When the University lost the ability to be a member of the controversial Worker Rights Consortium, the broader fight to improve the working conditions in factories producing University apparel died along with the school’s membership in the WRC.
In the seven months since the Oregon University System passed a statewide rule essentially dissolving the University’s ties with the WRC and the Fair Labor Association, the previously unavoidable WRC and FLA acronyms have been nonexistent on campus.
But the WRC has continued to expand its membership base, recently adding Notre Dame, Ohio State University and Syracuse University to its list of member schools. The organization has also completed two investigations of reported attempts to keep factory workers from unionizing, one in New York state and one in Mexico.
University President Dave Frohnmayer said he still considers the group young and inexperienced.
And ASUO President Nilda Brooklyn said with the work done by last year’s student government, and the lack of a strong student voice pushing for change, her administration has no plans to tackle the labor issue.
“What could be done that hasn’t already been done?” she said. “Every step I could take is a step that’s already been taken.”

Frohnmayer said when the student leaders who camped outside Johnson Hall for 10 days in spring 2000 graduated last spring, it marked the end of a dip in momentum that began even before the OUS passed its rule — and a dip that had been happening nationwide.
“Worker rights was almost uniquely an issue from the winter and spring of 2000,” he said.
Frohnmayer believes student leaders lost some of their momentum because they didn’t speak for the majority of students, especially after Nike CEO Phil Knight vowed never to donate his personal money to the University again in response to the WRC decision.
Frohnmayer added that the worker rights issue in general reinforced his belief that students need to work within the system before turning to protest and lists of demands that must be met immediately. He said the WRC issue had been decided before a single tent had been pitched on the administration’s lawn.
“That’s a weapon to be chosen very carefully,” he said. “Purity of intent isn’t enough in this business.”
Even though a major issue explodes on campus every year before dying down just like the WRC, Frohnmayer said this one led to a “short-term political fix that had long-term consequences” because student leaders never told him how important the WRC was to them.
He said he stands by the OUS decision, adding that he would have removed the University from the WRC not long after the OUS decision came out.
Although Brooklyn agreed that students need to work with the administration, she said the work of her predecessors in the ASUO office demonstrated to her that students can enact change when they feel official avenues have failed. Brooklyn was working as an intern on the ASUO Multicultural team and didn’t participate in the protest. As president, however, she’s applying the lessons she learned from observing her predecessors, especially realizing the actual power students have when they organize and work collectively.

The WRC protesters outside Johnson Hall “had complete confidence that they had the right to demand,” she said.
She added that although she doesn’t see her office leading a new campaign for worker rights this year, the specific efforts to support the WRC also have left a legacy on campus.
“This forced us to talk,” she said. “There are now people who think about who made that uniform.”
For those who are thinking about “who made that uniform,” the WRC is expanding to offer the public more information. WRC Executive Director Scott Nova said the WRC Web page, at workersrights.org, now lists where schools’ clothing is made.
Nova said the WRC boasts 82 schools in its membership, and the University continues to be the only school that has quibbled over its legal ability to pay its WRC dues and has been barred from membership.
The WRC has tackled labor complaints at the Nike factory in Mexico last winter and spring, and at a New Era sports cap factory in New York. Nova said the group has successfully improved conditions and the workers’ ability to unionize, but said conditions still need to change for the better. Neither Nike nor Reebok has placed orders at the Mexico factory since the labor dispute ended.
“Ultimately, the proof is in the pudding,” he said. “It’s a story whose conclusion is yet to be written.”
But Frohnmayer said he will remain skeptical of the group’s abilities until it finds a system for monitoring labor as a whole. Single investigations aren’t enough to change the problem, he said, and the reports from those investigations run the risk of being “sensational and “anecdotal” as a result.