Finals week was fast approaching when 15 University of North Carolina students occupied the administration building in Chapel Hill on April 17. For years, Student Action with Workers (SAW) has been pushing their chancellor, James Moeser, to pledge not to buy university apparel from sweatshops.

Nine years earlier, UNC had adopted a labor code of conduct for its apparel suppliers—after a four-day student sit-in. But this spring students spent 16 days occupying the same building in an effort to enforce that code. "We have been forced to take action because of the failure of the UNC to live up to its supposed commitment to workers’ rights," said senior Salma Mirza. 

Student sit-in at UNC admin office—photo from www.fightbacknews.org

SAW activists transformed the administration building into a communications center, launching an online petition, organizing a call-in campaign to Moeser’s office, and broadcasting video feeds from inside the sit-in as well as endorsements from student groups, faculty, unions, and elected officials. Their blog connected the action to a history of student-worker solidarity at UNC, including two 1969 food service strikes, during which strikers established alternative "food stands" outside the dining halls. "We are talking about sweatshops, but also housekeepers, grad students, and adjuncts," said Mirza. Junior Anthony Maglione discussed strategy with one of the housekeepers on the night shift whose aunt took part in the 1969 dining hall strikes. "We want to build this with campus workers who get up at 2:00 AM to clean our classrooms," he said.

Duke Students Against Sweatshops came from Durham to fill shifts at the sit-in and organize a solidarity camp-out and breakfast. After winning support from their own administration, students like Andrew Zonderman made the eight mile trip to Chapel Hill more frequently, to build statewide support for the program. "The DSP [Designated Suppliers Program] won’t be completely effective until a majority of the collegiate apparel market is signed on. It’s going to be the UNC’s and other universities with successful Division I athletics with large support bases that are going to tip the scales," he said.

In the last dozen years anti-sweatshop organizers have built an impressive network across campuses. When Chancellor Moeser went to Washington, DC for a conference on global development, United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) activists from the area met him outside and brought the protest inside, too.

"We knew people working in the hotel that were cleaning rooms and asked them to leaflet each room about the sit-in," said SAW protestor Linda Gomaa.

Designated Suppliers

The UNC sit-in was the latest round in a nationwide campaign led by USAS to pressure universities to adopt its Designated Suppliers Program. When schools sign the DSP, they agree to source their licensed apparel from factories where workers receive a living wage and have the right to organize. After a six-month grace period, participating schools would begin sourcing 25 percent of each licensee’s apparel from designated factories. After three years, the proportion would rise to 75 percent.

The program compels licensees like Nike and Adidas to pay more for apparel so that factory owners can pay their workers a living wage—which would be set in negotiations led by the workers’ organizations. Forty-five schools have signed on, but await support from other colleges before forming a list of designated suppliers and implementing the program.

The idea for the DSP grew from another project USAS helped conceive, the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a factory monitoring organization composed of student representatives, college administrators, and labor experts. WRC’s factory inspections keep schools and licensees up to speed about labor abuses in their supply chains, but WRC lacks the ability to alter sourcing decisions as the DSP proposes to do.

Weak Enforcement

With the WRC monitoring, it’s more like saying to companies, ‘It would be nice if you complied’," said Claudia Ebel, a University of Colorado student on the WRC’s governing board. Without an enforcement plan, factories like BJ&B in the Dominican Republic where workers organized for higher wages, have lost business from licensees and subsequently shut down.

The other major sweatshop monitoring organization on campuses is the Fair Labor Association (FLA), directed by a mix of officials from major corporations, nonprofits, and universities. Student activists see the FLA as hopelessly compromised.

In late 2007, for example, the WRC received reports of racial discrimination and anti-union intimidation at a New Era hat factory in Mobile, Alabama, which produces Tar Heel apparel for UNC. Against the wishes of UNC’s licensing committee and SAW students, Moeser upheld New Era’s decision to keep WRC monitors from entering the plant and approved a factory audit by an FLA-accredited monitoring firm instead.

Students saw a glaring conflict of interest. New Era Vice President Tim Freer not only sits on the FLA board of directors, but SAW reports that he conducted captive audience meetings with workers during the plant’s eventually successful union organizing drive.

Moeser and other college presidents, who have the final say on university apparel and licensing decisions, still harbor doubts about the DSP’s anti-trust implications.

The WRC rescinded its request for a Business Review Letter, sensing that a Bush-heavy Department of Justice would return an unfavorable interpretation of the DSP. Supporters point to the 2006 legal opinion of former Assistant Attorney General and anti-trust expert at the Department of Justice Donald Baker. As long as the designated list of suppliers is formed on humanitarian grounds, argued Baker, "the probability of a Licensee or Factory mounting a successful legal challenge to the program remains low."

If this past spring is any indication, the campaign to push beyond these weaker programs is reaching critical mass. In April dozens of students at Penn State, University of Montana, and Appalachian State launched office occupations to confront administrators about the unfulfilled labor codes of their universities.

The UNC sit-in, for its part, made real gains before five students were led out in handcuffs on May 2. Last August, Moeser had rejected the possibility of signing on to the DSP. He reversed that decision on the 12th day of the sit-in, calling an emergency meeting of the licensing committee in hopes of appeasing students.

"It was getting close to commencement," Mirza said, "and donors were coming through campus."

Though the licensing committee voted 7-5 against endorsing the DSP, it did move unanimously to put the issue before UNC’s new chancellor next fall.

Students have spent years fighting for codes of conduct and factory monitoring groups. The road to implementing the DSP appears long, but is getting shorter and the arrests at UNC are more a sign of progress than defeat. "This wasn’t just about the sit-in. We’ll come back to meetings next year with more support," said Gomaa. "I’m optimistic about our position."