Subject: Anti-Sweatshop Campaign Issues
From: Robert Stern (rmstern@umich.edu)
Date: Tue Aug 29 2000 - 12:24:03 EDT
You may already have received from me in late July an E-mail message and
a letter from the Steering Committee of the Academic Consortium on
International Trade (ACIT) concerning the issues raised by the
Anti-Sweatshop campaign on American campuses and the decisions that have
been taken. Our objective is to assemble a group of American academic
economists who wish to be signatories of the letter, which will be sent
around mid-September to the presidents of American universities and
colleges.
Since you may not have received the initial E-mail or may have been away
from campus in the past month, you will find below a copy of the ACIT
letter and an attachment containing the list of U.S. academic
signatories compiled to date. Some other U.S. and foreign signatories
are also included as the initial E-mail apparently reached beyond
members of the U.S. academic community.
We have decided to extend the deadline for signatories until *September
15, 2000.* If you wish to be a signatory, please let me know by return
E-mail: rmstern@umich.edu.
Information about ACIT and links to information on the sweatshop issues
can be found at: www.spp.umich.edu/rsie/acit/.
You may already have received from me in late July an E-mail message and
a letter from the Steering Committee of the Academic Consortium on
International Trade (ACIT) concerning the issues raised by the
Anti-Sweatshop campaign on American campuses and the decisions that have
been taken. Our objective is to assemble a group of American academic
economists who wish to be signatories of the letter, which will be sent
around mid-September to the presidents of American universities and
colleges.
Since you may not have received the initial E-mail or may have been away
from campus in the past month, you will find below a copy of the ACIT
letter and an attachment containing the list of U.S. academic
signatories compiled to date. Some other U.S. and foreign signatories
are also included as the initial E-mail apparently reached beyond
members of the U.S. academic community.
We have decided to extend the deadline for signatories until *September
15, 2000. * If you wish to be a signatory, please let me know by return
E-mail: rmstern@umich.edu.
Information about ACIT and links to information on the sweatshop issues
can be found at
www.spp.umich.edu/rsie/acit/.
July 29, 2000
Please find below a letter addressed to the presidents of American
universities and colleges with regard to the issues raised by the
Anti-Sweatshop campaign on American campuses and the decisions that have
been taken. In this letter, we urge that the Anti-Sweatshop issues be
subjected to more critical analysis and debated and discussed more
widely than has been the case to date.
The authors of the letter are economists who are members of the Academic
Consortium on International Trade (ACIT). ACIT is a group of academic
economists and lawyers who are specialized in international trade policy
and international economic law. ACIT's purpose is to prepare and
circulate policy statements, letters, and papers dealing with issues of
current importance to policy officials, members of the academic
community, and other groups and the public. These are posted on the
ACIT web site, www.spp.umich.edu/rsie/acit/. The members of the ACIT
Steering Committee are listed below, together with signatories of this
letter from a number of American academic institutions.
Dear Sir/Madam:
We, the undersigned, are concerned about the process by which decisions
are being taken by some academic institutions in the ongoing
Anti-Sweatshop campaign to establish Codes of Conduct to be applied to
American firms manufacturing apparel with university/college logos in
poor countries and about the choice among agencies appointed to monitor
the activities of these firms.
We believe that the decisions on these matters by universities and
colleges should be made only after careful research, discussion, and
debate in a manner appropriate to informed decision-making. However, we
often encounter news reports of sit-ins by groups of students in the
offices of university/college administrators, after which decisions are
often made without seeking the views of scholars in the social sciences,
law, and humanities who have long discussed and researched the issues
involved or of a broader campus constituency of fellow students and the
entire community of faculty members. Furthermore, little attention has
been given to whether the views of the Anti-Sweatshop campaign are
representative of the views of the governments, non-government
organizations (NGOs), and workers in the poor countries that are
directly involved in the manufacture and in the export of apparel and
related goods.
We recognize the good intentions of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC)
and the Fair Labor Association (FLA), which are the two main
anti-sweatshop groups competing for membership commitments by
universities and colleges. Both of these groups, however, seem to
ignore the well-established fact that multinational corporations (MNCs)
commonly pay their workers more on average in comparison to the
prevailing market wage for similar workers employed elsewhere in the
economy. In cases where subcontracting is involved, workers are
generally paid no less than the prevailing market wage. We are
concerned therefore that if MNCs are persuaded to pay even more to their
apparel workers in response to what the ongoing studies by the
anti-sweatshop organizations may conclude are appropriate wage levels,
the net result would be shifts in employment that will worsen the
collective welfare of the very workers in poor countries who are
supposed to be helped. Further information on this and other issues
involved in the anti-sweatshop campaign is posted on the ACIT web site.
We are also concerned that the monitoring mechanisms established by
both the Worker Rights Consortium and Fair Labor Association may prove
uneven and ineffective. Other certifying and monitoring organizations
should also be considered, such as the Council on Economic Priorities
Accreditation Agency (CEPAA), an international non-government
organization with considerable experience in administering a Social
Accountability Standard (SA8000). Under SA8000, member companies are
required to comply with national and other applicable laws and to
respect the principles of worker rights embodied in the pertinent
Conventions of the International Labor Organization (ILO), the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, and the United Nations Convention on the
Rights of the Child.
In view of the complexity of the broad economic and related issues that
the subject of "Social Responsibility" raises, we stress the need for
universities and colleges to properly research, debate, discuss, and
take decisions on this matter in a manner more appropriate to the fact
that they, of all institutions in society, must promote informed
decision-making.
ACIT Steering Committee
Robert E. Baldwin, University of Wisconsin
Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University and Member of SA8000 Advisory
Board
Alan V. Deardorff, University of Michigan
Arvind Panagariya, University of Maryland
T.N. Srinivasan, Yale University
Robert M. Stern, University of Michigan
List of Signatories
See attachment
Bob Stern
--
Prof. Robert M. Stern rmstern@umich.edu
Dept. of Economics/Public Policy www.umich.edu/~rmstern
University of Michigan
440 Lorch Hall, 611 Tappan Street phone: 734-764-2373
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1220 fax: 810-277-4102
