Human Rights in Our Own Backyard

Injustice and Resistance in the United States

William T. Armaline, Davita Silfen Glasberg, Bandana Purkayastha

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780812205145
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Most Americans assume that the United States provides a gold standard for human rights—a 2007 survey found that 80 percent of U.S. adults believed that "the U.S. does a better job than most countries when it comes to protecting human rights." As well, discussions among scholars and public officials in the United States frame human rights issues as concerning people, policies, or practices "over there." By contrast, the contributors to this volume argue that many of the greatest immediate and structural threats to human rights, and some of the most significant efforts to realize human rights in practice, can be found in our own backyard. Human Rights in Our Own Backyard examines the state of human rights and responses to human rights issues, drawing on sociological literature and perspectives to interrogate assumptions of American exceptionalism. How do people in the U.S. address human rights issues? What strategies have they adopted, and how successful have these strategies been? Essays are organized around key conventions of human rights, focusing on the relationships between human rights and justice, the state and the individual, civil rights and human rights, and group rights versus individual rights. The contributors are united by a common conception of the human rights enterprise as a process involving not only state-defined and implemented rights but also human rights from below as promoted by activists.

PART I

ECONOMIC RIGHTS

All human beings have the right to the economic, social, and cultural rights that are the prerequisites for human dignity and survival. In the United States, economic, social, and cultural rights are particularly contested. Among the many necessary and inalienable rights identified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) are several that address the notion of economic rights. These include housing, the right to work, the freedom to choose where to work, fair and humane work conditions, protection from unemployment, equal pay for equal work, fair living wages for work done, reasonable limitations to the hours of work demanded, and the right to create and join unions to protect their interests as workers.

Economic rights are key to human dignity and survival, as well as the ability to secure social rights such as housing, education, health care, and food. Economic justice is strongly related to issues of racialized and gendered inequality. But what happens when the rights of employers to make business decisions concerning their private capital and employment practices clash with individuals’ rights to jobs, fair wages, and the like? What happens when the rights of workers in one country are at odds with the rights of workers elsewhere? What effect have the changes in the global economy had on workers’ rights?

Moreover, although the UDHR focuses on the rights of workers, economic rights extend to consumers as well. What is the relationship between the rights of workers and those of consumers? Are their rights necessarily contradictory? Additionally, people consume more than manufactured, tangible goods; they also consume credit to access important necessities of life like housing. What role do institutions providing credit to purchase homes play in the realm of human rights, equality, and economic justice? How do individuals resist the power of major institutions like multinational corporations and large national/international banks to gain economic justice?

Chapters in this section explore these questions, exploring the rise of sweatshops and the resistance of colleges to licensing garments made in sweatshops; the rise of contingency workers to replace full-time permanent workers; and the specter of predatory mortgage lending and its role in reproducing racialized economic inequality.

CHAPTER ONE

Sweatshirts and Sweatshops: Labor Rights, Student Activism, and the Challenges of Collegiate Apparel Manufacturing

Julie Elkins and Shareen Hertel

On a sleepy December weekend in 2004, just twelve days before Christmas, the Hartford Courant, the hometown newspaper for the University of Connecticut, delivered a startling gift. Splashed across the front page, above the fold, with a huge accompanying color photograph, was the headline: “As Colleges Profit, Sweatshops Worsen” (Kaufman and Chedekel 2004: 1). The face of a tired, middle-aged Mexican woman—a factory worker in a textile plant that manufactures sportswear bearing the university’s friendly Husky dog mascot and classic navy and white UConn logo—dominated the front page. The photograph was taken in a small town a few miles from the U.S. border and a lifetime away from the leafy campus of a university known nationally and internationally for its academic human rights programs.

The news story was indeed a paradoxical gift—because it revived a spirited debate on campus over the ethics of university procurement of athletic wear. It propelled a move by UConn to revisit its position on corporate social responsibility. And it opened the way for collaboration between UConn and other universities and colleges nationwide in efforts to raise the living and working conditions of the people who manufacture logo-bearing apparel and other products in factories around the world.

But cynics might ask: why bother trying to remedy poor working conditions a continent away? Is it beyond the mandate of a public university to improve the social welfare of people only tangentially connected to it through a long and complicated business supply chain? Even if it were the responsibility of a university to protect workers’ rights, aren’t the means for doing so woefully inadequate to the task (or overly complex)?

The responses to the cynics are multidimensional. This chapter explores the normative foundations for the university’s responsibility to protect and promote workers’ rights. It analyzes the role student activists have played as a catalyst for change in related university policies over time. And it explores the changing institutional landscape that UConn and other colleges and universities now navigate on a daily basis in the course of doing business in the global marketplace.

Normative Background and Literature Review

The University of Connecticut is a public institution. Under national labor law, all public institutions are required to uphold worker rights and labor standards covering everything from working hours and wages to health and safety, nondiscrimination, and protections from forced labor, hazardous child labor, and other forms of abuse. The United States has ratified a number of binding international treaties on human rights which obligate the country to ensure that state institutions (such as UConn) along with private sector actors (such as private universities, colleges, and companies) are regulated by national labor law.

