Liberal Talk Radio

Now that the academic world is supremely conscious of fair-labor practices, universities are having trouble finding enough suppliers to churn out that endless stock of sweatshirts, t-shirts and shot glasses bearing the logo of dear old State U.:

Five months after Columbia joined a national effort to enforce labor standards in the factories that produce its branded apparel, the coalition of universities is running up against the practical difficulties of changing an industry from the outside in.

Under the old Designated Suppliers Program, only eight factories worldwide would have qualified to receive apparel orders from brands producing university gear — not enough to sustain the demand of the 33 schools that currently participate in the program of the Worker Rights Consortium, an organization that monitors international labor practices.

And if you’re having difficulty meeting standards, the easiest thing to do is simply change them:

Since April, requirements have been eased to increase the number of factories able to meet the standards. Most significantly, instead of demanding that factories have unions already in place, the new document requires only that they be open to the establishment of unions.

Still, the evolving plan has not moved along quickly enough for some:

Columbia’s student activists would like to see quicker progress.

“We recognize that they spent the summer working on something,” said [Students for Environmental and Economic Justice] member Jessie Leiken, CC ‘08. “However, we wish they had come up with something that benefited workers more immediately. . . . Were corporations trying to roll out this plan, it wouldn’t take so long.”

Interesting comparison . . .