Sweatshop Workers, Allies Discuss Workers' Rights

The Workers' Rights Consortium, an organization monitoring labor rights, kicked off its 10-day, 12-university speaking tour Friday. The tour's function is to highlight recent improvements in some Mexican textile factories that produce apparel licensed to universities nationwide with panel discussions.

WRC's schedule also includes stops at Duke University, Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin and the University of Southern California.

During their stop at UNC, panelists traced the development of an independent workers' union at the Kukdong plant in Atlixco, Mexico -- a major victory in the factory's battle for improved food, treatment and wages.

"UNC goods are made in about 2,700 factories, so we can think of this as one down, 2,699 to go," said Rut Tufts, UNC's director of trademarks and licensing and a representative on the WRC board of directors.

Tufts also is a board of directors member of the Fair Labor Association, another labor watchdog group. The University belongs to both organizations, although in recent years students have pushed to sever ties with the FLA.

WRC Executive Director Scott Nova that it was support from schools like UNC that helped bring about changes at Kukdong. "These recent changes represent a breakthrough in Mexican labor rights," Nova said. "Despite the courage and perseverance of the workers involved, there would have been no success without the pressure put on government officials and factory managers by U.S. universities."

The development of a code of conduct for the factory has transformed the way that companies like Nike and Reebok think about labor rights issues, Nova said. "It shows that universities can have a concrete role in the real world, with real issues."

Panelist David Alvarado translated for Marcela Munoz Tepepa, a Kukdong factory worker, and Huberto Juarez Nunez, a researcher in economics at the Autonomous University of Puebla.

As a key leader in the movement, Tepepa told audience members she was glad to meet them in person. "This is very personally important for me, because I am a worker who has made sweatshirts for this University," she said.

She said because the government of Mexico has historically sided with business owners on workers' rights issues, UNC's support was critical. "Without international support, it would have been impossible for us to win."

Nunez agreed with Tepepa's assessment of government-business relations. "Right now there are protection unions, but for the most part, they protect the interests of the company, not the workers," he said.

Nunez went on to say that industrial restructuring, such as the workers' rights movement, has the potential to alter Mexico's export-based economy. "With the first organized and successful response (in Kukdong), we saw something interesting," Nunez said. "Women and mothers were able to significantly impact the social movement in Mexico -- their creativity and audacity broke the myth that the factory worker is extremely skilled but extremely docile."

Nova said he hopes students nationwide will continue to exert pressure on their universities to demand fairness for factory workers. "Universities have significant power in the global market," he said. "Students should keep doing exactly what they've done to revolutionize the process."

Despite the success at Kukdong, Tepepa said the struggle for unilateral workers' rights is still in progress. "I would compare it to a fruit tree -- you have to let the tree grow before you can harvest the fruit," she said. "But once the fruit is there, no one will be able to deny us that."

The University Editor can be reached at udesk@unc.edu.