Your reporters state in the Wednesday, Sept. 26 Badger Herald that a Madison attorney “defended” the Fair Labor Association and that “According to [John] Rosenblum, the FLA is a sufficient monitoring organization because it promotes internal monitoring, independent external monitoring and an adequate complaints process.”

I did not “defend” the FLA and I did not describe it as a “sufficient monitoring organization.”

On the contrary, I expressly disagree with both characterizations.

I was asked by the university committee — literally after the panel began — to fill in for an absent FLA representative. As stated at the outset, my role was not to defend, adopt or explicate the FLA view, but to present the FLA content and structure in the most informative way possible given my work as a legal consultant to human-rights organizations and an adjunct professor on labor rights issues. I would have done the same for the Worker Rights Consortium if that had been necessary.

Aside from describing the FLA structure, I pointed out that the FLA is about to be tested in terms of its structure and capacity to monitor when it launches its large-scale monitoring this fall. I noted a series of subjects on which the FLA has been criticized, and sought to lay those out for inquiring students. I commended aspects of the WRC, and, in my most optimistic assessment, pointed out that the two organizations might at times complement each other in exposing oppressive factory management and outrageous working conditions.

My essential point is this: neither organization is sufficient. The only “sufficient” organization for workers is a union. So both the FLA and WRC must bear our intense scrutiny as they launch their initial monitoring, and they should be tested closely to see whether workers actually gain their own voice at work.

— Jonathan D. Rosenblum, Kelly & Petranech LLP