Six years ago, Boston College affirmed its Jesuit values and commitment to social justice by joining the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent monitoring body for sweatshops around the world.
By aligning with the WRC, BC pledged that its apparel would come from factories that upheld workers' rights and respected ethical standards. The proliferation of free-trade accords coupled with increased privatization and deregulation. however, has radically recast the global socioeconomic landscape.
Neo-liberal capitalist advancement now governs a new market-derived value system predicated on rigid economic growth, industrial development, and profit. These global forces have instigated a race to the bottom, in which multinational corporations are pitted against each other in search for the cheapest labor, nonexistent environmental standards, and unchecked labor law.
Yet in a seemingly hopeless path to material and ideological decay, there remains hope and opportunity for members of BC to resist and confront this current mode of capitalist hegemony.
Recognizing the perilous juncture of globalization in which we find ourselves, United Students Against Sweatshops, an international movement among college campuses, has developed a new program to address the inadequate enforcement of the WRC's standards and proactively challenge the dominant trends of the garment industry.
The Designated Suppliers Program (DSP) is the latest initiative designed to counter human and environmental devolution perpetuated by apparel corporations including Champion (our apparel licensee), Nike, and Reebok. As these corporations have little obligation, outside of any moral motivation, to adhere to basic labor law, the DSP aims at constructing an alternate mode of apparel production and consumption that upholds the fundamental human rights of all workers.
Under the auspices of this program, BC apparel will be supplied by factories that are mandated to respect the rights of their employees by affirming their right to organize, bargain collectively, and earn a living wage. Licensees (Champion, in BC's case) are required to pay a price to suppliers commensurate with the actual cost of producing under applicable labor standards, including payment of a living wage.
Licensees may bring any factory they choose into the program, provided that the factory can demonstrate compliance with the program's labor standards. Given the negligible increased cost to the licensee and the diversity of suppliers included, this program is both economically and logistically viable.
As of February 2007, 30 schools across the country, including Georgetown, Duke, Brandeis, University of Connecticut, and Columbia (among others) have adopted the DSP.
At BC, the United Students Against Sweatshops urges our own administration to pledge its commitment to economic and social justice by becoming the 31st. In a time when the problems we face seem abstract and distant from our everyday lives, the DSP offers opportunity for material change and a departure point for situating humanist values as the basis for economic relationships. We call upon BC to translate its Jesuit ideology into practice, to recognize our role in perpetuating global inequality, yet also identify the vast potential we have to construct a just future.
Phil Stango, A&S '07, Cynthia Frezzo, A&S '07, Ben Fuller-Googins, A&S '09, are members of the United Students Against Sweatshops.
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