Anti-Sweatshop Group Votes to Require Members to Demand Locations of Apparel Factories By MARTIN VAN DER WERF
Washington
The 137 universities of the Fair Labor Association agreed Tuesday to demand that the locations of all factories where their licensed goods are manufactured be made public. A little over a year ago -- prior to a wave of anti-sweatshop protests on campuses -- no colleges were making such demands.
The institutions in the organization passed the resolution unanimously Tuesday at a meeting here. It is especially notable because, of the two competing anti-sweatshop groups -- the Worker Rights Consortium is the other -- the F.L.A. is more closely tied to industry. It has 11 apparel-manufacturing companies among its members, but only two of those are already voluntarily disclosing factory locations. The action taken Tuesday by the University Advisory Council does not have to be ratified by the association's Board of Directors, which is dominated by the apparel manufacturers.
"The actions of students and of institutions have caused significant change in the past year," said Robert K. Durkee, vice president for public affairs at Princeton University and the college representative on the F.L.A.'s board. "This is a further step toward making this the norm."
It is also a reflection of reality. Mr. Durkee said that more than 40 colleges that are members of the F.L.A. were already requiring public disclosure of factory locations, and collegiate representatives in the organization felt that it was time to make it a condition of membership. The resolution says that all colleges must adopt a policy by December 31 that will require disclosure of factory locations. In reality, most colleges will probably put that requirement into place as contracts come up for renewal, said Mr. Durkee, so it may take a little longer for the standard to take full effect.
Public disclosure of factory locations is one of the founding principles of the Worker Rights Consortium, an upstart group with more than 50 college members that takes a harder line against apparel manufacturers. It does not allow any manufacturers to join the organization.
Richard P. Appelbaum, a member of the consortium's advisory council, said that the F.L.A. action is "encouraging," but that stark differences remain between the organizations.
"The big difference to me has to do with the degree of enforcement, the willingness to open up factory doors to truly independent monitoring," said Mr. Appelbaum, director of the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
The Worker Rights Consortium calls for annual inspections of all manufacturing facilities by independent monitors. The Fair Labor Association's system of examining factory conditions includes outside monitors and self-monitoring by manufacturers. About 30 percent of a manufacturer's facilities would be inspected by outside groups in the first three years of monitoring, dropping to about 10 percent in each year after that.
However, the action on Tuesday demonstrates how quickly the idea of any public factory disclosure has advanced.
Before the Fair Labor Association began writing a code of conduct, in 1999, a code written by another group, the Collegiate Licensing Company, failed, in part because students protested that it did not require public disclosure of factory locations. Duke, Georgetown, and Princeton Universities, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, became the first institutions to require that locations be disclosed, acting in January and February of 1999. Nike, the sports-apparel company, was the first to release a list of factory locations, in October 1999. Now, Gear for Sports and Champion, a division of the Sara Lee Corporation, also disclose factory locations. Nike and Gear for Sports belong to the F.L.A.
However, most other apparel manufacturers have not agreed to make factory locations public. Officials at those companies could not be reached for comment late Tuesday.