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Fair labor wins in UM Student Senate

MPAC gains support for workers' rights campaign

By Catie Joyce

Posted on May 02, 2002, at 12:00 a.m.

After two years of work, the Maine Peace Action Committee has reached a large goal in its anti-sweatshop campaign by getting the university to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium. At Tuesday night’s General Student Senate meeting MPAC took a step toward the goal, as GSS voted in favor of a resolution that gave the group $500 for half of the annual dues needed to join WRC.

Originally University of Maine President Peter S. Hoff did not support the university joining WRC. Since UMaine already belongs to the Fair Labor Association. MPAC wants UMaine to belong to both workers’ rights organizations, because, according to April Thibodeau, president of MPAC, each group has different strengths. FLA is larger and has industry representatives along with labor representatives where WRC is more independent, with university, student and labor representatives.

“We thought the FLA wasn’t doing a good job,” Anand Taparia, the treasurer of MPAC, said after the meeting. “And with the big industry representation it was far too much influenced by business and corporate interests to do a good job. Indeed, joining the WRC, we thought, will help ensure that we become sweat-free.”

MPAC recently received an email from Mark Anderson, interim chief financial officer, saying Hoff had reconsidered and the university would join WRC if the Student Government gave half of the $1,000 annual dues to “represent wider student support” for the campaign, Thibodeau said.

Tuesday night’s GSS meeting was the most well attended Senate meeting of the year, as almost 50 students came to show their support for the anti-sweatshop campaign. About 20 students spoke in favor of joining WRC during the general good and welfare portion of the meeting.

Fred Nehring, a former senator, started off the student speeches by telling the Senate this is their opportunity to make a change.

Thibodeau then gave a speech outlining MPAC’s work in its anti-sweatshop campaign. Over the past two years MPAC has had tables in Memorial Union, held information sessions and showed films to raise awareness of the issue. MPAC collected over 1,000 signatures on a petition to make UMaine sweatshop-free. This semester they held a protest in front of The Bookstore and held a fashion show. They have also had meetings with Hoff and Anderson.

Thibodeau said joining WRC would benefit students in a number of ways by supporting a nationwide movement that allows direct student participation and provides internships for students as there are student seats on the WRC governing board.

Several more students urged the Senate to vote in favor of the resolution for ethical reasons and to represent the student body, citing the petition with more than 1,000 student signatures on it.

“Please have a voice,” Olivia Mercier said. “Speak for all the people that worked hard on this. Please just vote for the students.”

She said it would be “a real devastating blow to all student groups” if the resolution failed. “There are a lot of budget cuts, and people are becoming discouraged. This is an opportunity to unite the campus.”

Another student said he would really like a reason to believe in his school. “This is an opportunity for me to believe in my school again instead of seeing it sell out.”

“It’s humanism and showing compassion for people,” Katie Mann said. “It’s only going to get bigger.”

Sarah McClain urged the Senate to support the WRC because she said the FLA doesn’t address the abuses of women. “UMaine has done a lot for women’s rights, it needs to support women workers’ rights too,” she said. “This is an important stand we need to take on women’s rights as well as workers’ rights.”

“I will be able to wear [the UMaine] logo with pride,” Andrew Morse said, “knowing it was made with fair labor. This is in everybody’s best interest.”

The original proposal to give $500 to MPAC failed unanimously, with one abstention, in SG’s Executive Budgetary Committee. Thibodeau approached Sen. Sarah Knight after the EBC’s decision, asking her to bring it up to the entire Senate for reconsideration. Knight said she was “under the impression there was a lot of miscommunication” between MPAC and EBC. Thibodeau said she was unprepared when she came before EBC.

Thibodeau said she felt EBC might have been under the impression that it was more of a political statement that wouldn’t do much.

“But this is a substantial policy change,” she said.

EBC was concerned with the university losing contracts, like the one it holds with Nike. However, Thibodeau reassured the Senate that universities rarely lose contracts by joining WRC.

After attending to other business, the Senate began to debate the WRC resolution. The Senate first voted to discharge the resolution from the committee to be able to vote on it.

Sponsored by Knight and co-sponsored by Sen. Ted Chernesky and Sen. Matthew Rodrigue, the resolution read “be it enacted by the [UMaine GSS] as follows: to allocate $500 from unallocated [funds] for the 2001/02 fiscal year to MPAC. This funding will be used to pay half the annual dues to join the Workers’ Rights Consortium for one year, after which, the contract will be assessed.”

Sen. Jon LaBonte proposed an amendment that the Senate passed. The amendment created a committee made up of four students, three faculty members and three administration members to approve university contracts under WRC membership.

LaBonte spoke in support of the resolution.

“I think this is a really important step for collaboration,” he said. “Too often we complain there’s not enough connection to the administration. This creative collaboration is the first step in forming a relationship with the administration.”

“It’s for the future of the student body, to gain future support of students,” Sen. Scott Caton said. “It’s another way of bringing in information, another resource. It will give the student body a larger voice.”

Knight said she sponsored the resolution because “There were more than 1,000 student signatures on a petition. That’s more participation than anything we’ve seen this year.”

“I can’t see a finer way to spend money than protecting human rights throughout the world,” Rodrigue said.

However, not all of the senators were in favor of the resolution. Some senators expressed concern for an increase in prices for clothing and also felt that a lot of their constituents did not support this campaign.

Thibodeau said joining WRC does not usually raise prices of the merchandise.

“I haven’t seen anyone [non-senators] speak against this,” Sen. Chris Hill said. “Both sides need to be heard because there are both sides out there. We need to decide if this $500 is in the best interest of everyone.”

Hill also accused some of the senators of supporting the resolution in order to secure votes for themselves next year.

“I am in opposition to this,” Sen. Nate Thoms said. “I sympathize with the other 9,000 students that did not sign the petition. This is not an activity, not an event, not a club, it’s a membership. I can’t think of any other membership we pay for.” He did concede to the proposal being a “reasonably noble cause” however.

“We just spent $700 on a horse show,” Sen. Erik Black said. “I think we can spend $500 on basic human rights. We’ve given a lot of money to a lot of student organizations that benefit less students than this.”

The final roll call vote was 11-3-2 in favor of giving the money needed to join WRC.

“Personally I thought it was a very lively and intense debate,” Taparia said. “And the final decision … clearly showed that the Student Government represents the student community and respects their sentiments. Both sides had their arguments. The huge student support was a major factor.”

Taparia said the real work has just begun.

“The committee has to be a good one and has to perform in order that our goal [for a sweat-free university] is realized.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 2nd, 2002, 12:00 am. You can follow any responses to this article through the RSS feed.