Faculty No-Sweat Network Created

by Paul Garver

Thirty-five academics have launched a faculty network to support the ongoing struggle on American campuses for workers’ rights.  Building upon recent victories by the campus-based movement against sweatshops, reported earlier on Talking Union, the professors are circulating the following open letter, inviting more faculty members to join the Faculty No-Sweat Network, and urging their support in promoting the Alta Gracia label of no-sweat clothing at campus bookstores.

Over 200 campuses already carry the Alta Gracia brand. Since the workers that produce Alta Gracia clothing in the Dominican Republic are free to join a union and receive substantially higher wages than those of the more numerous sweatshop employers, American students on those campuses have an unusual opportunity to promote the rights of workers.

Dear Colleagues,

We write to ask you to join us in an important progressive enterprise: the formation of a Faculty No-Sweat Network committed to promoting justice for the workers who sew university clothing. We’ve already achieved an important breakthrough, as we’ll describe below, but we need to sustain and expand this important victory. To do that, we need your help.

We hope you will agree to take two initial steps: 1) respond to this email and tell us you would like to participate in the network and continue to receive communications from us, and 2) help spread the word about the new Alta Gracia label, the first collegiate clothing brand ever to pay a living wage to workers and welcome unionization.

As you know, thanks to committed activism by students and faculty, almost every university and college in the country now has a labor code that applies to the brands (like Nike, Reebok and Russell Athletic) that make university logo clothing. Many of these universities have joined the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labor rights organization that helps enforce these codes by investigating working conditions in factories around the world that make university products. Thanks to extraordinary efforts by the WRC, student activists, and faculty members like yourselves, we have recently achieved some astonishing breakthroughs:

• Last November, Russell Athletic agreed to re-open a factory it had closed in retaliation for workers’ decision to unionize – the first such reversal of a retaliatory factory closure ever to occur in the apparel industry in the developing world. Russell reversed itself because of an effective grassroots campaign waged by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), backed up by the WRC’s research and advocacy, which generated stories in most major mainstream media outlets .
• Just two months ago, Nike paid nearly $2 million that was owed to workers by two of its contract factories – the first time a brand has ever been compelled to assume financial responsibility for its contractors’ malfeasance. This, too, is the result of WRC’s and USAS’s efforts to draw public attention to Nike’s irresponsible practices.

We are proud that faculty played important roles in both of these campaigns – helping to challenge the misinformation circulated by the companies and their defenders, supporting the work of student activists on our campuses, and working to convince campus administrators to take a strong stand in support of workers’’ rights. Our goal is to expand and strengthen this vital faculty involvement through the creation of the Faculty No-Sweat Network.

We are asking you to do something none of us can ever recall asking colleagues to do before: help create brand recognition for a new apparel brand that is being launched this fall. Alta Gracia Apparel, named after the town in the Dominican Republic where the factory is located, is the first apparel brand committed to making its products in a factory

• where workers have union representation,
• where workers are paid a living wage (340% of the DR’s minimum), and
• where the WRC will have unfettered factory access to verify that all labor rights commitments are being met.

The Alta Gracia label is a brand of Knights Apparel, the largest maker of collegiate clothing. It shows that it is possible to make high quality, affordable apparel, while paying decent wages and guaranteeing humane working conditions. If this happens, it will raise the bar for the entire apparel industry worldwide. No longer will major clothing brands and their apologists be able to argue that sweatshop conditions are necessary to compete in the global economy.

This will only happen, however, if the brand is successful. It is now on sale at more than 200 universities. The challenge now is to market it successfully to students, faculty, and college alumni – to make the Alta Gracia label as recognizable and hip as the Nike swoosh. That is where you can help out.

If your school already sells an Alta Gracia t-shirt or sweatshirt, please buy one (or both!). It would also be great –assuming you are comfortable doing so– if you would wear the t-shirt or sweatshirt and tell your students about it. (The Alta Gracia website has a list of schools carrying the product.)

We would also encourage you to write a column for your campus newspaper urging students, faculty, alums, and others to purchase the Alta Gracia items and explain why it is important. It might also be helpful to co-author the column with a student or a sympathetic administrator. We would be pleased to draft the column for you, so just let us know.

If your school does not carry them, please urge your business officer to do so.
You will never have a better opportunity to make a purchase that will make a political difference.

Please let us know by return email (to Richard Applebaum at rich@isber.ucsb.edu) that we can add your name to the new Faculty No-Sweat Network, and take the extra step to model the Alta Gracia label. It is an excellent opportunity to educate students about the dynamics of apparel production and the possibility of changing them.

Sincerely yours,

Richard Appelbaum, MacArthur Chair in Global & International Studies and Sociology, UCSB
Mark Anner, Professor of Labor Studies and Political Science, Penn State University
Eileen Boris, Hull Chair in Women’s Studies, UCSB
Kate Bronfenbrenner, Director of Labor Education Research, Cornell University
Michael Burawoy, past president, American Sociological Association; Professor, UC Berkeley
Bob Bussel, Director, Labor and Education Research Center, University of Oregon
Tracy Chang, Director, Labor Program, Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations, Rutgers University
Dan Clawson, Professor, Sociology, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Jane Collins, University of Wisconsin
Altha Cravey, Institute of Latin American Studies, UNC
Hector Delgado, Professor, Sociology, University of LaVerne, Sociology
Peter Dreier, Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental College
Peter Evans, Professor, Sociology, UC Berkeley
Catherine Fiske, Founding Faculty, School of Law, UC Irvine
Richard Freeman, Herbert Ascherman Chair in Economics, Harvard University
Gary Gereffi, Sociology and Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Duke University
Mark Golub, Assistant Professor of Politics and International Relations, Scripps College
Tom Hayden, Visiting Professor, Scripps College
Kent Wong, Director, Center for Labor Research
David James, Professor, School of Cinematic Arts, USC
Robin Kelley, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, USC
Margaret Levi, Jere L. Bacharach Professor of International Studies, University of Washington-Seattle
Nelson Lichtenstein, MacArthur Chair in History, UCSB
John Logan, Senior Labor Policy Specialist, Labor Center, UC Berkeley
Susan Orr, Chair, American Democracy Project, SUNY Brockport
Ruth Milkman, Associate Director, Joseph S. Murphy Institute for Worker Education and Labor Studies, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Manuel Pastor, Director, Program for Environmental and Regional Equity, USC
Laura Pulido, Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and Geography, USC
Robert Ross, Director of International Studies Stream and Professor, Clark University
Gay Seidman, Professor, Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Harley Shaiken, Director, Center for Latin American Studies, UC Berkeley
Andrew Schrank, Graduate Chair and Advisor, Sociology, University of New Mexico
Chris Tilly, Director, Institue for Research on Labor and Employment, UCLA
Margaret Weir, Professor, Political Science and Sociology, UC Berkeley
Kent Wong, Director, Center for Labor Research and Education, UCLA
Helena Worthen, Professor, School of Labor & Employment Relations, University of Illinois Urbana – Champaign