On a March day two years ago, leaders of Students for Progressive Education and Action stood on the steps of Nassau Hall shouting anti-sweatshop slogans and pumping their fists in the air. Today the steps are quiet and the loudest noise from the University anti-sweatshop campaign is the rustling of papers.
But the anti-sweatshop movement, while quiet for the moment, has given birth to a host of new political campaigns on campus — the most prominent of which is a series of protests against Citigroup.
Like most movements that spring to prominence because of a single controversy, SPEAC is making an effort to move on from the anti-sweatshop campaign to other issues.
It is running an active campaign against Citigroup, as well as bringing leaders of the Global Peace Now movement to campus and organizing University maintenance and dining hall workers.
Still, these toddler campaigns have yet to come into their own or develop nearly as loud a roar as their parent movement.
Right now, the anti-sweatshop campaign is in what SPEAC leader Amanda Fulmer '01 described as an analytical mode. "We don't want to jump on something before we can see what kind of alternatives we have," she said. "We're on a dual track of trying to make the FLA suit our needs as best we can while also keeping our eye out for other alternatives."
The Fair Labor Association is a White House-backed initiative to monitor clothing manufacturers, which Princeton joined in March 1999 after months of discussion. The University joined the FLA as one of 17 affiliates. Now there are approximately 145.
One of the reasons that the sweatshop issue has fallen below campus radar is the increasing complexity of the issue. "The longer the rallying cry gets, the harder it gets to rally people's emotions," Fulmer said.
And as time passes, people forget about what happened two years ago on the steps of Nassau Hall. "It's definitely harder when a lot of the institutional memory goes away," Fulmer said. While some freshmen and sophomores are aware of the nationwide anti-sweatshop movement, they were not yet students at Princeton during the rally.
The other key reason for the anti-sweatshop campaign's low profile is a lack of leadership. SPEAC leader David Tannenbaum '01, one of the key organizers of the campaign during the 1998-99 school year, took a leave of absence from the University last year. Fulmer spent the spring semester abroad.
With Tannenbaum and Fulmer both off campus, it was hard to find someone willing to commit the time and effort to organizing the campaign, SPEAC leader Laura Kaplan '01 said. "When Dave left, there was no one to step up and be a leader for that campaign," she said. "None of us wanted to take on the responsibility and then drop it."
This year, Fulmer and Kaplan are the chief coordinators of SPEAC, overseeing all of the group's campaigns. Each campaign has its own coordinator, but there is currently no coordinator for the anti-sweatshop campaign.
Still, SPEAC leaders say that there is a certain broad level of interest in the issue. If someone steps up to coordinate the campaign, Kaplan said, "it's something that could take off."
Code of conduct
The FLA oversees compliance with its code of conduct, which includes provisions regarding forced labor, child labor, harassment or abuse, nondiscrimination, health and safety, freedom of association and collective bargaining, wages and benefits, hours of work and overtime compensation. It also requires that factories conduct internal monitoring and submit to independent external reviews.
The University is in a unique position because Vice President for Public Affairs Bob Durkee '69 is the sole representative from a university on the FLA's 14-member board. "Because Durkee's on the board, we can pressure him to consider the WRC [Workers Rights Consortium] or pressure Durkee to improve the FLA," Kaplan said.
"It certainly gives us a front row seat," Durkee said.
The Workers Rights Consortium is an alternative monitoring organization to the FLA, which SPEAC and other liberal groups have urged the University to join.
As a member of the FLA's board, Durkee has met with committees at other schools to hear their concerns about the FLA.
He also proposed to the FLA last spring that participating colleges only be allowed to contract with FLA-approved companies — a stipulation that was already part of the University's own policy. At the time, FLA-member schools were increasingly adopting this policy on their own. The proposal was accepted unanimously.
SPEAC was not entirely satisfied with the FLA when Princeton joined in 1999. In that sense the situation has not changed.
"I still have a lot of doubts about it," Fulmer said, mentioning concerns about the accuracy of monitoring practices and conflicts of interest within companies contracted to monitor factories.
"There's always a risk of that, but there are provisions in the FLA charter that address those concerns," said Durkee, noting that there is a large enough staff to monitor the monitors. The FLA has high standards for its monitors and a large enough staff to monitor the monitors, Durkee said.
For its part, SPEAC had long urged the University to join the WRC. Unlike the FLA, the WRC does not require member schools to adhere to a specific code of conduct, but does require that member schools have their own codes. The workers rights that the WRC supports are very similar to those stipulated in the FLA's code of conduct.
Last spring, the resources committee of the U-Council — a standing committee that reviews University policy on sweatshops — declined to recommend that Princeton sign on to the WRC. But it also encouraged the University to keep a close eye on the group's organizational evolution, Durkee said.
"[The WRC is] in an early stage of their evolution," Durkee said. He has been in regular touch with WRC-member schools and says that a number of schools are disappointed with what he called "the lack of progress and the direction of evolution."
The University conceivably could participate in both the FLA and the WRC.
SPEAC says it is not planning to commit to a new initiative or stage any large sweatshop-related events anytime soon. But, "just because we haven't had a big protest doesn't mean that people aren't interested," Tannenbaum said.
This past summer, four University students interned at monitoring companies, in accordance with one of the recommendations of the resources committee. Later this fall, the students will report to the resources committee on their experiences. The Wilson School will offer a class called "Sweatshops, Labor Standards and International Trade" in the spring semester — following through with another of the resource committee's recommendations.
But it continues to be a hot topic at other schools around the nation. On Oct. 6, five universities — Harvard, the universities of California and Michigan, Notre Dame and Ohio State University — released a joint report on worldwide apparel manufacturing. The report analyzes data gathered by consultants in seven different countries to judge whether manufacturers are complying with local labor laws, codes of conduct and standards for fair working practices, according to the Harvard Crimson.
"People [at Princeton] have shifted their attention to other political issues," Tannenbaum said.
He went on to argue that the sweatshop movement made activism acceptable again at Princeton. "We sort of mainstreamed student activism," he said.
If Tannenbaum is right, then the sweatshop movement's legacy is about more than sweatshops — it is about the newer movements which are the offspring of the anti-sweatshop campaign. In some way, perhaps, they were also conceived on a March day on the steps of Nassau Hall.
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