CU Eases Supplier Standards

Five months after Columbia joined a national effort to enforce labor standards in the factories that produce its branded apparel, the coalition of universities is running up against the practical difficulties of changing an industry from the outside in.

Under the old Designated Suppliers Program, only eight factories worldwide would have qualified to receive apparel orders from brands producing university gear-not enough to sustain the demand of the 33 schools that currently participate in the program of the Worker Rights Consortium, an organization that monitors international labor practices.

Since April, requirements have been eased to increase the number of factories able to meet the standards. Most significantly, instead of demanding that factories have unions already in place, the new document requires only that they be open to the establishment of unions.

In addition, university and student representatives are trying to address the problem of licensees pulling their orders out of factories that do make improvements, which discourages others from changing their practices. Some representatives have proposed that licensees leaving a unionized factory should be required to take their business to another union shop.

"It's important that they [other universities] look at the plan as it is today," said Columbia Director of Purchasing Honey Sue Fishman, noting that the new document contains "huge differences" from the April draft. "It's framed in a different way that makes it more successful and sustainable."

Fishman has been meeting in Washington, D.C. with the DSP working group since Columbia joined the program last spring. In a meeting last Friday with members of Students for Environmental and Economic Justice, Fishman noted that while the University is fully committed to the progress of the DSP, she can't push other schools to join the program or move faster.

Columbia's student activists would like to see quicker progress.

"We recognize that they spent the summer working on something," said SEEJ member Jessie Leiken, CC '08. "However, we wish they had come up with something that benefited workers more immediately. ... Were corporations trying to roll out this plan, it wouldn't take so long."

One roadblock-the fear that universities might be violating anti-trust laws by cooperating to force standards upon apparel corporations-has since been overcome by a WRC legal opinion and Columbia's own general counsel affirming the legality of the program.

The lingering issue, then, may be money. According to Leiken, even though wages represent only about two percent of the price of an article of clothing, paying workers more carries attendant costs that customers might notice. And in order to make the program effective, many more schools will have to participate.

"To make the brands do something that they've never done before is going to take a large collection of schools demanding the same thing," said Zack Knorr, an organizer with United Students Against Sweatshops, in a meeting with SEEJ members last Wednesday.

Language regarding paying workers a living wage and the time line for phasing in requirements remains largely the same. The final plan will be released to all universities early next week.