Opinion: Column
SLAC’s good intentions no good
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Also by Sam Clegg:
- Lunch trays signal end of America (April 30, 2009)
- SSFC right on; ASM muddles on as year ends (April 28, 2009)
- Far left coalition shattered from Monona to Mendota (April 21, 2009)
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Even if the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the Student Labor Action Coalition must be very pleased with itself. How could it not be? After a concerted effort by the organization, the University of Wisconsin decided to sever its contract with Russell Athletics, an apparel company accused of having permitted unfair labor practices at an 1800-worker plant managed by one of its subsidiaries in Honduras.
Consider it a triumph of progressivism at the local level. The factory had purportedly been closed by Russell in retaliation for attempts by workers to unionize and demand higher wages. In response, UW cut its contract. And Tuesday night, SLAC had two of the union’s organizers, Norma Castellanos and Moises Alvarado, speak about their travails to a motley assortment of activists.
To be certain, the conduct of Russell’s affiliate company, Jerzees de Honduras, was vicious in some respects. The Fair Labor Association conducted three independent reports, and their conclusion indicated that union workers had, far from experiencing simple hostility, been threatened with death via decapitation. Castellanos and Alvarado confirmed the allegations in their speeches.
So given the facts, how could any person with a semblance of compassion argue that SLAC was wrong in pushing the UW to sever its contract with Russell?
The issue, sadly for the absolutists, is considerably more nuanced than SLAC is willing to admit.
Firstly, the FLA, in the same report, indicated the factory had closed primarily due to economic reasons, and cited a declining demand for Russell products as well as the closure of three other Russell factories in Honduras last year alone.
Then there’s the problem of SLAC’s presentation of the issue. Before Castellanos and Alvarado came onto the stage, a primitive flowchart was drawn on the chalkboard, inexplicably connecting Warren Buffet, whose conglomerate owns Fruit of the Loom and therefore Russell, to the abuse of workers themselves. What should have been a relatively straightforward critique of brutal management and indifferent government became an indictment of a single corporate figure who is, unfortunately for SLAC’s whimsically self-important activists, very marginally connected with the companies he owns, busy as he is with giving away the vast majority of his fortune to the same causes the campus left habitually agitates for.
SLAC astoundingly fails to understand that agitation in the form of a boycott of Russell products, a move intended to hurt the company, will in the end only boot thousands of workers out of jobs. This has already proven to be the case in Honduras.
Certainly, any benefits of cheap labor must be balanced by concerns about the safety of workers. But to make the logically ridiculous leap that wages must exceed the value the market sets for them is not only silly — it harms the very people it paternalistically claims to be helping. For every Honduran worker who cannot subsist on $60 a week, there are multitudes of Southeast Asian workers who can. Is the university therefore morally obligated to deny them employment?
Although SLAC is no doubt loath to admit it, efforts to restrict a company’s ability to set its own wages will either cause it to invest in mechanization processes that make workers from the Third World inessential, or those companies will simply go elsewhere.
So will the former workers get new jobs after contracts are cut? Or will they return to the same cycle of rural poverty that has dominated the lives of those living in the developing world for the past century? SLAC, despite its palpable smugness about its very ephemeral success, provided not a single answer.
As for Castellanos and Alvarado, they are painfully uncertain about their future. The factory they worked in is closed, permanently for now. Russell has the opportunity to reevaluate its contract with the university until March. In the meantime, 1800 workers are out of a job, potentially for much longer, all so SLAC can deem itself morally superior for having struck a blow against that omnipotent bogeyman of leftists everywhere — the American corporation. Then again, I didn’t see anyone from SLAC volunteer to employ the people whose jobs Russell had terminated. And if an illusory notion of moral vindication is all the SLAC has to offer in return for the lost work, then all they have accomplished is the placement of one more brick of good intentions on the long, long road to hell.
Sam Clegg (sclegg@badgerherald.com) is a sophomore majoring in economics and history.
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Great article.
-David Lapidus
The University’s reason for cutting ties was the anti-Union implication that shutting the plant down had. The FLA denied this claim; should the University have cited human rights violations?
