SLA

Brown University Student Labor Alliance

New York October 19, 1999- At a press conference today, students from Brown University announced that Brown will become a founding member of the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), a new factory verification organization developed by USAS in consultation with human rights groups and factory workers. The purpose of the consortium is to enforce university sweatshop Codes of Conduct. Brown is the first school in the country to join the WRC.

Brown University set a date of October 15th to pull out of the Fair Labor Association (FLA) unless their principles were met. The principles were not met, and Brown students are still calling for Brown and other schools to pull out of the FLA and join the WRC. Brown's president, E. Gordon Gee, said yesterday, "It should be very clear to everyone that I do not find the progress made to date by the FLA to be satisfactory."

Brown's affiliation with the WRC kicks off the largest-ever campaign by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), a national student anti-sweat group. The goal of the campaign is to get schools to join the WRC and withdraw from the FLA. Wednesday, October 20 is a national day of action at over 120 college and university campuses nationwide. Brown, for example, will be holding a "sweatshop fashion show," with students modeling Brown t-shirts and sweatshirts while an announcer describes the sweatshop conditions under which they were produced. "If administrators thought they had it bad during the spring sit-ins, wait until this campaign gets started," said Irene Tung, a Brown Senior.

"By joining the Worker Rights Consortium, Brown is leading the way," said Nicholas Reville, a Brown Junior. "The WRC is a fundamentally different model of factory verification which focuses on building connections between workers, local human rights organizations, and universities."

"The FLA system of factory monitoring has shown itself to be ineffective, and they have shown no desire to improve their standards or procedures," said David Moore, a Brown Junior. "I think schools are beginning to
recognize that sweatshop monitoring is best done on a local level that's responsive to workers-the Worker Rights Consortium makes this possible."

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