A faculty member’s reaction to NMSU bookstore selling ‘alleged’ sweatshop garments September 12, 2001

Goliath, Pistol Pete, and Sweatshop Apparel in the NMSU Bookstore

Guest Column by David M. Boje, Professor of Management

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. 

I believe that one person can make a difference in this world. I invite you to make a difference. 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 to resist violence by engaging in non-violence. Yesterday, the World Trade Towers, Pentagon and Jonestown (PA) were attacked by hijacked commercial airliners, killing all on board and thousands more in the impact. I abhor all forms of violence.

Violence is not the 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.  To end the violence against women, who are working in the sweatshop-supply-chain, sub-contracting to make university apparel and paying a licensing fee to our university, I believe that Ahimsa (non-violence) in the form of peaceful consciousness raising actions is our answerability (a morally–mandated response to a story of suffering).

Yesterday, I put up posters around the College of Business Administration and economics. The flyers announce the first meeting of the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) of New Mexico State University (faculty and staff are also welcome). Our chapter will elect officers, and continue the investigation of the conditions of women working to make the clothing and backpacks sold in the bookstore, and the disposition of royalties paid to NMSU for using our university logos. 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 is built on the exploitation of women in sweatshops.

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. 

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 for 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 significant 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 corporation send sweatshop factories a questionnaire, which was filled out by factory owners (not by workers or independent monitors), and that is their method of monitoring factory conditions. The corporation makes occasional, announced visits.  This methodology of monitoring is gross and inadequate.

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.

Goliath

Goliath is a giant who boastfully intimidated and bullied his opponents.  David (my namesake) used a small stone and a slingshot to topple a giant who was dressed in full battle gear, wielding sword, shield, and body armor.  I do not want to throw stones. I do want to transform the Goliath sweatshop-supply-chain’s relationship to our university. I do not want to boycott NMSU apparel. I seek to engage the factory management in acts of reform so that women who sew our clothing are paid a living wage, have the right to organize, can voice concerns without being punished. 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 right to visit any factory where NMSU apparel is made.

I also think, as faculty, we can demonstrate non-violent and peaceful forms of resistance to predatory, greedy, sweatshop-capitalism, and university-apparel licensing.  In this way we can become aware of the chain that binds the sweatshop worker to this university.

I am a critical postmodernist, who uses the aesthetics of culture jamming, to get my message across. I apply acts of détournement to inquire into the sweatshop supply chain that links this university bookstore to women in sweatshops.

Détournement  – is a Situationist Internationale method that juxtaposes cultural symbols with counter-symbols. The method involves taking a familiar territory (ad, slogan, situation) and artistically defamilarizing it (adding or juxtaposing something hidden into the familiar).  Sometimes the symbol is modified or put into a novel context, in order to raise awareness. This can mean subverting the cultural meaning to the opposite of what the politics of the original context implies (e.g. Nike Just Do It; Nike Just Don’t Do It).

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-totting NMSU mascot, with the more serious issue of sweatshop apparel sold in the campus bookstore.  My posters depict Pistol Pete handing out petitions to start a NMSU chapter of USAS, and demanding that a posse be formed to find out of those varmints in the sweatshops are abusing any young women sewing his image onto sweatshirts.  This is hardly the manner in which Pistol Pete is used.  For example, in the September 6^th  (2001) issue of the Roundup, there is a front page color photo of Pistol Pete passing out flyers for a tailgate kickoff party for the NMSU vs. Oregon State football game.  At the Tailgate, there will be a carnivalesque theater of gelatin wrestling, mud pit tug-of-war, music, and beer drinking (on this otherwise dry campus).

However, an alternative definition of carnival (from Bakhtin) is the theater of resistance, a way to satirize power.  I depict a more ironic, Pistol Pete, passing our flyers, that say “investigate the sweatshop relations with our bookstore.”  

When workers are voiceless, because they fear speaking out will get them fired, we have a situation of oppressive silence. The sweatshop supply chain for university apparel is, oftentimes, a silent, yet violent web of relationships.  If we recast Pistol Pete as the new icon of a $3 billion dollar university-apparel licensing industry, the new meaning is a Sheriff who investigates allegations of the mistreatment of women workers, making our clothing.

As a further act of détournement, I am seeking models for an NMSU sweatshop fashion show. This is a bit of carnival that can be performed in any classroom or student event. 

