In 1999, one Saint Louis University student began a campaign to ensure that SLU would continue the fight against sweatshops.
On Tuesday, April 24, SLU President Lawrence Biondi, S.J., made the final decision to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium, an organization that strives to prevent inhumane factory working conditions. A campaign eight years in the making is now over.
By choosing to affiliate with the WRC, SLU will join more than 100 other colleges and universities across the U.S. in their mission to ensure that the factories producing items with their college logo, such as clothing, comply with basic labor rights of workers.
The WRC investigates working conditions of factories where the affiliate university’s merchandise is manufactured, after which a comprehensive report about any violation is compiled and released to the university and the general public. The WRC then works to rectify problems that are found either during their own factory assessments or in complaints that are filed with the WRC by workers.
Despite the positive impact of the WRC in factories across the world, the initiative did not take off immediately.
There were concerns among members of the President’s Coordinating Council that, under the WRC’s regulations, any factories found to have broken codes of conduct would be closed down, leaving all the workers out of a job and effectively making a bad situation worse.
“The question then came up,?’Is it just for us to support an organization that could cause this to happen?'” said Evan Krauss, SGA president and the only student member of the PCC.
However, since part of the foundation of the WRC is to educate factory owners about running a plant that is respectful of labor rights, members of SLU United Students Against Sweatshops assured the PCC that shutting down factories was not the way the WRC operated.
The final decision does not come as a complete surprise-many were fairly convinced it would pass beforehand, including Krauss.
“Students who have worked?and supported this campaign have exemplified many?of the teachings we receive here at SLU . I am confident that Fr. Biondi will support the students’ effort to enhance?our sense of social responsibility,” Krauss said before the decision was announced.
The campaign first got its start on campus in 1999 by a student named Cab Gutting, who passed an SGA Code of Conduct in 2000 that was similar to the WRC requirements. In 2005, the future SLU USAS co-directors John Carroll and Christina White took over the project.
“In the fall [of] 2005, we decided we needed a student organization focusing on economic injustice,” said Carroll. “So we began meeting with Katie Jonas [also a USAS co-director] and formed SLU’s own United Students Against Sweatshops.”
USAS spent the majority of last year working to become a chartered student organization and writing a constitution.
This year, they focused on campus education to raise awareness for their cause among SLU students. After passing legislation in the SGA about WRC affiliation, USAS went before the PCC for the first time at the PCC’s monthly meeting in February.
The PCC met again this March, where USAS made another presentation advocating an affiliation with the WRC.
“The students worked hard on the proposal, researching the various issues and preparing themselves to answer all the questions that needed to be answered. Their presentation at PCC was excellent,” said Kent Porterfield, vice president of student development.
The presentation is what led to a PCC recommendation, which in turn led to the eventual decision from Biondi, marking an end to a long campaign for the students.
“From my perspective, choosing to affiliate is yet another positive action we can take to support our social justice values as a University. I congratulate the students for their hard work and persistence, which clearly paid off,” said Porterfield.
