apparel Corporations and Their Subcontractors
  	Hauflerm Virginia (No date) Discussion Paper #2  Comparing Private Sector Initiatives:  Labor Standards, Information Privacy and Environmental Management
  	ILO (2000) - Labour Practices in the Footwear, Leather, Textiles and Clothing Industries Report for discussion at the Tripartite Meeting on Labour Practices in the Footwear, Leather, Textiles and Clothing Industries Geneva, 16-20 October 2000
  	Maquiladora Solidarity Network analyses of FLA and GA monitoring. March, 2001 report - Codes Memo 5 April, 2001 report  Codes Memo 6 August, 2001 report Codes Memo 8
  	Research into Nike's Global Alliance assessment study: Wages, Hours and Trade Union rights -- Still Missing (Clean Clothes Campaign, 15 Sept. 2000)
  	Harvey, Pharis J. "DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE MECHANISMS FOR IMPLEMENTING LABOR RIGHTS  IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY by  (source).
  	Haufler, Virginia   Comparing Private Sector Initiatives: Labor Standards, Information Privacy and Environmental Management. Carnegie Discussion Paper #2
  	O'Rourke, Dara (1997) " Smoke from a Hired Gun," report by , Transnational Research and Action Center (TRAC), 10 November, 1997. This report is on file at ILRF and also available at TRAC's Corporate Watch website www.corpwatch.org
  	VanEijk, Janneke, "Comments on the Guidance Document for Social Accountability 8000," Clean Clothes Network, December 1997.

NEWS ELSEWHERE:

• October 11, 2001 Press Release on Kukdong factory - Send to local papers.

• June 27, 2001 Guilty by association CU's dilemma?

• 10/25/01  SDSU joins anti-sweatshop group - Campus No. 87 school tied to Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) By Ayana Day http://dailyaztec.com/Archive/Current/city/city02.html

MORE IN THE NEWS LINKS:

1. in the news SITE

2. Nike, Reebok, Adidas, New Balance - In The News Site

3. Nike, Reebok, Adidas, New Balance and Stock Market Impact of Portest Movements

    

4. SEE news of COUNTRIES WHERE SWEATSHOPS make what you wear

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