Less than six months after the University joined the Worker Rights Consortium, University President Dave Frohnmayer announced last Tuesday that the school will also become a member of the Fair Labor Association. It was an unexpected surprise to the students and faculty who fought last spring for the school to join the WRC.
“This decision was not thoughtlessly made,” Frohnmayer said at a press conference on Sept. 19. “I was buried in books, documents and conversations with people involved with the FLA.”
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 under 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 schools are currently trying.
Frohnmayer admitted at the press conference that he considered joining both groups last spring, but said the FLA has recently made great strides to change its 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.
Both the FLA and WRC have their critics, but the administration and the student activists who fought last spring for the WRC are at odds about which group is best. The WRC had its first national meeting in July in New York City, and is not as far along in the organization process as the FLA, which is closer to being able to monitor the working conditions in factories. But student leaders adamantly disagree with Frohnmayer’s statements that the FLA has changed and removed the apparel industry’s influence on the FLA board, the primary complaint about the organization.
“The FLA cares more about factory owners than factory workers,” ASUO President Jay Breslow said.
The University president’s 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 on Monday, recommended that the University not bind itself to one organization.
The review panel comprises four faculty members and no students, but the licensing code of conduct committee that recommended Frohnmayer join the WRC last year had student representation.
Frohnmayer said the addition of the FLA would help to 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 and the University Senate and 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 from 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.
“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 national attention to the University. In contrast, Tuesday’s decision came quickly and with much less publicity, although Frohnmayer stressed that he took the recommendations from the past weeks and months under consideration. Many who supported the WRC last year were also vocally against joining the FLA, and Frohnmayer said he reviewed those comments again before making his decision.
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.