(Model Enters, stage left) Our first model this morning is Alexis. She’s wearing a stunning NMSU ensemble from The Game and Gear For Sports. Notice the style, attention to detail and crisp cotton look of this fetching little number. (Model walks across runway, then freezes) Despite the NMSU logo-image used to sell its products, these corporations subcontract to sweatshops in China, Honduras, and Mexico, where workers are paid as little as 44 cents an hour.  Thank you Alexis, you look fabulous. (Model exits, stage right, and the next model enters, stage left)

With each model in the fashion show we see the NMSU garment and hear the story of the working conditions of its manufacture.  I think Pistol Pete would be the appropriate Master of Ceremonies. After all, his logo is on many of the garments.  Pistol Pete might say “I want to know why a $40 NMSU sweatshop pays more in licensing fees to this university than it does to the woman that made it?”  Between one and two dollars (depending upon the country) is paid daily to the worker for a $40 sweatshirt in our bookstore. If corporations increased that pay by 50%, we would pay $41, and the worker would get a living instead of a poverty wage. “I’d pay that much” says Pistol Pete. “Hey, how about the university? If NMSU takes a dollar less, and then students do not pay a higher price”

The acts of détournement, messing with the Pistol Pete cultural symbolism, are ways to penetrate the secrecy that surrounds sweatshops.  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 few universities. We were denied access to the factory.  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 elected not to interview any current workers. We did, however, interview sisters, who had quit their job at Kukdong, and had no intent to return. They both said, the left because of the violence. They described how women were beaten so badly, 15 went to the hospitals, and two pregnant women had miscarriages because of the violence.  You can see our report at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/kuk_dong_story.htm.

I think the juxtaposition of Pistol Pete with university sweatshop apparel, embeds our mascot in the more serious context of the Other, the woman who sews our clothing, and who when she voices her concerns, can expect a march through the gauntlet of violence. Women in sweatshops are terrorized to be voiceless, and Pistol Pete becomes a chivalrous knight, dressed in the armor of the Wild West instead of the Knight Errant, announcing Tailgate parties, in order to fill seats in the football stadium and its might spectacle.

There is an important parallel between Pistol Pete, the icon of the Spectacle of Sports and apparel advertising, and the corporate and university contractor to sweatshops: both hide behind a mask. 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.

Détournement is a way to unmask the sweatshop worker’s situation and the media spectacle of university-corporation- (pseudo)-monitor. 

La Dérive

My protest, in Situationist jargon, is called "Dérive," a playful-constructive behavior to make us awareness of psychogeographical effects, as we walk and drift into our classrooms with Naked Feet. I teach in Naked Feet, parking my shoes and socks in the hallway. Some students join in, and some days, our shoes are lined up in the hallway. In our Naked Feet, we feel new sensations, with our heels and toes touching not only the ground, but our mind.  We are grounded into new awareness. This Dérive stroll into a classroom is quite different than the classic dress code for the Business College classroom.  Dérive allows us to let go of our fashion-slavery, and provoke an emotional reaction in the minds of our students and colleagues.  Just last night, two full professors in my college, seeing the line up of shoes in the hallway, could not resist making playful remarks from the hallway. “What are all these shoes doing in the hallway?  Why are you teaching barefoot?”  There timing was perfect, and their good-natured remarks made the point of my lecture come alive. The Dérive was working, they were aware of an aesthetic shift in their usual environment. 

I decided to bring Dérive to NMSU after meeting a young college student in Washington D.C., named Rebecca.  The first words out of her mouth to me, “I am a pacifist. I do not participate in violent protest.”  Each day she put up posters protesting the world trade situation. I told her I worked for six years to bring some awareness to NMSU of the relationship between apparel, universities, and sweatshops.  Each day a poster Nazi, ripped down her posters, and each night she scraped off the tatters, and with biodegradable wheat-based glue, applied new ones to base of the lampposts on Connecticut Avenue.  Each poster was a masterpiece in artistic design and rich in facts about the exploitation of various industries in differing parts of the world. Here I was, attending the Academy of Management convention in D.C. with 6,000 other Business College professors, and were, for her the Goliath, that she intended to transform through her peaceful poster campaign.  I think Rebecca is a role model to university students everywhere. She is someone who takes time out of her university study to find out the facts on an issue, decides upon a peaceful protest action, and brings awareness to her issue.  As we talked, we both agreed, “you can only win over violence with acts of non-violence.”  I saw this in the Civil Rights, Peace for Vietnam, Women’s and Gay Rights movements of the 1960s.  In this time of sweatshop violence, Rebecca is a role model. But, more important as a role model are those heroic young 16 to 22 year old women in Atlixco, and other factories, who are speaking out, despite the risks. 

Can we apply the example of heroic women everywhere to non-violently drawing attention to the relationship between university apparel and sweatshops?  Can we transform a violent workplace by sending Pistol Pete to investigate factory conditions? Will acts of détournement and dérive draw university faculty, staff, student and administration to our answerability to sweatshops?  Making Pistol Pete flyers, taking off our sweatshop clothing, putting on sweatshop Fashion Theater are ways to get involved in a global economy that is increasingly a throwback to factory conditions two centuries ago. 

I encourage students and faculty to make the classroom a situation of critical pedagogy (Pablo Freire), an act critical postmodern resistance to the Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord), and a place the Theater of the Oppressed (Augusto Boal) can transform Goliath (Global Predatory Capitalism and its links to the University). For more information please consult http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/usas/

  Professor David Boje, 646-2391 or dboje@nmsu.edu or JUST JOIN