EDITORIALS
 

Ending “Sweatshop” Labor
By Karen R. Hitchcock, President

        Over the past three years concerned students at the University at Albany have joined their fellow students at colleges and universities both locally and across the nation in focusing attention on ending “sweatshop” labor - a term routinely used to define the deplorable working conditions existing in a number of nations around the world.  Their focus is placed especially on those companies that manufacture apparel sold on college campuses, including items that bear a collegiate logo.  These students have raised their voices in unison to decry unfair and inhumane labor practices and condemn exploitation, including child labor, worker abuse and harassment, discrimination, and lack of a living wage.  Their ongoing efforts not only focus attention on these abuses, but also lead the way for the establishment of new policies to deal with companies that manufacture collegiate apparel under such unacceptable conditions.
    Clearly, support for a code of conduct to address human rights issues is in keeping with the University at Albany's commitment to social justice.  The University community supports basic human rights for all and willingly expresses its position against sweatshop labor.  While this pronouncement is certainly non-controversial, the solution is, nonetheless, complex, for there is no clear-cut or immediate way to resolve longstanding labor problems that span not only continents, but cultures as well.  A living wage, reasonable work hours, access to health care, and safe working conditions are rights taken for granted in the United States. 
     Assessing a “living wage” in other countries, or monitoring reasonable work hours and working conditions are extremely difficult tasks.  For example, the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a not-for-profit entity created by the Apparel Industry Partnership and sponsored by the United States Department of Labor, was formed with the intent of administering a code of conduct with a carefully prescribed monitoring process to assess companies on compliance to licensing standards.  The FLA urged colleges and universities across the nation to become affiliated, and many complied, convinced this group could adequately monitor the manufacture of collegiate apparel.  However, the FLA had no full disclosure requirements or living wage provisions included in the code of conduct and United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) began urging their respective campuses to withdraw from a group they felt was biased to the apparel industry. 
    As an alternative, USAS, in consultation with human rights groups and workers across the nation, has developed another entity known as the Worker Rights Consortium.  This group proposes to open information regarding industry practices to public scrutiny and develop mechanisms to respond to the needs of workers who are involved in the manufacture of licensed products for institutions of higher education. 
    However, in New York State, all colleges and universities within the SUNY system are subject to the provisions of State law with respect to the procurement of goods and services.  That law does not currently permit New York State agencies to mandate additional qualifying conditions beyond those set forth in the law, such as compliance with labor and work place safety standards, for those seeking to provide them goods and services.
    Despite these obstacles, University at Albany students and others affiliated with Sweat-Free SUNY and USAS have been resolute in their dedication to this most important issue.  They have engaged and continue to engage in open and active dialogue with the University, encouraging that the necessary steps be taken to establish strict codes of conduct for companies that manufacture items that bear college or university trademarks.  They have communicated their message beyond their immediate campuses to the SUNY System Administration, as well as to the legislature of New York State. 
    The determination of these students has effected a heightened awareness on all our parts.  The University at Albany maintains open dialogue with concerned students as we continue to explore this critical issue.  The System Administration of the SUNY system has expressed its “full support of the goal to ensure that products bearing collegiate trademarks are produced under healthy, safe and fair working conditions.” 
    In addition, there are currently several bills in both houses of the New York State Legislature that address this situation.  One, called the “Sweatshop Prohibition Act,” would ensure that all manufacturers wishing to supply goods to a state agency must also provide information and documentation relating to subcontractors, manufacturing plants, and wages and benefits paid to employees at each location.  This bill would also provide that state agencies could not enter into contracts to obtain goods from a vendor who is unwilling or unable to provide documentation containing this information.  Another bill before the Assembly would prohibit public colleges and universities in New York State from licensing their trademark on unlawfully manufactured apparel because of their “special responsibility to ensure that goods, which bear their name, reflect ethical labor practices.” 
    Regardless of the difficulties that stand in the way of rectifying such deplorable labor situations, I am most proud to say that college and university students have not given up the fight - nor will they permit us to wane in our support for them.  Responsible student activism is a critical component of the educational, intellectual and civic development of college and university students.  Working together,  we hope to make significant progress in support of this issue.

Service to Guild or University: What’s Best for Albany
By Win Means, professor emeritus of geology

    The final section of the University’s recently released Self-Study (for the Middle States review) is headed “Mutuality of Obligation.” It contains a call for more universal participation by faculty in on-campus planning, program development, management and special teaching initiatives. By implication at least, it calls for less participation by faculty in the activities of their disciplinary “guilds,” notably research and guild management. I endorse the general sense of the call for greater local participation, but think it needs some qualification. At the risk of restating the obvious, I suggest the following formula for division of faculty after-teaching time: guild-early, University-later. By “guild-early,” I mean dominant attention to guild enterprises during the first part of a faculty member’s career, say during the first 15 post-doctoral years. By “University-later,” I mean a shift in emphasis in the later part of a career, such that something like equal time is given to University at Albany and guild activities. Guild-early, University-later is in fact the pattern already in evidence over much of the University, I imagine. I think it should be preserved and propagated.
    The rationale for “guild-early” is simply that the University aspires to be a leading research university - that is, a university where nearly all faculty are engaged in research or other creative work of good quality. The first years of a career are when young faculty members need to establish themselves as productive nodes for research and graduate training. This requires nearly complete devotion of after-teaching time to setting up facilities for research, obtaining funding (as necessary), recruiting graduate student coworkers, doing research, and participating in network-building activities within the guild, such as travel to meetings and overseas centers of scholarship. This is how the infrastructure for research at an ambitious university is built and maintained. This is when faculty members should think of themselves as “The Albany Branch” of a global enterprise in psychosomatic structural geology (or whatever the field may be). University service is not excused during this period, but it is throttled back. Otherwise the University will grow a crop of mid-career professors who have never established themselves in scholarship, and the University’s research aspirations will be unrealizable.
    The rationale for “University-later” rests on the assumption that the faculty member is, by mid-career, an up-and-running node for scholarship and graduate training, and that this part of a professor’s output is sustained, hopefully, to the end of the career. Now the time does come for substantial, on-campus service contributions, including participation in and generation of teaching initiatives. Now faculty members have the maturity and intimate knowledge of guild affairs to most usefully fulfill their obligation to help with University affairs.
    I can hear objections from some senior research colleagues saying the further one goes in scholarship, the more time it takes to fund a burgeoning stable of students, to supervise their work, and to meet guild demands for reviewing, invited papers, speeches, and the like. I say, if this happens, you are running too big an enterprise. You are putting guild interests ahead of University interests. Remember, I am talking about what’s best for Albany, not what’s best for your guild and your research career. It’s Albany, after all, that pays most of your salary. If it is objected that cutting back on graduate students (from, say, twelve to four) is only going to hurt overall graduate enrollment, I say, don’t worry, we are bringing more nodes on-line all the time. We won’t rely so much on a few big research groups. The reason that all senior research people need to be pulling their oar in on-campus service is simple. There are too many matters important to the proper growth of the University to be left to beginners or to senior people with no membership, or lapsed memberships, in their guilds. To the old objection that on-campus service is cosmetic and fruitless, I say, not with enough like YOU there.