Students called for Marquette to take a more active stand in protecting workers who make university apparel in a meeting with a university official yesterday.

Toby Peters, associate vice president for the administration, met Wednesday afternoon with Courtney Konyn, freshman in the College of Arts & Sciences, Marc Dettmann, senior in the College of Arts & Sciences and Drake Dettmann, junior in the College of Business Administration, to discuss the possibility of Marquette joining the Designated Supplier Program, a group of colleges and universities across the nation, in an effort to protect the rights of workers who sew university logo apparel.

Marquette has contracts with Nike, GEAR, Champion and Under Armour.

Peters said the first move for the administration would be to pull together representatives from the companies Marquette uses and find out where they stand on labor issues and which factories Marquette apparel comes from.

Peters said he would also consult MUSG and Mark McCarthy, assistant vice president of student affairs and dean of student development, about starting a student anti-sweatshop group.

"Sweatshops violate antitrust laws," Marc Dettmann said. "It's near impossible to enforce a livable wage."

The DSP would increase stability for these factories because they would have a contract with the companies that buy their products, he said.

Dettmann already has an anti-sweatshop student group called Ubuntu, which he started earlier this semester.

Ubuntu presented a short film last night about DSP and sweatshop conditions in the Alumni Memorial Union.

DSP Program

The program calls for factories to provide a living wage to their workers, worker's right to unions and fair working conditions in the factory.

Peters hesitated to commit Marquette to the program until more research was done and other groups gave their input on the program.

"Everyone (the administration) agrees with the concept of protecting the rights of workers," Peters said. "It all boils down to how we can make that happen."

According to Marc Dettmann, DSP requires that companies such as Nike which provide university apparel sign contracts with individual factories.

According to Zach Knorr, international campaign coordinator for the United Students Against Sweatshops, large companies like Nike do not own factories but contract with the factories that make their products.

The contract stipulates that supplier factories will provide most of the apparel and they will be obligated to respect the rights of their workers.

In order for factories to pay fair wages and respect their workers rights, the companies have to pay a price for the apparel that would fiscally cover the factory paying a living wage. The companies are required to maintain a long-term, stable relationship with the factories. The companies are also required to ensure that each factory receives sufficient orders for their products, which would keep the majority of the factories business in the collegiate market.

Dettmann said he did not know how DSP selects the factories receiving orders.

That process would have to be examined before Marquette would join the DSP program, Peters said.

The program has already been adopted by 30 colleges and universities across the nation including University of Wisconsin-Madison, Duke University, Georgetown University and the University of California system.

Monitoring the Factories

Marquette depends on the Collegiate Licensing Company, which in turn depends on the Fair Labor Association and the Workers Rights Consortium, to monitor overseas factories that make collegiate apparel.

Under the DSP program, the WRC would remain as the monitor to the factories in order to ensure workers' rights.

According to Peters, the collegiate market represents only 1.5 percent of the apparel industry.

"It is hard to really make an impact with such a small percent," he said.

Peters said he was impressed with the schools that have already joined, saying that schools like Duke University and Syracuse University have a lot of leverage in affecting change.

History

In 2001, JUSTICE set up the code of conduct that vendors on the Marquette campus must abide by, Peters said.

"This code is rigid and would also apply to the Spirit Shop," he said.

In the Feb. 13, 2001 issue of the Marquette Tribune, MUSG approved a code for all vendors on Marquette's campus.

The code called for independent monitors of factory conditions, inclusion of women's rights and paying workers a living wage.

MUSG also sponsored Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu, anti-sweatshop speakers. Keady spent a month in Indonesia working in a factory earning the same wage as the workers.

On Feb. 20, 2001, Vada Manager, director of global issues at Nike, submitted a viewpoint to the Tribune criticizing Keady, accusing Keady's visit to Indonesia as trivializing and demeaning the lives of Indonesians who work at the factories.