While supporters of the Worker Rights Consortium have recently been the most outspoken voices on the labor rights issue, many members of the business community firmly maintain that American-based international corporations are not exploiting lesser developed nations and that labor monitoring organizations aren’t necessary.
“We’d be stupid not to do the right thing,” Russell Athletic spokeswoman Nancy Young said. “We have a set of global standards, which in some cases is more stringent than anything the [labor monitoring organizations] have come up with. It’s just good business.”
The WRC, which the University joined April 12, and other labor-rights monitoring organizations are intended to make American corporations comply with basic labor standards in foreign countries
Young said that employees of companies making products for Russell Athletic are at least 15 years old, are paid the minimum wage of their countries plus overtime pay and are not subjected to corporal punishment or unsafe working conditions.
“Our concern is for the people who work for us and the people who work for our suppliers,” she said. “It’s our number one priority, and it’s going to stay our number one priority.”
The priorities of American-based international corporations become the priorities of their licensees in other countries, opponents of monitoring organizations say.
“We do whatever our customers say,” said Luc Helena, spokeswoman for La Gaviota, a factory in Puebla, Mexico, which holds contracts with Nike and other American companies. “If they told us to sing in the shower, we’d do it to meet our quotas.”
Helena said La Gaviota has willingly maintained the working conditions mandated by Nike.
She said La Gaviota employees are at least 18 years old, are offered medical insurance and a safe working environment and are paid $5.87 per day, which is $1.27 higher than Puebla’s average minimum wage.
Many opponents say that because overseas factories are forced to uphold good labor conditions to attract workers, intervention of a non-profit or government agency is unnecessary.
“It’s a slippery slope when American citizens attempt to impose on other countries values that those countries don’t feel are appropriate,” said Raymond King, associate dean of the business school.
King didn’t entirely write off monitoring groups, though.
“I certainly leave open the possibility that there are behaviors in certain places at certain times that I wouldn’t agree with,” he said.
He said some standards, such as child labor, should be enforced by the international community while other standards, such as wage rates, shouldn’t be imposed.
University finance professor Larry Dann said he doesn’t oppose monitoring organizations but has apprehensions about the WRC’s exclusion of business representatives.
“There is concern about organizations grandstanding and looking for violations,” he said. “It should be done with some type of balance that involves all participants.”