[Fwd: [Pews] Scholars organize to defend sweatshops]

"Spener, David" wrote:

> A colleague just forwarded this to me.  It comes from the latest issue of
> the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Are any of you familiar with this
> Academic Consortium on International Trade?  Are any other scholarly groups
> organizing to criticize these "Chicago boys"?  Thanks for any insights you
> can offer.
>
> David Spener
> Trinity University
>
>                         Scholars' Letter Takes College
>                     Presidents to Task for Working With
>                     Anti-Sweatshop Groups
>
>                     By JULIANNE BASINGER
>
>                     About 200 scholars, including a Nobel laureate in
>                     economics, have signed a letter criticizing college
>                     presidents for working with two anti-sweatshop
>                     groups and urging the administrators to study the
>                     issues more carefully.
>
>                     The letter was written by a half-dozen academic
>                     economists and lawyers who specialize in
>                     international trade policy and economic law. The
>                     group, which calls itself the Academic Consortium
>                     on International Trade, began circulating the letter in
>                     July among other scholars to collect signatures, and
>                     plans to send it to college presidents across the
>                     United States next week.
>
>                     The scholars "are concerned about the process by
>                     which decisions are being taken by some academic
>                     institutions in the ongoing anti-sweatshop campaign
>                     to establish codes of conduct to be applied to
>                     American firms," the letter states. "We believe that
>                     the decisions on these matters by universities and
>                     colleges should be made only after careful research,
>                     discussion, and debate."
>
>                     The letter criticizes colleges' decisions to participate
>                     in two anti-sweatshop groups: the Worker Rights
>                     Consortium, and the Fair Labor Association. The
>                     association's members include 141 colleges and
>                     universities, as well as a dozen
>                     apparel-manufacturing companies. The consortium,
>                     which formed this year, has more than 50 colleges
>                     but no manufacturers among its members. The
>                     former has the backing of many higher-education
>                     associations, and the latter has more support among
>                     student activists, but the economists argue that both
>                     groups are misguided.
>
>                     The signers of the letter include Robert Lucas, a
>                     Nobel laureate in economics and a professor at the
>                     University of Chicago. The document accuses
>                     college administrators of making decisions on the
>                     basis of students' sit-ins and other campus protests,
>                     rather than first seeking the views of scholars and "a
>                     broader campus constituency of fellow students and
>                     the entire community of faculty members."
>
>                     Robert M. Stern, an economics professor at the
>                     University of Michigan and one of the leaders of the
>                     letter-writing effort, said Wednesday that the
>                     protests of the World Trade Organization's meeting
>                     in Seattle last year had prompted his group to write
>                     its letter to college presidents. "We felt that most of
>                     the protest is really being misdirected," he said. "Our
>                     main point is to call for a more effective process of
>                     dealing with these issues that would involve more
>                     careful research and better communication with
>                     economists who have researched and written
>                     extensively on these issues."
>
>                     In their letter, the scholars criticize the two
>                     anti-sweatshop groups for urging companies to raise
>                     the wages of their workers in developing countries
>                     above the prevailing market average for those
>                     countries. Their letter intimates that paying higher
>                     wages would limit the number of jobs in those
>                     countries and "worsen the collective welfare of the
>                     very workers in poor countries who are supposed
>                     to be helped."
>
>                     Michael Posner, executive director of the Lawyers
>                     Committee for Human Rights, one of the Fair Labor
>                     Association's founders, disagreed with the letter's
>                     assertions. "It's not legitimate to say companies
>                     know best," he said Wednesday, and the question
>                     of living wages needs further study.
>
>                     The association has sought to involve scholars who
>                     are experts on the issues, he said, and has held
>                     conferences at the University of California at
>                     Berkeley and the University of Wisconsin during the
>                     past couple of years to bring a range of academic
>                     experts together to discuss wages and working
>                     conditions for apparel laborers in developing
>                     countries.
>
>                     "I find a lot of the criticism in the letter a bit
> baffling
>                     and off-base, and I hope that university
>                     administrators will consider that the F.L.A. is a way
>                     to advance workers' rights in these industries in a
>                     way that can and should embrace the academic
>                     community and the expertise it brings," Mr. Posner
>                     said.
>
>                     Eric Brakken, one of the leaders of United Students
>                     Against Sweatshops, a member of the consortium's
>                     board, also disagreed with the letter. "There's a
>                     tremendous lack of understanding about what the
>                     W.R.C. really is and how much careful study
>                     students have done about this issue," he said.
>                     Moreover, many of the campus committees that
>                     colleges formed to decide whether to participate in
>                     the consortium included scholars from various
>                     disciplines, he added.
>
>                     The letter expresses concern about the "monitoring
>                     mechanisms established by both the Worker Rights
>                     Consortium and Fair Labor Association," saying
>                     they "may prove uneven and ineffective." The letter
>                     urges college presidents to consider working with
>                     other certifying and monitoring groups.
>
>                     Leaders in the consortium said Wednesday that their
>                     group hadn't developed any monitoring agenda yet,
>                     and had no plans to develop a broad certification
>                     system for factories' compliance with the group's
>                     standards. Instead, the consortium plans to focus on
>                     verifying workers' complaints and investigating
>                     violations in factories where workers have reported
>                     problems, said Maria A. Roeper, the consortium's
>                     interim director.
>
>                     The association released its monitoring benchmarks
>                     in July. Mr. Posner said those benchmarks are
>                     similar to the standards advocated by the letter
>                     writers.
>
> David Spener, Ph.D.
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Trinity University
> 715 Stadium Drive
> San Antonio, TX  78212  U.S.A.
> VOICE: 210/999-8562
> FAX: 210/999-8509
> EMAIL: dspener@trinity.edu
> WEB: http://www.trinity.edu/dspener
>
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