Seven and a half long years after students at the University of Washington first organized around the cause of ending the UW's complicity in sweatshop labor, the UW has now at long last become a "sweat-free" university--almost.

On May 15, UW President Mark Emmert sent a letter to Scott Nova, executive director of sweatshop watchdog organization the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), announcing his decision to sign the UW on to the Designated Supplier Program (DSP), a collegiate fair labor mechanism created by United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS). This event crucially realized a goal that the UW chapter of the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) has been working toward for most of the past school year--including and especially during an intensive Spring Quarter campaign, employing both lobbying and direct action, to pressure Emmert to adopt the DSP [see "UW's Anti-Sweatshop Surge," ETS!, April 26].

Later that week, on May 18, Emmert met with members of SLAP in the UW administration building to inform them of his decision, thus making the news official on campus. Having spent many months and much political energy advocating the DSP's adoption, SLAP were of course quite pleased--except for the crucial detail that Emmert's decision, as described in his letter to Nova, merely means that the UW is now formally adopting the DSP, but not yet implementing the program. The most crucial passage of Emmert's letter to Nova reads:

"In order to best uphold and enforce our commitment to fair labor practices, the University of Washington announces its support for the DSP. The University supports the objectives of the DSP as they reflect in large part our existing code of conduct. We will join the DSP Working Group, as a member, to collaborate with other colleges and universities to help create the conditions necessary to move the program forward in the future and resolve our concerns.... The UW is committed to work seriously towards implementation of the DSP."

Once implemented, the DSP will require the UW to source at least 75 percent of its licensed apparel from specific factories that provide their workers with a living wage and the right to unionize. USAS and the WRC have already identified a number of factories around the world with the potential to meet the DSP's requirements, and SLAP, with a student representative on the UW's Licensing Advisory Committee, intends to play a proactive role in the UW's participation in the DSP.

The UW's adoption of the DSP grandly caps a busy school year for SLAP, who have organized a number of public events on the UW campus to promote the anti-sweatshop cause, beginning in January, when they staged a "sweatshop clothesline" event in front of the UW's popular Husky Union Building. In February, SLAP hosted the Wal-Mart Speaking Tour, in which three former Wal-Mart employees spoke on various college campuses nationwide--including the UW--about their experiences working under oppressive workplace conditions. In early March, SLAP hosted the Global Exchange speaker Chie Abad, a former garment worker and union organizer from the US territory of Saipan, a noted haven for sweatshop labor abuses. Also in March, SLAP first began employing direct action on campus by staging a mock funeral for BJ&B, a unionized garment factory in the Dominican Republic that was effectively shut down this year by the Nike Corporation's use of "cut and run" tactics in its subcontracting. In early April, SLAP staged a mock wedding between the UW and the DSP in front of the UW administration building, and later in the month staged a well-attended rally and campus-wide march to promote the DSP.

SLAP's campaign, and the resulting adoption of the DSP by the UW, ties in to larger issues beyond the anti-sweatshop cause, mainly involving the often-shady relationships between public universities and private corporations. In particular, sports apparel brands such as Nike have a unique relationship with public (and private) universities due to the allure of collegiate logos in the apparel marketplace. Many universities--including the UW--own the rights to their official logos, and apparel brands must gain permission to use such logos. It follows that socially conscious college students, as members of collegiate communities, have the potential power to ensure that their schools' clothing is made under fair labor conditions. All it takes is organization--and SLAP has now set a great example for how student power plus organization can "get the goods."

SLAP's victory won't be complete until the DSP is actually implemented--which could still take some time, given the UW administration's history of smothering student activist initiatives in warm bureaucratic embraces. Meantime, in the coming year, in addition to working to ensure implementation of the DSP, SLAP also plans to organize around getting the UW to take a stand against the closure of the BJ&B factory, and they'll also be supporting the UW Guatemala Project's current efforts to stop the closure of the only unionized garment factory in Guatemala. Also on their long-term agenda is the termination of the UW's exclusive vending contract with the Coca-Cola Corporation, itself a notorious opponent of worker rights worldwide.

The UW's long-overdue status as a "sweat-free" university now joins several other progressive historical events at the UW--from the creation of its Office of Minority Affairs in 1968 to the beginning of its campus recycling program in 1990, and now the adoption and impending implementation of the DSP--which would never have happened without student activist initiative and persistence. Students rock once again, and congratulations are in order.