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Labor Fight Ends in Win for Students
By Steven Greenhouse
New York Times, 11/18/09
The anti-sweatshop movement at dozens of American universities, from Georgetown
to U.C.L.A., has had plenty of idealism and energy, but not many victories.
Until now. The often raucous student movement announced on Tuesday that it had
achieved its biggest victory by far. Its pressure tactics persuaded one of the
nation’s leading sportswear companies, Russell Athletic, to agree to rehire
1,200 workers in Honduras who lost their jobs when Russell closed their factory
soon after the workers had unionized.
>From the time Russell shut the factory last January, the anti-sweatshop
>coalition orchestrated a nationwide campaign against the company. Most
>important, the coalition, United Students Against Sweatshops, persuaded the
>administrations of Boston College, Columbia, Harvard, New York University,
>Stanford, Michigan, North Carolina and 89 other colleges and universities to
>sever or suspend their licensing agreements with Russell. The agreements —
>some yielding more than $1 million in sales — allowed Russell to put
>university logos on T-shirts, sweatshirts and fleeces.
Going beyond their campuses, student activists picketed the N.B.A. finals in
Orlando and Los Angeles this year to protest the league’s licensing agreement
with Russell. They distributed fliers inside Sports Authority sporting goods
stores and sent Twitter messages to customers of Dick’s Sporting Goods to urge
them to boycott Russell products. The students even sent activists to knock on
Warren Buffett’s door in Omaha because his company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns
Fruit of the Loom, Russell’s parent company. “It’s a very important
breakthrough,” said Mel Tenen, who oversees licensing agreements for the
University of Miami, the first school to sever ties with Russell. “It’s not
often that a major licensee will take such a necessary and drastic step to
correct the injustices that affected its workers. This paves the way for us to
seriously consider reopening our agreement with Russell.”
Other colleges are expected to do the same. Analysts say the college market
occupies a significant part of Russell’s business. Because Fruit of the Loom
does not detail Russell’s sales, it is not known how large a part.In its
agreement, not only did Russell agree to reinstate the dismissed workers and
open a new plant in Honduras as a unionized factory, it also pledged not to
fight unionization at its seven existing factories there. Mike Powers, a
Cornell official who is on the board of the Worker Rights Consortium, said
Cornell had canceled its licensing agreement because it viewed Russell’s
closing of the Honduras factory as a flagrant violation of the university’s
code of conduct, which calls for honoring workers’ freedom of association. He
applauded Russell’s agreement, which was reached with the consortium and union
leaders in Honduras over the weekend. “This is a landmark event in the history
of workers’ rights and the codes of conduct that we expect our licensees to
follow,” Mr. Powers said. “My hat is off to Russell.”
John Shivel, a spokesman for Russell and Fruit of the Loom, said, “We are very
pleased with the agreement between Russell Athletic and the Workers Rights
Consortium, and look forward to its implementation.” He declined to discuss
why Russell had adopted a friendlier attitude toward unionization after years
of aggressively fighting unions. In a statement Russell released jointly with
the apparel workers’ union in Honduras, the company said the agreement was
“intended to foster workers’ rights in Honduras and establish a harmonious”
relationship. “This agreement represents a significant achievement in the
history of the apparel sector in Honduras and Central America,” the joint
statement said.
In the past, the Honduran workers condemned Russell’s behavior, saying that it
had fired 145 workers in 2007 for supporting a union. The union’s vice
president, Norma Mejia, said at a Berkshire Hathaway shareholders’ meeting last
May that she had received death threats for helping lead the union. Russell
denied the assertion. Union leaders in Honduras hailed the agreement, which
would put hundreds of laid-off employees back to work in a country whose
economy has been hit by a political crisis over who will lead it. “For us, it
was very important to receive the support of the universities,” Moises
Alvarado, president of the union at the closed plant in Choloma, said by
telephone on Tuesday. “We are impressed by the social conscience of the
students in the United States.”
This was in no way an overnight victory — it came after 10 years of building a
movement that persuaded scores of universities to adopt detailed codes of
conduct for the factories used by licensees like Russell. In addition, the
students, sometimes through lengthy sit-ins, pressured their officials to
create and finance an independent monitoring group, the Worker Rights
Consortium, that inspected factories to make sure they complied with the
universities’ codes. When the consortium issued a detailed report accusing
Russell of violating workers’ rights, United Students Against Sweatshops began
its nationwide campaign.
Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, which has more
than 170 universities as members, said: “This represents the maturation of the
universities’ codes of conduct. There’s a recognition by the universities of
their ability to influence the actions of important brands and change outcomes
for the better.” He said the agreement was “unprecedented” in terms of scope
and size and in “the transformative impact it can have in one of the hardest
regions of the world to win respect for workers’ rights.” Mr. Nova also
praised Russell for changing course. “I think the executives at Russell
recognized it was time for a new approach,” he said. “They decided it was
important for the success of their company.”
As part of its campaign, United Students Against Sweatshops contacted students
at more than 100 campuses where it did not have chapters, getting them
involved, including at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, where
Fruit of the Loom has its headquarters. The group helped arrange a letter
signed by 65 members of Congress, who voiced “grave concern about reports of
severe violations” of labor rights at Russell. This time around, the students
did not feel the need to resort to sit-ins to persuade university
administrators. “The schools remember our sit-ins of the past,” said Dida
El-Sourady, a senior at the University of North Carolina. “There’s an
institutional memory that students will escalate their tactics, and this could
become a very big deal, a lot bigger than people holding signs.”
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