It looks like you need to get your facts straight before making outlandish claims. For one the FLA summary indicated that the plant closed for economic reasons. However the 30 page report indicated serious labor violations. Also the FLA is funded by the very companies that it is investigating. Do you really think that fruit of the loom, nike, or addidas is going to put out negative info about itself?
Next the plant didnt close because we cut the contract, Russell agregiously violated the labor codes of conduct and as a result we cut the contract. By the time the contract was cut the plant was already closed.
And to the question of why SLAC isnt employing any of the workers, well I dont know maybe because they are COLLEGE STUDENTS not multinational conglomerates. It is the duty of the students of this campus to hold the suppliers of UW apparel in check and demand that it treats its workers fairly and with respect. And by the way paying them $60 a week (under Honduran minimum wage) is by no means respecting the workers right to support their families and to rise above the lowest poverty levels.
I was doing some math last night based on the info the workers relayed about the conditions at their factory, and it’s astounding how much these garment workers are exploited:
The workers make $40 per week in wages.
It’s common that hooded sweatshirts at UW bookstore cost $40 each.
Each worker must make the quota of 160 hoodies per day. 160 hoodies times $40= $6400 in revenue each worker creates for Russell each day. Each workers annual income= $40 per week times 50 weeks per year= $2000
EVERY DAY EACH WORKER’S CREATED REVENUE FOR RUSSELL THAT IS THREE TIMES THEIR ANNUAL INCOME!
You should be ashamed of yourself for not reporting (or even knowing) that FLA is funded by companies it reports on. That’s like citing a global-warming skeptic whose funding comes from ExxonMobil. Did you even know that the FLA isn’t the only group issuing such reports, or that it is not the one that UW-Madison works with?
Typical Badger Herald. This kind of reporting is why the Herald exists in the first place.
Not sure how to take this article or columnist seriously when no mention is made of the WRC. “Oops.”
The WRC was not mentioned in this column because I find it hard to view it as a legitimate organization. As noted by “Inside Higher Education,” the WRC’s ideas of improvements to its code included, for example, requiring that a certain percentage of a company’s factories to have unions. Such a quota is confusing. If unions are good, shouldn’t all factories be unionized? Why a quota? And what does this empirically cause companies to do? Move elsewhere. Additionally, as of 2006, Scott Nova, executive directory of the Consortium, pointed out that only 8 of some 2000-3000 factories that made college apparel were in compliance with the guidelines set by WRC. As for the group’s advocacy against child labor, it may hurt the very individuals it claims to help - the issue, like I argued, is significantly more nuanced than SLAC or WRC is willing to admit. Nicolas Kristof made a similar claim in his argument against boycotting sweatshops, pointing out that for many children in the third world, the alternative means of employment in black-market jobs is much more dangerous and far lower-paying. Unless the WRC and SLAC can ensure the children who will not work in factories will not be forced to work in more dangerous conditions, they should cease their attempts to regulate economies of which they have almost no understanding. Finally, I apologize for my portrayal of the contract cutting. I should have made it more clear that the factory was already closed. However, the original argument still stands - how will cutting the contract with Russell benefit other workers who make/made Wisconsin apparel, and how will imposing high costs on companies NOT induce them to simply go elsewhere? Those arguments were not answered in the above commentary; instead vitriolic claims were made about the FLA being run by corporate stooges. And yet, the FLA nonetheless made arguments against Russell, arguments which I acknowledged. It is hardly fair to argue, as 2:29 did, that FLA is both illegitimate and simultaneously capable of pointing out violations when they do indeed occur, usually the hallmark of a competent organization.
-Sam Clegg
“As for the group’s advocacy against child labor, it may hurt the very individuals it claims to help”
You heard it here, folks— Sam Clegg supports child labor.
Anyone who says child labor is wrong in all circumstances supports the murder of children. There are children all over the world who have no hope of getting an education and yet are facing starvation. The choice is not always between work and school, but sometimes it is between work and starvation. An outright ban on child labor in all circumstances can mean causing a child to starve to death.
For some evidence of the above comment, see
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/15/opinion/15kristof.html
A must read for anyone who supports bans on sweatshops or child labor.