Latest revision as of 00:00, 12 May 2006

Labor Rights

Definition

When we talk about Labor Rights or Workers Rights, the focus in on the conditions of Labor in a particular situation. Labor is one of the three factors of production in Classical Economics, alongside with Land and Capital, and is of course essential to the the functioning of every society and system of production. Economists measure the rate of retribution that each factor of production gets from its input. In this case, the important rate is the "Rate of Returns to Labor". Some critics of the current system of production use the argument of the lowering and lowering returns to Labor, as an indicator of the lowering living standard of working families. This is not to say that CEOs of large corporations are getting pay cuts. Even more, we know that the opposite is occuring. Nevertheless, lower returns to labor occur in the most basic stages of production, not at high managerial positions.

If a lowering rate of return to Labor is paired with a higher rate of return to Capital, an issue of class and classism arises. Who are those who own the majority of Capital resources in the United States? Not the working classes. A simpler way of understanding this is the following premise: this process makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. The working classes only have their Human Capital, their Labor to take to the market. This is a clear example of structural or macro-level working of classism.

Labor Injustices in Colleges & Universities

Unfair Labor can and probably does occur everywhere. The t-shirt you are wearing may have been sowed by 12 year-old children, who get paid 7 cents an hour; the person that cooks your food, cleans the floors at your dorm, washes your bathrooms, they might all be victims of Unfair Labor.

Campus Workers

A college community is composed by:

Students
Faculty
Administrators
Non-student workers

Even though student workers can be underpaid, the focus in general is directed to full-time non-student workers that can be and usually are underpaid, especially in big Universities. The definition of underpayment in such situation is linked not only to minimum wage for the particular State, but also to State indicators of the minimum amount of money a family needs monthly to support itself and not fall below the poverty line. Students at colleges and universities nationwide were appaled when they discovered that workers in their school had to go on welfare because their wage could not support their family. The Harvard Living Wage Campaign's slogan was: "Workers can't eat prestige". Unfair Labor does not only have to do with wages, but also with impossibility to unionize, lack of benefits, etc.

Sweatshops

There is no common consensus as to how exactly a sweatshop is defined. SweatshopWatch, an NGO commited to the struggle to end unfair labor conditions, uses the following one:

A sweatshop is a workplace that violates the law and where workers are subject to:

Extreme exploitation, including the absence of a living wage or long work hours,

Poor working conditions, such as health and safety hazards,

Arbitrary discipline, such as verbal or physical abuse, or

Fear and intimidation when they speak out, organize, or attempt to form a union.

A broad definition would include any workplace in which unfair labor practices happen. The relation of these workplaces with colleges and universities is that generally apparel but many other things as well that are sold at the school, with or without the school logo, can be made at these places. The concept put forth by students protesting This of course is not a problem of colleges and universities in themselves, but rather of entire sectors of the economy, including the garment industry. The root of the widespread use of sweatshops can be traced to the modern economic concept of outsourcing and the effects of Economic Globalization and Free Trade Agreements, all which will be discussed in Section 2.2

Activism for Workers' Rights

Student Social Action for Workers Rights, closely linked to struggles against classism, is part of a larger tradition of activism in colleges and universities both at the US and elsewhere. First, we will discuss the History and tradition of activism in the US, and then focus on some of the causes for the rise of this new movement in the 1990s that continues until today. We will also describe and analize several different current student organizations, their successes and challenges still ahead. Finally, we will provide means and ideas for students at Dickinson to Get Involved and fight injustice at their college or university.

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History

The student struggle for workers rights has perhaps its initial seeds in the coalition between student organization and labor unions. However, the actual movement for Labor Rights is stemmed in the struggle against Globalization and its consequences. It is a battle against the order established, against injustices both on the personal and the public sphere, both at home and far away; and that is a struggle that has a long history:

"Although the first nationally organized student movement in America occured in the 1930s, student opposition to the established order had a long tradition. The history of protest within and against American colleges and universities is nearly as old as the institutions themselves. While most undergraduates have tended to be inactive and passive, the have had periods of sudden and explosive activity. From the earliest days, college students in the United States have rebelled against what they considered repressive authority and unrepresentative administrations."

