Letters to the Editor

Image of sweatshop-free merchandise is a facade

Less than three years ago, Princeton's students called on the University to end its clothing contracts with companies whose goods were produced under sweatshop conditions. After rallies and vocal opposition to current policy, Princeton agreed to contract with companies that met certain standards related to their fair treatment of workers.

Princeton pledged that items bearing the University's logo would be produced by companies that met a set of standards: not using forced or child labor, not discriminating against workers, not using harassment or abuse, providing a healthy and safe working environment, giving freedom to collectively bargain, paying a minimum wage consistent with local law with legally mandated benefits and not requiring employees to work more than 48 hours per week and 12 hours of overtime.

These standards would be regulated by the Fair Labor Association, which Princeton joined. At the time, this was viewed as a major victory: the FLA would monitor companies and Princeton would only make contracts with those the FLA approved. Indeed, Princeton's own Vice-president of Public Affairs, Robert Durkee, sits on the FLA board of directors.

With these checks in place, one might think that Princeton is contracting only with companies that have fair labor policies. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Just to give one particularly egregious example, Princeton Tiger hats are currently produced and sold by New Era, a company whose labor policies are unacceptable by the standards the University purports to support.

A team including a professor of labor law from Columbia and an economics professor from the State University of New York recently drafted a report for the Workers Rights Consortium that details New Era's malpractices. These include health and safety violations (including failure to prevent blood-borne disease transmission or to compensate workers injured on the job), discrimination against older workers and the threatening and intimidation of workers involved in collective bargaining, including the firing of union officials.

Currently, New Era workers at the plant that produces Princeton hats are on strike because of the issues outlined above and the failure of New Era to bargain in good faith. Georgetown, Duke, and the University of Wisconsin have already suspended their contracts with New Era, and today students and workers on scores of other campuses across the country are calling on their universities' administrations to do the same.

The image of sweatshop-free merchandise that Princeton is attempting to maintain is, unfortunately, nothing more than a facade. Princeton, once in the lead on anti-sweatshop issues, has fallen behind, maintaining its sole affiliation with the FLA (and its model of 'self-enforcement') while more than 90 other campuses have joined the Workers' Rights Consortium, committed to independent monitoring. Until Princeton suspends its contract with New Era and joins the WRC, we as students must question the ethical foundations of the University and realize that clothing identifying us with our school comes at the cost of treating the people who produce them with basic standards of fairness. Students for Progressive Education and Action