University of Colorado at Boulder Chancellor G.P. "Bud" Peterson today announced he intends to initiate new actions to help higher education institutions receive more accurate and consistent information from licensed apparel manufacturers regarding labor disputes and factory closures among their subcontractors.
"We currently have no reliable way to independently confirm the conditions that lead to labor disputes, work stoppages and factory closures," said Peterson. "The conflicting information we often receive on factory conditions and closures adversely affects our ability to enforce our apparel manufacturing code of conduct."
Peterson cited the recent closure of the BJ&B factory, owned by a South Korean company, Yupoong, in the Dominican Republic. The factory, which manufactured college ball caps for Nike and Reebok, had made key reforms and even certified a union. But from 2004 on, its workforce shrank from 2,000 to just 350.
Recently, it announced all work would stop by May 22.
"The groups with which CU-Boulder is affiliated, the Fair Labor Association (FLA) and the Workers' Rights Consortium (WRC), tell two completely different stories about the closure," said Peterson. "Nike, our main sports apparel supplier and a client of the factory, offers yet a third version. We simply can't make policy decisions with this kind of conflicting information, and we have no way to conduct outreach to every one of our suppliers' factories to verify these situations."
Peterson said he will ask for clarification from Nike on the closure and to help account for discrepancies between its version of events at BJ&B and those of the WRC and FLA. He also intends to raise the issue of workplace verification with his fellow CEOs at other colleges and universities to generate ideas about how to resolve these issues.
Peterson hailed the work of CU-Boulder's Licensing Apparel Committee (LAC), chaired by CU-Boulder history Professor William Wei, for its work in identifying other key issues and action items for the administration.
"The LAC's work, and that of Vice Chancellor for Administration Paul Tabolt, has been key to moving CU ahead on apparel manufacturing issues," said Peterson. "And this despite the myriad complications formed by the political, economic, cultural and business considerations involved. The committee and VC Tabolt have spent, by our calculations, more than 750 people hours on the sweatshop issue this academic year alone, and yet moving ahead remains stymied by our inability to receive consistent and reliable information."
CU-Boulder's LAC plans to hold its final meeting of the semester in May to discuss Professor Wei's recent trip to El Salvador, where he was a member of a WRC fact-finding delegation. He will, among other things, provide an update on the textile industry in El Salvador.