(Brax, 1981, p.3)

Student activism is clearly a long-lasting tradition in the United States. In fact, the first student rebellion in a college or university in this country happened in 1766 at Harvard University (Brax, 1981, p.3). Nevertheless, this phenomenon has not had consistency throughout the decades. During the 1930s, as Brax suggests "change [...] occurred in most students' life styles and political views, change that proved to be significant because it involved students for the first time in the broades societal issues of war and peace and the protection of civil liberties." (Brax, 1981, p.17) However, the movement died out in the beginning of the 1940s with the US involvement in the Second World War, when the peace and anti-interventionism ideals lost most of its appeals.

The 1960s are, according to Robert Rhoads, the "high-water mark of student protest"(1998, p.vii). In his own words:

"It is particularly the decade of the 1960s that speaks to the actions of contemporary student activists. The democratic concerns of the 1960s [...] launched major campus movements against social inequality, limited student rights, and American Imperialism. [...] While the Civil Rights Movement had launched a momentous wave of student activism, it was the Peace Movement that closed the door on the decade of campus unrest."

(Rhoads, 1998, p.viii-5)

The 1960s were not only a time of high student activism in the United States, but also in many other places in the world. It's an interesting coincidence to note that during the Spring of 1968, students were taking control of the Sorbonne in Paris, Columbia University in New York City and the National University of Mexico, in Mexico City. The French May was qualified by Jean-Paul Sartre as one of the most important revolutionary moments in History.

The 1960s gave way to the 70s, and even though student activism grew and exploded in other parts of the world, especially in Latin America, the US movement receded:

"No one is quite sure what happened. Maybe the few most commited activists who tended to generate the passion of protest simply burned out or graduated and got on with their lives. By the mid-1970s the economy had slowed down and perhaps students had more to worry about than 'equity and justice for all.'[...]Instead of campus wars over policies and politics, the vast majority of students of the mid to late 1970s waged their battle against polyester and embraced political apathy."

(Rhoads, 1998, p.55)

The 1970s and 1980s saw perhaps a rise in other types of activism, but the common struggle against the larger structural injustices of the system experienced a strong decline. Nevertheless, it is important to understand that at this point there seems to be a diversification and separation between different struggles, which in the past could have been seen together. The Civil Rights Movement in the 60s gave way to the Peace Movement, and they were strongly linked in the search for justice and equality. During the following decades, movements against sexism, heterosexism, racism, environmental justice, all took their own separate paths, becoming independent movements.

The movement that arises in the 1990s and peaks in 2000 for Labor Rights can be linked with the auge of the 1960 simply because of its challenge of the whole structure of society. Globalization and Neoliberalism reinforced a process as old as the system itself, that one that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. The fight for Labor Rights falls into a larger scheme of an "Anti-Globalization" movement, as the media has tagged it. According to Naomi Klein, there is inherent irony in this tag, because this movement is "turning Globalization into a living reality, much more than a 'multinational' will ever be able to". (2002, p.15)

Globalization & Inequality

"Globalization has created a world without walls, an explosion of democracy and diversity within democracy"

Bill Clinton

"Globalization has not brought the supposed interdependence, but rather an accented dependency. Not only is wealth far from globalizing, but poverty has extended. The abbyss between North and South has turned so huge that it is evident how unsustainable the current economic order and the blindness of those who pretend to justify it are."

Hugo Chávez Frías

In the current Global Economy, profit-maximizing corporations seek to minimize the cost of Labor. Because of this factor, companies in general have stopped hiring low-skilled labor in their country of origin, where Labor tends to be quite expensive in relative terms, and have established themselves in places where workers can be hired at relatively lower wages, sometimes in slave-like conditions. This is what modern economists denominate outsourcing.

Factories in which Labor conditions are below certain basic standards, as explained in Section 1.2.2. are denominated sweatshops. These types of factories started to become widely spread throughout the apparel industry in the 1990s, where Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) allowed for trade barriers to be taken down, and the possibility of lower costs of Labor became a possibility through outsourcing. One of the most known cases is that of the maquiladoras in Mexico. Because of the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, apparel produced in Mexico with U.S. material is exempt from any taxes, except for the added Labor value, which can go down to even a couple of cents. It were these conditions which students started protesting against.

Student activism in the area of Labor Rights in the Age of Globalization started around 1993, when student organizations started pushing colleges and universities to terminate contracts with Pepsi becauce of its relation with the despotic government of Burma. In 1997, Pepsi, because of student, consumer and investor pressure, declared a complete pullout from Burma, and the finalizing of relations with the dictatorship that ruled the country in that time.

