Making Bad Promises
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Despite my conservative political convictions, I have no compunctions about supporting liberals on certain campus issues. Last fall, for example, I supported the Stanford Labor Action Coalition’s (SLAC) living wage petition. Although Stanford’s administration had long pledged to pay its workers a “living wage” and had publicly reaped the PR benefits of doing so, it was slow to fulfill its promise. Therefore, although I had mixed feelings about the minimum wage’s objective economic value, I signed the living wage petition and urged my friends to do the same. To me, the question was less about economic efficiency than about fulfilling a promise.
At the same time, it is important to avoid making unwise promises. Therefore, I urge Stanford students and staff to think carefully before committing our university to the Sweat-Free Stanford Coalition’s proposals.
Recently, the Sweat-Free Stanford Coalition has been extremely active. It has organized several talks, appeared on the Daily’s front page, and presented a list of demands to President Hennessey’s office. It’s goal? “We ask that Stanford University take a vigorous stand against sweatshops by affiliating itself with the WRC and DSP.”
Some basic information on these organizations is warranted. The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) is an independent “labor rights monitoring organization” whose stated purpose is to “combat sweatshops and protect the rights of workers” around the world. The WRC supports a related, affiliated program called the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), whose purpose is the “enforcement of university codes of (sweatshop-related) conduct” within three years.
Unfortunately, although one may agree with the Sweat-Free Stanford Coalition’s stated goal of protecting workers’ rights, joining the WRC and DSP will not help us achieve that end. I offer four reasons.
First, I find that the WRC’s activities are often excessive. In reading their reports, I feel that the WRC tries to impose Western industrial standards on poor, third-world peoples—an attitude that almost smacks of imperial arrogance. For example, I read a 2004 WRC case study of Lian Thai, a factory based in Thailand. The WRC criticized the company’s overtime policies, sick leave policies, and its refusal to pay for employees’ family funerals. It then went on to slam the company for cutting a “special skills bonus” to three employees who made sweaters.
But it gets more interesting. According to the report, the company had an old practice of providing cooked rice to its employees every Sunday afternoon. In 2003, however, the management found this expense unprofitable and decided to discontinue the practice. The WRC decided to intervene, and they eventually compelled the company to reinstate the Sunday afternoon snack.
If this Thai company is breaking the law, then it ought to be reported to the local police, not the WRC. Why should the WRC be enforcing Thai law? But if this Thai company is simply cutting workers’ pay or eliminating Sunday snacks, why not let the Thai workers decide for themselves whether to stay? (In fact, some of them chose to leave). Without underestimating the importance of Sunday snacks, I do not understand why Stanford University should pay any organization to impose its particular worldview on private companies.
Second, joining the WRC will not be cheap for Stanford. According to the WRC’s online FAQ, schools with “licensing programs pay annual fees in the amount of 1% of their previous year’s gross licensing revenues, with a minimum of $1,000 and a maximum of $50,000.” Although the WRC is a non-profit corporation with an annual budget of more than $1.3 million, Stanford will be compelled to pay for its activities. In joining the WRC, a slice of our school’s revenue will go not to third-world workers, but to an external bureaucracy.
Third, I find many of the DSP’s ideas to be undesirable. Among them, I was least pleased with this one mentioned in The Stanford Daily’s op-ed: “By requiring licensees [i.e. Stanford] to sign long-term contracts with their suppliers, the DSP will stabilize an industry known for constantly shifting its production from country to country and provide garment workers with a reasonable level of job security.”
I disagree with that idea. Over here, most Americans find it difficult to accept the outsourcing of our manufacturing jobs, yet we accept it as a way of life. But if we reject protectionism in America, then why are we trying to protect jobs in foreign nations? If I read the op-ed correctly, joining the DSP will compel Stanford to give foreign workers not just jobs, but a permanent living.
Finally, there are free market arguments. Although factory working conditions in countries like Thailand and El Salvador seem unclean by Western standards, they nevertheless provide employment to millions of urban workers who would otherwise be languishing in rural subsistence living. Through outsourcing, multinational companies help employ millions of Asians, South Americans, and Africans. This allows third-world nations to experience double-digit growth rates, enabling huge populations to enter the middle class. Moreover, there remains the question that all economists have asked from time to time: “Why would third-world workers sew shirts for 25 cents apiece if they were being offered a better deal elsewhere?”
The anti-sweatshop poster read: “What is the difference between creating poverty and fighting it? 25¢.” It suggested that for every Stanford shirt purchased, third-world workers earn about a quarter. It then suggested that if we raised this amount to 50 cents, they would have “living wages” instead of “poverty wages.”
I absolutely agree. If we want to help third-world workers, we should help them directly: either buy an extra shirt or donate a quarter to a third-world charity. Indeed, the Sweat-Free Stanford Coalition could even organize a “Wear Stanford” campaign to encourage students to buy and wear more Stanford shirts. But it would be most unwise for us to force Stanford into an open-ended commitment to pay annual fees in perpetuity to an external multi-million dollar bureaucracy, or to grant job guarantees to foreign workers that we deny even to our own.
This is one promise that we should not make.
