8 October - Original Letter by Boje http://roundup.nmsu.edu/public/10*08*01/opinion/opinion2.html
15 October - Sam Brown (FLA) Reprimand of Boje http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/usas/pages/Brown_letter_to_roundup_oct_15_2001.htm
Unpublished - Boje Reply http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/usas/pages/reply_to_sam_brown.htm
This is a reply to Sam Brown, who is Executive Director of the Fair Labor Association (FLA), and his October 15, 2001 letter to the editor of the Round Up. You letter to reacts to one paragraph of my Guest Column in the Oct. 8th Round Up.
This is what I said:
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.
Mr. Brown accuses me of making false statement, being inaccurate, misleading, and not taking the time to research the FLA, its web site and monitoring practices. I dispute his conclusions and here are the facts:
"First, FLA does not endorse paying a living wage to workers." I stand by this comment of Oct. 8. Your Oct. 15 reply agrees with mine on several points: you say FLA does not "currently [have] a living wage provision as a requirement" and that "FLA requires employers to pay the local minimum wage or the prevailing wage, whichever is higher." I say this is not good enough and WRC presents a more rigorous and humane monitoring standard. Further, you are inaccurate and misleading in stating that WRC does not advocate a "living wage." I invite you to check the WRC website 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:
1. 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.]
Mr. Brown, who are you trying to mislead? You know the history of FLA, better than I. FLA is an outgrowth of the Clinton administration Apparel Industry Partnership Agreement, following the Kathie Lee Gifford scandal in 1996. It originally included corporate, NGO, government and union involvement, but the unions and (most credible) NGOs bailed when the code failed to include right to bargain and living wage.
"Second, FLA allows consulting and accounting firms paid by the corporate manufacturers to monitor." Mr. Brown says this is an erroneous statement and list the nine accredited monitoring firms. In checking http://fairlabor.org/html/monitors/accredited-monitors.html, FLA lists 11, not 9 firms, and 3 of these specifically state that they are "consulting" firms on the FLA web page. I do take Mr. Brown's criticism to heart, and agree that these are not accounting firms. True of the 11, COVERCO as Mr. Brown says is a nonprofit firm, yet it is still paid for its services by corporations. However, I submit that all 11 are paid by the corporations (e.g. Adidas, Nike, Reebok, Gear for Sport, etc.). This violates the sense of the term "independent," in "independent monitoring." Further, anyone checking the FLA list of "Board of Directors" that includes Nike, Reebok, Adidas, Liz Claiborne, Phillips Van Heusen, and Levi Strauss while sensibly question "independence" of the FLA monitoring system. Please rename "Fair Labor Association" to "Unfair Corporate Association," to reflect truth in advertising.
"Third, FLA’s approach is to tour some, not all factories, in pre-announced visits, once a year or less." I stand by this claim. As Mr. Brown says, "30 percent of these [factories] are externally monitored." But this is only in the first year. There is no FLA requirement that ALL factories be monitored, and once a sample of factories is approved as FLA-certified, then the monitoring gets more relaxed. The reality of supply chain contracting to sweatshops is that as sweatshops are discovered to be abusive in the media, the choice is either (a) PR, (b) cut and run, or (c) clean it up. The first two choices insure that status quo never changes, despite FLA affiliation.
"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." I stand by this claim. Some history will help. On January 23, 2001 the Fair Labor Association (FLA) announced that it had approved seven major brand-name apparel and sports shoe companies to participate in its monitoring program. The first FLA accredited monitor was Verité, on March 3, 2001. The dates here are serendipitous to the January 12 beating by the Police and goon squads of the women workers of Kukdong. And the result of the FLA approved monitoring is Nike is not renewing its orders with the Kukdong factory. In our report, we indicate that the FLA monitor did not bother to interview Kukdong feeder factories in the same city, which we photographed in our report http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/kuk_dong_story.htm As Mr. Brown points out NMSU has an obligation to cancel any and all license contracts with garment manufacturers stitching our logo onto clothing sold in the bookstore. There is also the Nike swoosh being worn in photo-shots of the NMSU women's volleyball team. Nike is an FLA board member and affiliate, but as far as I can determine has yet to pass FLA's approval. Bottom line is many of the products sold in the NMSU bookstore are manufactured by subcontractors who are not FLA affiliated, and those that are have not been visited by a single FLA-approved monitor, with the exception of the Nike swoosh sown on our volleyball uniform. Again, I repeat my call for a university investigation into sweatshop license agreements with NMSU that are FLA approved and outside FLA contract guidelines.
"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." Sorry Mr. Brown, but FLA external inspections are not "unannounced." I went to Kukdong and studied the Verité monitoring. The exact days that they visited was pre-announced. Perhaps the Liz Claiborne visit is unannounced. Mr. Brown you and I both know that workers consider outsiders and especially foreigners to be corporate staff. Further, many of the Verité interviews were conducted on company grounds, and in the presence of factory management. And after the report was filed, and Nike-reparation report was filed, what happened? Another cut and run.
On October 17, 2001 Vada Manager, Director of Global Issues Management of Nike, Corporation wrote to tell me that Nike would not be renewing its orders for university garments with Kukdong. The tragedy is that after the women workers won the right to eat food without maggots, earned raises in pay from illegal to legal limits (not living wage), and empowered themselves with the right to have their independent union (SITEMEX) voted into place, Nike Inc. chooses not to place any more orders with the factory. This was to be expected. Since April 19, 2001reports circulated on the USAS, Kukdong, and Nike-Related list serves about Nike staff members who visiting several university campuses that were selling Kukdong campus apparel. What would you do if we canceled our order, since we have lost so much money paying for monitors at this factory? Evidently, the answer was not a thing.
While I congratulate Mr. Brown for inviting discussion, I object to the characterization that I am not informed or accurate. My study of independent and corporate-dependent monitoring approaches is available to you at, http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/AA/monitors.htm Mr. Brown, you may not remember, but you and I debated each other, face-to-face last November at a labor conference in New Orleans. I look forward to our next exchange.
I repeat my call for NMSU to dispense with FLA and join the WRC, where a more rigorous monitoring program is enacted. I also call upon Nike to resume its university sweatshirt orders with the Kukdong factory, now renamed Mexmode. Interested faculty and students can contact http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/usas/ to join United Students (and Faculty) against Sweatshops.
David M. Boje, Ph.D. is Professor of Management at New Mexico State University