For example, the United States has ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which prohibits slavery and forced labor (Article 8) and protects workers’ right to freedom of association (Article 22). The United States has also ratified several of the core labor rights treaties developed over the past century by the International Labour Organization (ILO), including ILO Convention 105 on forced labor and ILO Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labor. Labor rights are also included in the labor side accord to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), so the Mexican woman staring out from the front page of the Hartford Courant is also protected (at least in theory) by regional trade law covering workers’ rights in the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

In addition, there are a number of examples of “soft law” (i.e., nonbinding norms) that influence U.S. government action on labor rights enforcement, albeit less directly than “hard law” such as the treaties discussed above. The ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work of 1998, for example, outlines the fundamental or “core” set of labor rights that includes nondiscrimination, protection against forced and child labor, and the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining.¹ The Limburg Principles (1986) and Maastricht Guidelines (1997) spell out the manner in which states should implement economic rights (including labor rights). The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and the UN Norms on the HR Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises further outline the respective responsibilities of states and corporate actors in relation to human rights.

But in practice, how far does the law extend beyond the borders of the United States? How aware is an institution like the University of Connecticut of what goes on beyond its campus, behind the walls of factories that its licensing or bookstore staff may never visit in the course of procuring goods for sale with its logo?

The normative obligations for international human rights are complex. States are the entities responsible for enforcing international human rights law, companies aren’t. Corporations are only legally responsible for upholding the national laws of the countries in which they operate, and in which they are chartered. But states have a three-fold responsibility to respect, protect, and fulfill rights (Dine 2005).² The responsibility to respect rights means that neither the state nor its agents can violate rights directly. The responsibility to protect means the state is obligated to prevent non-state actors (like companies) from violating rights through effective enforcement of the law. States must prevent, investigate, and punish abuse by non-state actors—including companies—and provide access to redress for victims of abuse (UNHRC 2007b, 9; 2008, 7-8). The responsibility to fulfill means that the state is responsible for creating an “enabling environment” in which rights can be enjoyed, by establishing government institutions and policies.

UConn is a state institution (a public university) and is thus responsible for protecting the rights of people in its supply chain by ensuring that the companies that produce its logo-bearing products are observing national law. Companies, in turn, have a responsibility not to be complicit in human rights abuse. They should not contribute to or profit from abuse (Khan 2005: 4). But the standards that bind companies to avoid complicity in abuse are largely voluntary. They range from company-specific “codes of conduct” to industrywide or sector-based standards that commit companies voluntarily to respect workers’ rights and the rights of people in communities affected by corporate operations, over and above what national law would require. There are literally thousands of corporate codes—ranging from the UN Global Compact to the code that UConn affixes to every licensing agreement with a supplier—covering multiple aspects of corporate social responsibility (Leipziger 2010; National Research Council 2004).

Public universities, like UConn, and private sector companies have adopted “codes of conduct” largely in response to public pressure from consumers, investors, and students, in the case of colleges and universities.³ Such voluntary standards are not legally binding unless affixed to contracts with suppliers, a form of “hybrid” law (UNHR 2006: 13). But regardless of the legal status of companies’ human rights obligations, activists on the ground have asserted that “workers rights are human rights” and have left academics and policymakers to sort out the nature of legal obligations and translate those obligations into practice through regulation and enforcement (Hertel 2009).

The creative strategy of framing workers rights as human rights undergirded by international law became integral to new union and grassroots organizing of the late 1990s and has only intensified over the past decade into the early twenty-first century (Compa 2008; Seidman 2007). And the tactic of involving consumers directly in transnational advocacy—through “social movement unionism,” as Margaret Levi has termed it (Levi 2003)—is the hallmark of the kind of organizing central to UConn’s story of student activism on sweatshops.⁴

Case Study

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a broad term that covers a range of actions by companies that make business decisions that go beyond the bottom line to create safe and fair working conditions for their employees and subcontractors. While CSR efforts are not new, there has been a recent focus on the world of sewn apparel that has created a new stakeholder: the university. Specifically, colleges and universities have begun to recognize the institutional power they have through the licensing contract of their logo-bearing goods. Instead of perpetuating the institutional oppression of workers (who are most often women), universities have been insisting that licensees that are granted permission to use institutional logos must adhere to basic standards in the treatment of their workers.

This new stakeholder interest in CSR began in the early 1990s, sparked by the child labor scandal involving the logo wear of talk show host Kathy Lee Gifford. In response to a national outcry, President Bill Clinton asked his administration to initiate formal actions to address sweatshop labor in sewn apparel, which inspired the creation of the Fair Labor Association (FLA). The FLA is an NGO that has three major constituencies in its board structure: industry representatives, university representatives, and representatives of NGOs.⁵ This was the first formal national association that had a particular focus on college logo apparel. While some stakeholders welcomed the efforts of the FLA, others (particularly university student groups) openly criticized the FLA for its strong ties to licensees. This growing concern inspired the formation of the national student NGO called United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) in 1998.⁶ Shortly following the emergence of USAS, another NGO called the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) was founded.

