Once policy has been passed the challenge is to put this into practice. At this stage students have been facing problems because they have been asked to do lots of time-consuming research into suppliers, without adequate information. Finding an ‘ethical’ supplier that universities can switch to is not only quite difficult but also ideally we should be thinking through what actions universities can take to have a positive impact on workers in existing supply chains.
Purchasing relationships
Working out exactly how the purchasing relationships for UK university merchandise works is key to finding out what would be most effective for UK universities, for example, whether it would make sense for universities here to join up to the Workers Rights Consortium, as some Canadian universities have.
We are trying to pool this information at the moment. Email us with the following info if you can. Cheers!
- Is most university branded clothing bought and sold by the university itself or by the students union, or both? (And is the NUS involved through its commercial wing, NUSSL?).
- Which companies are involved in production?
- What is the volume/value of this production?
One example we can learn from is that of the grassroots US student organisation United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). USAS has been running its ‘sweatfree campus’ campaign since 1999, and began by working on codes of conduct for suppliers of university merchandise.
USAS activists realised that a monitoring process, in which the workers themselves have a real voice, is essential to ensure that these codes of conduct are implemented. In 2000 they set up the Workers’ Rights Consortium, which works with labour rights activists in the US and around the world to investigate factory conditions and address concerns.
USAS campaigns to get universities to affliliate to the Workers’ Rights Consortium, and their continuous pressure on administrations and corporations has resulted in significant victories supporting workers fighting for fair working conditions around the world.
Email us with your ideas for the future direction of the campaign.