Students lobby for workers
By: Ben Baden, Staff Writer
Issue date: 11/9/07 Section: University
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About 20 members of Student Action with Workers delivered a letter to Chancellor James Moeser's office after giving a short speech requesting that he agree to the Designated Suppliers Program.
"We feel there can be no Tar Heel pride in apparel made in sweatshops," said sophomore Scott Williams, an organizer of SAW.
The program, which is steadily picking up support from universities and high schools across the country, plans to enforce contracts with companies that make university apparel and has a reward system for factories that improve conditions, he said.
Salma Mirza, another SAW organizer, said 38 universities have set up working groups to implement the program, including the University of California system, Georgetown University and Duke University.
Jim Wilkerson, Duke's chairman of the DSP working group, said he was glad Duke joined the program in February 2006.
"It's a huge step for anti-sweatshop work once it's implemented," Wilkerson said.
A University committee charged with reviewing the merits of the program during the past two years halted efforts to sign on to the Designated Suppliers Program in August.
In an Aug. 20 letter to the licensing labor code advisory committee, Moeser stated that "too many critical questions simply have not been answered."
Later in the letter, Moeser stated that UNC plans to investigate other avenues to disassociate itself from sweatshop labor. "There is more momentum among the very top public universities licensing programs to pursue alternatives to the DSP," the letter states.
Moeser has not yet read the most recent letter from campus protesters, but he is expected to do so later in the week.
And though Nancy Davis, associate vice chancellor for University relations, said in an e-mail that Moeser already has made his opinion clear, Mirza said the group will not stop contacting Moeser until he signs on to the DSP.
Thursday's event is not the first occurrence of anti-sweatshop protesting on campus in recent years.
In February 2001, students from Students for Economic Justice talked with Moeser about their concerns about UNC's contract with Nike and a factory in Puebla, Mexico.
And in 1999 Students for Economic Justice held a four-day sit-in in the lobby of South Building until the University added a full-disclosure clause to UNC's labor code.
Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.
Viewing Comments 1 - 2 of 2
Scott Williams
posted 11/09/07 @ 2:26 PM EST
Ben (and everyone who read this),
You forgot to mention:
1.Chancellor Moeser ignored us while he exited the building (through a group of dozens of students delivering a letter to him) seconds after a security guard lied to us and told us the Chancellor had left. (Continued…)
Salma Mirza
posted 11/09/07 @ 5:33 PM EST
A number of clarifications:
*This was part of an international sweatfree day of action, in which 60 other colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada held sweatfree actions demanding their administrations take steps to protect workers' rights in our supply chains
*The ten student groups other than SAW collectively represent hundreds, if not thousands of UNC students in a formal endorsement and commitment to anti-sweatshop policies, and of the 20-30 students who participated in the letter delivery, not all of them were members of SAW, some were members of these other groups or part of student government
*SAW members have been active participants in the licensing committee procedures since 2003, and while it is important to establish the history of under what circumstances universities adopted ethical codes of conduct (after massive anti-sweatshop student protests), there is no need to go back to 2001 to find students participating in anti-sweatshop actions-- there have been
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