Both the FLA and WRC have similar missions; however, their board structures and methods of achieving their missions can at times conflict. The FLA works directly with licensees and plant owners. If a possible labor violation is brought to the attention of the FLA by a licensee, the licensee may hire a nonbiased third party to investigate the alleged violations, issue a report, and work with the licensee to remediate any issues. The WRC works directly with the workers. Most reports are filed by workers directly to the WRC and a field investigator of the WRC staff meets with workers inside and outside the plant to investigate the situation. The WRC does contact management and the licensee but often receives less cooperation than the FLA experiences based on the method of reporting, and types of investigations. Since the FLA and WRC have very different procedures to investigate an alleged issue, the two organizations have historically issued reports that may have conflicting findings.

The WRC was created in the late nineties and was intentionally structured on a shared governance principle with one-third of its board from USAS, one-third from universities, and one-third from among independent labor rights experts. While some universities were already invested in providing leadership against sweatshop labor issues, many institutions of higher education were pressed by student activists to begin or increase their involvement. USAS is probably one of the most powerful student activist movements since the 1960s. The movement quickly aligned itself with WRC and lobbied against universities to curtail their participation in the FLA. Over time, universities have made individual choices to be solely part of the FLA or the WRC, part of both NGOs, or none at all.

Understanding the Evolution of Student Protest Politics

This new student activist movement looks quite different from the movements of the late 1960s. Like the campaigns of the past, the contemporary movement continues to work against issues of inequity in power, discriminatory practices, and oppression; however, the grassroots efforts of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century have had greater scope owing to the movement’s use of the Internet as a mobilizing tool. Individual university student groups can have instant access to information on one another’s activities as well as updates on manufacturing conditions literally across the world via text, Facebook, Twitter, email, and other technological advances. They can use the same technology to share information, coordinate protests, and refine a consistent organized national effort. This social movement has also benefitted from the creation and presence of paid USAS staff in Washington, D.C., who are in close contact with other NGOs (for example, by sitting on the board of the WRC). This technological edge was instrumental in the coordinated launch of the Designated Supplier Program (DSP) proposed by USAS in the fall of 2005, to be discussed shortly.

Recently there has been a resurgence of student activism and these movements have grown quickly, fueled by technology.⁷ In addition to formal modes of communication, social networking groups such as Facebook are constructed so that individuals can join easily, connecting them to thousands of other members instantly. This casual interconnectedness with international politics has become a powerful force in the student movement. In 2007, Facebook reported over 21 million registered users (Needham and Company 2010: 4) and by 2010 over 500 million users⁸ (Facebook 2010). It is no mystery why student activism has taken to optimizing these technological freeways to gain support, foster new movements, and coordinate action. Despite these strides and budding student organizations for change such as USAS, there has also been significant resistance and “old-school” style protests.

The typical college student is at a university for four years and often views the world through the prism of eight consecutive sixteen-week semesters. Time moves quickly for students and they commonly want transformational change to happen instantly. While first-order change may be achievable in the course of a sixteen-week semester, actual transformational change (such as that called for in the DSP) is typically not possible. Transforming relationships with licensees, and implementing a complex program such as the DSP, is not possible in an academic year. Students frequently view this as a block to transformational change or as a consequence of resistance on the part of the administration to make any real changes to “business as usual.”

Navigating the Organizational Landscape

The alphabet soup of newly formed NGOs discussed above has reached out specifically to the universities with the most power. Power in the college logo-apparel world translates into schools that have the most successful Division I football and men’s basketball teams. Logo wear translates into significant financial royalties for top athletic teams. Major licensees (such as Nike, and Adidas) pursue championship-level athletic teams for exclusive contracts that bring in millions of dollars in revenue every year. These licensees assist in outfitting sports teams as well as paying the growing salary demands of hall-of-fame caliber coaches. This power dynamic, coupled with student activism, has created opportunities for universities to disrupt the institutionally supported cycle of oppression and to demand that licensees improve the wages, treatment, and working conditions of apparel workers.

One of the first significant accomplishments of the contemporary anti-sweatshop movement was working with major licensees to encourage them to reveal their lists of subcontractors. There was a great deal of opposition by major licensees to making their supplier lists public. Companies argued th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction: Human Rights in the United States
• Part I. Economic Rights
• Part II. Social Rights
• Part III. Cultural Rights
• Part IV. Political and Civil Rights
• Part V. Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination
• Part VI. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
• Part VII. Human Rights and Resistance in the United States
• Notes
• References
• List of Contributors
• Index
• Acknowledgments