Vote “No Sweat”

By Travis Pillow

The question of whether or not the University of Florida should join the Worker Rights Consortium, which helps ensure that licensed athletic apparel is not made in sweatshops, will be on the ballot during Student Government elections, Feb. 23-24. As if the Reitz Union Fee isn’t reason enough to show up and vote, this non-binding resolution will show the administration that students want UF to help improve working conditions in poor countries.

Fine Print editor Lydia Fiser recently dug up an old Nation article about how a similar battle played out a few years ago at Florida State, a “campus known more for holding national titles in football and ‘party school’ rankings than for student protest activity (sound familiar?).” The FSU student body supported WRC membership, but activists had to wage months of protests. The ultimately set up a tent city on their version of the Plaza of the Americas, which they kept up for months:

The tent-city protest was intended to end a long debate with the administration, which refuses to join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a sweatshop monitoring agency backed by the protesters and faculty, which passed a resolution supporting the students’ position. Instead, the arrests marked the beginning of a long standoff between the administration and student protesters, who now find themselves living in tents and sleeping bags to protest both the sweatshop issue and the administration’s refusal to tolerate the earlier protest–well after their classmates have gone home for the summer.

FSU ultimately joined the WRC, only to leave a few years later. So what was true for them then may be true for us now:

Sit-ins, protests and campouts have been required at many of the 100 universities who have now joined the WRC, and in this respect, FSU is no different. But the consequences of Florida State joining the WRC could be much more substantial than those at many of the other member schools, which might explain why the conflict has become so protracted at Florida State. Pendas says the possible impact of FSU joining is “huge…. We’re such a big university…and we’re in the South, for Christ’s sake!” He predicts a “domino effect” that would result in several other Florida universities joining–perhaps most importantly, the University of Florida, another football powerhouse with millions in licensing revenue pouring in each year.

The fight on our campus is important, and to some extent, history is on our side. Other southern schools, including our SEC rivels at Tennessee – have joined the WRC. And UF recently decided to stop licencing with Russell Athletic, which just lost a long battle with workers and students over a closed factory in Honduras. We have no illusions that voting “yes” will gaurantee UF joining the WRC – itself only a small part of the efforts to end the “race to the bottom” that continues to drive down wages and working conditions in the world’s poor countries – but it will surely help.