Last weekend featured one of America’s most significant holidays: Thanksgiving. In recent years, there has been considerable attention paid to a kind of consumerist holiday taking place the day immediately after, dubbed Black Friday. However, I would like to suggest that even a third holiday took place this weekend: N30 (short for Nov. 30), the ninth anniversary of the Seattle World Trade Organization riots. N30 could be considered the Anti-Black Friday, a much-needed reminder of the consequences of our drive to get our hands on more shit as quickly as possible.
It is in observance of N30 that I think it’s important the University restart a conversation many universities are currently having: how our trademark licensing policies can lead to the exploitation of foreign workers. For example, Russell Athletic, a company licensed by the University of Oregon to make sportswear products with our name on it (literally), announced last month that it was closing one of its factories in Honduras and firing the factory’s 1,800 workers. This particular factory specializes in collegiate-licensed apparel, such as the gray, hooded sweatshirts sold at The Duck Store.
The Workers Rights Consortium, of which the University was once an affiliate, has issued a report investigating the closure and believes, based on its monitoring efforts, that Russell Athletic closed the factory in response to efforts of its employees to unionize and petition for their workers’ rights. Russell is accused of closing the factory simply to oppose the unionization of its employees long before any anything had actually been done that would have raised their costs. It’s important to remember that Russell is an Oregon licensee, so we, too, profit from Russell choosing to ignore the rights of their Honduran workers. But this is not the first time Oregon has found itself unintentionally embroiled in the globalization debate and, if we don’t start talking again about our licensing practices, it surely will not be the last.
Several years ago, a group of Oregon students successfully pressured the University to affiliate with the Workers Rights Consortium, an organization that monitors foreign factories for labor abuses. The decision sparked a backlash from one of the University’s most loyal supporters: Nike founder and Oregon alumnus Phil Knight. Knight, in a letter to the University, at the time argued that the WRC serves little purpose other than fighting globalization in order to bring
apparel jobs back to the U.S. – a mission that, if it were true, would not even be that bad. Knight’s own apparel company had on several occasions been criticized by the WRC for failure to uphold labor practices. But the message of the Nike donor was clear: Beggars cannot be choosers.
The University, after having taken millions in donations from Nike profits, was stuck having to decide between a major revenue source and its interest in making sure licensees profit from its brand and trademark responsibly. The University shortly thereafter ended its relationship with the WRC, effectively succumbing to its donors’ complaints. It is important to remember, also, that the University’s hand was forced when the Oregon University System made it illegal for its member institutions to make business decisions on any basis other than profit and legality. This policy, however, needs now to be questioned in a more significant way.
Nine years after the Seattle WTO riots, it’s clear that the battle for globalization without social externalities is still being fought. In the long run, if we expect Oregon’s licensing profit to approach any kind of economic, social or ecological sustainability, we must change the way we do business. Given the anti-worker practices of licensees like Russell, it is time for this University to begin a new chapter in its history with workers’ rights issues, and now begin to rekindle the flame that inspires the vision of a fair trade world – one where we will be able to know that the UO gear we buy at the bookstore and the profits we receive from its sale are made without externalizing the costs of their production onto their workers.
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