As of Jan. 1 President-designate Lou Anna Simon has an opportunity to sign MSU up for more workers' rights groups.
Campus group Students for Economic Justice, or SEJ, has lobbied MSU President M. Peter McPherson for nearly five years to sign up with the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC). Still, it hasn't happened.
MSU is already a member of the Fair Labor Association - the "other" workers'-rights watchdog - and have been since 1999. The president of a university has the final say on which workers' rights groups to join, so the idea of seeking membership with WRC has been frozen at McPherson's desk.
For his part, McPherson said he stayed out of the organization because they don't consult member colleges before going after companies they find violating worker rights. But SEJ members called for MSU to join the Consortium because they disagreed with what they consider soft-edged negotiation tactics used by the FLA.
MSU licensing is no small game. MSU merchandise garnered $35 million in sales last year. Of the total, MSU got $1.4 million back in licensing fees. What MSU makes yearly from licensing fees helps to fund both general fund and athletic scholarships. Merchandising is no small potatoes for Big Ten schools like MSU, so in fairness, they should belong to at least one of these groups.
If anything, the two organizations have a distinct difference in approach. But there's nothing wrong with having all your bases covered, or perhaps playing both offense and defense for the same team in one game to weed out unsafe and inhumane work conditions in Third World factories. We hope one of those sports analogies helps.
Another Big Ten university, the University of Michigan, has the best model for keeping licensed merchandise away from sweatshop production, protecting its licensing agreements and maintaining the fight for workers' rights at home and abroad. U-M has a dual membership in both FLA and WRC, as well as a compliance committee that meets to ensure licenses are up to code. They don't seem all that worried about the WRC.
U-M's three-pronged attack keeps them covered from all angles, just in case one group fails, or the subjective embarrassment that the WRC apparently uses comes to fruition. Membership in these groups is largely symbolic on top of its actual function, and it's logical that MSU follow suit in protecting the workers who put the MSU gear on your back or head.
What if SEJ is right and the FLA is too soft on big producers like Nike, and some horrible injustice of human rights is attached to our school's name? But at the very least, MSU's licensed merchandise would look better and more responsibly handled in the eyes of the public for aggressively protecting workers and a financial vein for scholarships.
Schools such as U-M, and hopefully MSU as of Jan 1., maintain dual membership. All the SEJ is asking for is that the workers who sewed our favorite Spartan clothes are treated with dignity and respect and that the MSU brand name consistently stands for human rights.
If that embarrasses a few companies, so be it.
