A student group supporting fair labor is upset with the university after MSU President M. Peter McPherson met with the executive director of a labor-monitoring organization without notifying them.

Members of Students for Economic Justice, or SEJ, said they have been campaigning for four years to get McPherson to consider joining the Worker Rights Consortium and were disappointed to find out that the meeting took place earlier last month without their input or presence.

"That's unprofessional," said economics senior Dave Mitchell, a member of SEJ. "You don't do that in any kind of business transaction, let alone when you're the president of a university."

McPherson could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The Worker Rights Consortium is a labor-monitoring organization run by students, labor-rights experts and university administrators. SEJ members said they believe the organization would do a better job of monitoring conditions at factories where university apparel is manufactured than the Fair Labor Association, to which MSU currently belongs.

On March 10, McPherson met with Scott Nova, executive director of the consortium, in Washington, D.C.

"It was requested that SEJ be present since this is a student-driven campaign and student voices need to be heard on this issue," said linguistics sophomore and SEJ member George Moyer. "We've dealt with the university on a fair and level basis and I feel like they've shoved us aside this time."

Nine of the 11 Big Ten schools have joined the consortium, which lists 121 colleges and universities as its affiliates.

Nova said while nothing concrete came out of the meeting, it still was productive.

"It was a frank discussion about the possibility of Michigan State affiliating with the WRC," he said, adding that the president had expressed his thoughts and concerns about joining the organization.

"It was a good back-and-forth discussion."

But SEJ is issuing a public statement today outlining its grievances about not being included in the meeting process and that it hadn't taken place locally.

"The fundamental problem is that this is an undemocratic way that things happened here at the university," Mitchell said. "This is about the WRC, but it's also about the larger issue of students being cut out of discussion and debate by the administration."