Less than six months after the University joined the Worker Rights Consortium, University President Dave Frohnmayer announced Tuesday that the school will also become a member of the Fair Labor Association, an unexpected surprise to the students and faculty who fought last spring for the school to join with the WRC.
“This decision was not thoughtlessly made,” Frohnmayer said at a Tuesday morning press conference. “I was buried in books, documents and conversations with people involved with the FLA.”
But ASUO President Jay Breslow, who was part of a 10-day protest last spring that supported the WRC and opposed the FLA, which he and other activists claim gives too much power to the apparel industry. He said he was disappointed that Frohnmayer made a quick move to join the FLA without direct student input, especially after a March 29 Emerald editorial when Frohnmayer wrote that the answers to the labor issue “must be found by all of us, working together.”
“All of a sudden, ‘ding,’ we were with the FLA,” Breslow said. “But there’s a key piece left out and that’s students.”
Part of the April protest was to promote shared governance and more democracy on a campus where Frohnmayer has the final vote on issues such as the WRC and FLA. Breslow said the fact that Frohnmayer didn’t inform him of the move until Monday afternoon was a setback to the effort started last year to increase the power of the student voice on campus.
But more than the FLA or the WRC itself, Frohnmayer said Tuesday’s decision was made to ensure effective compliance with the University’s Trademark Licensee Code of Conduct, which sets standards for the conditions in which University apparel is made.
“The code of conduct remains our central focus,” Frohnmayer said. “The sub-question is how to monitor compliance.”
For now, that question will be answered by the FLA and the WRC, both of which monitor labor conditions in factories producing apparel sold through many universities. The University will have simultaneous membership in both groups, a plan that about 15 other Universities are currently trying.
Frohnmayer considered joining both groups last spring but said Tuesday that the FLA has recently made great strides to change their practices, including a new University advisory committee. He added that he reviewed student input from last year about both groups and decided the FLA had changed enough to warrant University inclusion.
“The FLA is not the same organization that existed in spring,” he said.
The decision was also prompted by an interim report compiled this summer by the University Senate Review panel, which was appointed to oversee committee concerns with membership in the WRC. The report, presented to the president Monday, recommended that the University not bind itself to one organization.The review panel is comprised of four faculty members and no students, but the LCCC that recommended last year for Frohnmayer to join the WRC had student representation.
Frohnmayer said the addition of the FLA would better enforce the conditions of the licensing code of conduct and “not lose momentum by betting on one horse.”He made his decision to join the WRC last spring after almost a year of recommendations from the Licensing Code of Conduct Committee, the University Senate and after a 10-day student protest on the Johnson Hall lawn. A week after Frohnmayer signed on, Nike President and CEO Phil Knight, a University alumnus, pulled his personal donations to the University.
Frohnmayer said Tuesday that he made a courtesy call to Knight to inform him of the FLA decision but it remains unclear whether Knight will give money to the University any time in the future. Kirk Stewart, Vice President of Corporate Communications at Nike, said the FLA decision does not change Knight’s philanthropic association with the University.
Breslow was also critical of the president’s decision to announce the University’s membership with the FLA before the entire student body is on campus, classes haven’t begun and student activists are the most busy with other projects.
“He could have announced this earlier in the summer or in one week. There is no pressing issue that dictated us signing on with the FLA this week,” he said.
The main point of debate remains whether the WRC or the FLA are making the biggest strides to become the best monitoring group. Breslow and other WRC supporters claim the apparel industry has too much control and leeway in the FLA while those who favor the FLA have expressed worries that the WRC is not strong or stable enough to properly enforce conditions.
“The FLA has made dramatic moves in monitoring issues,” said Duncan McDonald, University vice president for development and academic affairs, who attended the WRC’s national meeting in New York City earlier this summer. The next WRC national meeting is scheduled for Oct. 2.
In Tuesday’s press conference, Frohnmayer also stressed that the change doesn’t signal the beginning of the end for the WRC’s ties with the University, and Breslow agreed.
“This decision [to join the FLA] will remain on an entirely different track,” Frohnmayer said. “It was not meant to undermine the University Senate review process [of the WRC].”
The choice to join the WRC and Knight’s reaction brought the University into the national spotlight. In contrast, today’s decision came quickly and with much less publicly, although Frohnmayer stressed that he took the recommendations from the past weeks and months under consideration.
But he also made it clear that, ultimately, the choice to join was his to make.”At some point, the buck does stop at my desk,” he said.
The first print issue of the Emerald, due out Sept. 25, will feature more information on the decision, student and faculty reaction and an in-depth look at how the FLA has changed and what sets it apart from the WRC.