Profs: Do not yield to activist pressure

University presidents across the country are under attack for the way they handle sweatshop issues. A group of economists and lawyers, including a Nobel laureate, is sending a letter to college and university presidents criticizing the decision-making process when it comes to labor monitoring organizations. Over the past few years, sweatshop monitoring has become a major cause for student activists at Penn and across the country. Students at many schools -- including the University of Wisconsin, the University of Michigan and Columbia University -- have held highly publicized protests and sit-ins over university policies for monitoring production of school-logo apparel. Now more than 200 scholars belonging to the Academic Consortium on International Trade signed the letter saying that schools are caving too quickly to pressure from student activists and not reviewing their options effectively. "We often encounter news reports of sit-ins by groups of students... after which decisions are often made without seeking the views of scholars," the letter states. There are two major monitoring groups -- the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium. Students favor the WRC, saying it is less corporate in its interests. The WRC has risen from less than 10 college members six months ago to 50 today, largely due to student pressure. Currently, Penn does not belong to either organization. Penn Students Against Sweatshops have been calling for WRC membership since their sit-in last February, which succeeded in forcing Penn to pull out of the FLA. The six authors of the letter emphasize the importance of process when schools choose to join monitoring groups. "We need more consultation on the issues. They're very complex, [and] we don't want to be ruled by sit-ins," co-author and University of Wisconsin Economics Professor Robert Baldwin said. PSAS member and College junior Matt Grove defended PSAS' actions last year when the group led a nine-day sit-in. He said the student activist group had gone through all the appropriate channels trying to persuade the administration to listen to their concerns. It was only when those means failed that PSAS decided that a sit-in was necessary. Grove also emphasized that PSAS members made a point to study the sweatshop issue. "Obviously our group had done lots of work regarding learning about [the FLA and WRC]," he said. "We were not uneducated on these issues when we had the sit-in." WRC Interim Director Maria Roeper also criticized the letter's assertion that decisions were being made in a haphazard fashion. "Most of the decisions to join the WRC have been done through a committee process," she said. Academic Consortium members worry about more than just the process through which the decisions are made, however. They are also concerned about the FLA and the WRC's commitment to improve workers' wages, which may very well mean paying workers above the minimum or prevailing wage. That could actually be more harmful than helpful for workers, the Academic Consortium believes. "The net result would be shifts in employment that will worsen the collective welfare of the very workers in poor countries who are supposed to be helped," the consortium's letter warns. It is unclear what type of reception the letter will receive when it makes it into the hands of university presidents. Included among the 200 signatures is that of Robert Lucas, a Nobel laureate and professor of Economics at the University of Chicago who signed because he feels that "people ought to be well informed before they make decisions." The names of the other signers are not being released at the moment. However, Robert Stern from the University of Michigan, who led the letter-writing effort, did say that one of the signatories came from Penn, but would not release his or her name.

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