In that same year, 1997, and in the midst of a huge victory for the nationally-based, student-led Free Burma Coalition, the first anti-Sweatshops groups start coming together in colleges and universities accross the country. One year later United Students Against Sweatshops is formed in a conference of student anti-Sweatshops movements in Washington DC.

Student Movements

"These kids have grown up in an era when the role of marketing is to cool-hunt, to find and co-opt the latest, most cutting-edge, most radical ideas coming out of this culture. But I think that growing up in that context has pushed some people in this generation to think about what isn't co-optable. And that's in part why I think we're seeing a deeper questioning of the way capitalism works."

Naomi Klein, talking about College Students (Cooper, 2001)

Student Activism for Labor Rights has taken many forms such as organizations, campaigns, coalitions, NGOs. Some of them are purely student-based; others comprehend faculty and staff from schools; and some even external professional advisors. From the wide spectrum of these forms of activism, three of the most important ones, perhaps the most important ones, have been chosen not only to illustrate the power of student activism, but also how these expressions intertwine and connect, as they all stem from the basic notion of justice.

United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS)

Workers Rights Consortium (WRC)

Living Wage

Progress & Challenges

Nowadays, 200 colleges and universities in the U.S. and seven more accross the Globe are active members of United Students Against Sweatshops. This organization has not only had successful sweat-free campaigns, but has also achieved victories in Living Wage campaigns and many more.

Living Wage campaigns in Harvard, Swarthmore and Georgetown have been cornerstones for the Living Wage movement for their successes. On a different note, recently, Coca-Cola has been kicked off NYU because of student pressure.

Even though many battles have been won, the road ahead is still very long. Many colleges and universities, including Dickinson College, are yet to undertake SWEAT-FREE and LIVING WAGE campaigns. Even more, in those colleges in which those campaigns have been held, victories have not always been total, especially in the case of Living Wages.

What Can We Do?

Sweatshop University

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The Dickinson College Bookstore is currently affiliated with the Fair Labor Association, which provides its members with a list of all apparel products that are produced under "fair labor conditions". As explained in WRC, association with this organization does not provide a confident reliability that the clothing is actually produced in such conditions.

Students activist groups have been attempting to push for the Bookstore and the College to affiliate with the Workers Rights Consortium, as well as to affiliate Dickinson with USAS. Nevertheless, the lack of support from the larger student body has inabilitated concerned students to make their concern taken seriously by the administration.

WE NEED YOU!

Support Campus efforts for Dickinson Students to join United Students Against Sweatshops and the Administration to affiliate with the Workers Rights Consortium during the Academic Year of 2006-2007! Help concerned Dickinson Students raise the issue of sweatshop conditions to the Administration. We can make Dickinson a SWEATSHOP-FREE UNIVERSITY!

Living Wages

Students at Dickinson have raised this issue in the past years. However, the lack of massive support by the Student body has not allowed for students to be able to guarantee campus workers that joining with Activist groups to face the Administration will not jeopardize their working condition.

In order to conduct a successful Living Wage Campaign, Activist groups on Campus NEED YOUR SUPPORT'!

Join Activist Groups!

Help Make a Difference!

Back to Student Social Action Movements

Sources

Brax, R. S. (1981) The First Student Movement: Student Activism in the United States During the 1930s. New York: Kennikat Press

Cooper, M. (2001, April) Naomi Klein on Why Kids Raised on Cool Take a Stand on Trade. Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2001. Retrieved May 8, 2006 from: http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0429-05.htm

Klein, N. (2000) No Logo. Toronto: Random House

Klein, N. (2002) Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate. Toronto: Random House

Rhoads, R. A. (1998) Freedom's Web: Student Activism in an Age of Cultural Diversity. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press

United Students Against Sweatshops (2004, January) Comparison of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the Fair Labor Association (FLA). Retrieved May 8, 2006, from: http://www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org/docs/wrc_fla_04.doc

United Students Against Sweatshops (n.d.) About USAS: Principles of Unity Retrieved May 8, 2006, from: http://www.studentsagainstsweatshops.org/about/about.php

Van Heerden, A. (2006) Human Rights and Brand Accountability: How Multinationals Can Promote Labor Rights. Fair Labor Association. Retrieved May 10, 2006, from: http://www.fairlabor.org/all/news/Speeches/FLA_CHRC2006.pdf