President Simpson received an unexpectedly large amount of mail on Tuesday morning when UB Students Against Sweatshops (SAS) personally delivered over 1,000-signed petitions to his secretary's desk.
The petitions, signed by students and community members, requested that UB adopt the Designated Suppliers Program, a policy that would ensure the school buys apparel products from suppliers whose factories meet standards for fair treatment of employees.
"The secretary's desk was covered in them," said Joanna Boron, a senior linguistics major who helped organize the event. "It was quite a visual."
SAS presented the petitions to raise awareness of a factory in Honduras owned by Russell Athletic, a company that owns Jerzees and supplies collegiate apparel to universities across the country, including UB to a small extent, according to Boron.
Boron said that after a labor union was voted into the factory in Honduras, the company fired 300 employees involved in the union. Schools that join the Designated Suppliers Program would suspend their contracts with companies that don't support workers' rights and labor unions.
So far, 45 schools have signed on to the program, including State University of New York at Albany.
"This works best when there is a lot of people working on it that can put a lot of pressure on factories to treat workers better," Boron said.
SAS has been working for a year to push UB to join the program, sending letters to Simpson asking him to meet with them on the issue. So far, no meeting has been scheduled.
Simpson was not in his office when the petitions were dropped off, but his secretary said she would deliver them, according to Boron.
"Hopefully the petitions will be looked at and taken into account and not pushed aside," Boron said.
"I want to thank the students for bringing this matter to my attention. I have directed UB's Sweat-Free Apparel Committee to take a close look at this situation, listen to the concerns of UB's students and provide a recommendation for how UB should proceed," Simpson said in a statement released through News Media Relations.
The Sweat-Free Apparel Committee he cites consists of UB faculty and students who aim to make sure that all of the university apparel the school sells is produced in a fair labor environment.
"UB is committed to upholding those standards," Simpson said.
The group had a victorious moment eight years ago when they convinced the administration to adopt the code of conduct set forth by the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent organization that monitors labor rights particularly in factories making goods with university logos on them.
Yet the code, Boron insists, is not very enforceable when it comes to violations of worker rights, and it would be more beneficial if the schools joined together to suspend contracts.
"This is part of a larger movement to end global poverty and global disparity," Boron said. "This is avenue where students have the power to do something."
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
