The escalating debate about sweatshop labor and university athletic gear and how to enforce the varsity letter of the law can be viewed in many contexts.
It signals a resurgence in student activism. No single issue has galvanized campuses in these numbers in two decades. It marks a new beachhead for organized labor, which for years has been trying to make its goals understandable to a younger constituency.
It has prompted a very public spat between Nike and several large universities, and brought into focus the moral choices consumers face in a way that even a spate of murders of young people over designer sneakers and jackets did not. It has split the dizzying array of groups working for sweatshop labor reforms, although activists on both sides say they disagree only on the means, not the ends.
It has not–at least yet–made a difference in the price of T-shirts.
To Loyola Marymount business ethics professor Tom White, the struggle is the predictable and inevitable consequence of campuses casting their lot with for-profit corporations in a global economy.
“With that much money involved, of course there are going to be problems and strings attached,” White said. “If universities are going to be really serious about this as an ethical issue, they probably can’t count on that money.
“This gives universities an opportunity to go back and examine the purpose of their athletic programs. They’ve become a revenue-generating factory on one corner of the campus. Ultimately, the goal of a university is to put young people in a better position to succeed in life, and that keeps getting lost in the shuffle.”
But as multiyear contracts between university athletic departments and apparel companies soar past the $20 million mark, it is unlikely that any school will be willing to forgo such agreements completely. Instead, schools are trying to satisfy campus and community activists while maintaining their business relationships.
That proved to be a risky proposition for three schools–Brown University, the University of Oregon and the University of Michigan, all of which recently became affiliated with the Workers Rights Consortium, the newer and, some say, more aggressive of two groups seeking to improve overseas working conditions.
Nike, which has charged the WRC is unreasonable and unwilling to accept industry input, has terminated contracts with Brown and Michigan. CEO Phil Knight scratched a planned personal donation of $30 million earmarked for the expansion of the football stadium at his alma mater, the University of Oregon.
Michigan’s case came as a particular shock. The school’s merchandise sales consistently top the NCAA charts, and it was in the midst of negotiating a new six-year deal with Nike that was to have an estimated value of close to $25 million. Not that Michigan athletes are likely to have to play in rags. The day after the Nike announcement, Reebok, adidas and Puma all pounced on the opening and contacted the school.
The action has been widely denounced as punitive. Leaders of the Fair Labor Association, the more established group working for sweatshop labor reform, last week sent a letter to Knight conveying their concerns.
“The university is a place where new ideas can and should be tested and explored, and we urge Nike and other companies affiliated with the FLA to work together to do the same,” said the letter, signed by four members of the FLA board of directors. “No company should use a financial relationship or pressure to undermine or prevent this exploration.”
Nike spokesmen have defended the company’s ongoing effort to upgrade working conditions and say the WRC’s proposals go too far. “Michigan will not find another company who will be able to reach our standards,” Nike Labor Practice Manager Simon Prestridge told the Michigan Daily newspaper.
The University of Illinois, which expects to collect approximately $450,000 in royalties from licensed athletic apparel this fiscal year, joined the newly formed WRC earlier this year. But although the Illini athletic department is in the third year of a 10-year contract with Nike worth $8 million, associate chancellor Larry Mann said he is not fearful that the company will retaliate.
“We have a good relationship with Nike, and there’s some legitimacy to the issues they’re raising,” Mann said. “This thing will never get anywhere if industry isn’t invited in a positive way to discuss these matters. The reality is they have to be at the table with everyone else, and the WRC membership will just be talking to itself if everyone doesn’t fully agree that’s necessary.”
The effort to use university athletic apparel as leverage to induce sportswear giants such as Nike, Reebok and adidas to improve conditions in their overseas manufacturing facilities dates back several years, to a more general movement spawned by organized labor in the textile industry.
Universities began drafting codes of conduct for their apparel suppliers in late 1996 and early 1997, shortly after the formation of a White House task force on sweatshop labor and the establishment of United Students Against Sweatshops. Notre Dame and Duke University were among the first schools active on the issue. Those schools and many others now require their athletic apparel suppliers to disclose the locations of their manufacturing plants and subcontractors and to allow monitoring.
Out of that movement, in turn, the Fair Labor Association was created by a coalition of labor, consumer and human rights groups, colleges and universities, and the apparel companies themselves. The group is close to completing a set of standards for monitoring overseas factory conditions, including announced and unannounced inspections.
In recent months, however, dissatisfied campus and labor organizations formed the WRC, contending that the FLA isn’t tough enough and has been co-opted by corporate interests. Among the chief goals of the WRC are union organizing rights for overseas workers and the definition and imposition of a “living wage” in other countries. Students held demonstrations on many campuses to try to persuade schools to withdraw from the FLA and join the WRC, which they perceived as the potentially more effective group.
To date, the FLA counts 134 member schools, including the athletic powerhouses of Duke, Notre Dame, Georgia, Michigan State, Syracuse and Kansas. WRC affiliates number about 50, including Georgetown, Indiana and Wisconsin. A handful of schools, including Nike-outfitted North Carolina, belong to both.
Accusations have flown between the groups at times. However, many university administrators, including Northwestern’s vice president for business and finance Eugene Sunshine, do not view the FLA and the WRC as being at cross purposes.
Although Northwestern is affiliated with the FLA, the school may, in the future, consider joining the WRC as well, Sunshine said. “We’re not married to either organization,” he said. “We’re married to the objective.”
Mann said that although Illinois’ choice not to affiliate with the FLA was a conscious one, he and other campus officials are anxious to see the WRC and the FLA work cooperatively.
Representatives of WRC-affiliated schools met in Park Ridge two weeks ago. Those university administrators agreed to ask for more membership on the WRC’s governing board, more input into the group’s bylaws, more fiscal accountability (member schools pay dues) and a commitment to find a way to communicate with the apparel companies.
Mann said one challenge to the future success of the sweatshop labor reform movement is the proliferation of codes of conduct developed by schools and independent organizations that apply to apparel manufacturers. “It’s confusing to the suppliers,” he said. Including subcontractors, there are more than 400 companies with licensing rights to produce items bearing the Illini logo.
