Four students and one faculty member addressed a letter to University President Santa Ono calling on the University of Michigan to condemn alleged wage theft by Nike and the Hong Seng Knitting factory in Bangkok, Thailand. Representing the University’s chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops, the students dropped the letter at the Ruthven Building Thursday morning following an organization meeting Wednesday night.
USAS’ letter calls for a meeting with Ono by March 16 to ensure the University is compliant with and enforcing the President’s Advisory Committee on Labor Standards and Human Rights Code of Conduct. The University’s Code of Conduct states that all contractors and third-party companies the University works with “shall pay a wage that enables employees to satisfy their basic needs and provide legally mandated benefits.”
The Code of Conduct further explains that “all goods displaying the University of Michigan label must be produced in accordance with our Code of Conduct, international labor standards and respect for human rights and dignity.”
Public Policy junior Ruthy Lynch, co-founder of USAS at the University, told The Michigan Daily students have the unique power to put pressure on University administration and, by extension, Nike.
“Nike has such a large contract with the University,” Lynch said. “We can pressure our administration to pressure Nike to give the back pay to these workers. This has worked here at the University in the past, multiple times. The average student has so much more leveraging power over Nike than just a regular consumer.”
USAS previously fought against the University’s partnership with Adidas in February 2013 when USAS members joined Indonesian sweatshop workers on the Diag to protest the University’s $60 million contract with the sportswear company. The protestors called on Adidas to pay its employees a $1.8 million severance package, claiming it was owed to them for the poor conditions they endured in the sweatshops. In April 2013, Adidas agreed to pay the severance after former University President Mary Sue Coleman also wrote a letter to Adidas expressing concerns with the company’s practices.
Ian Robinson, sociology lecturer and president of Huron Valley Central Labor Council, helped present the letter with the students. Robinson told The Daily he is excited for the potential change this letter could ignite.
“I’ve been a supporter of worker rights both in this country and internationally for a long time,” Robinson said. “We made some progress. We have a Code of Conduct, we have an oversight process, but the actual changing of this system is really difficult, and it requires coordination of major buyers or major, in (the University’s) case, licensors that have real clout in the overall supply chain system.”
Lynch said students at other universities with Nike deals, like Penn State University and the University of Texas at Austin, have also expressed support for the Hong Seng workers.
“(Hong Seng Knitting) produces for Nike and it produces collegiate apparel for multiple different universities including Penn State, University of Virginia and UT Austin,” Lynch said. “UT Austin currently has the largest collegiate licensing contract in history worked out with Nike, and students at those other campuses have also been working on campaigns and pressuring their university about this.”
The University declined to comment, saying President Ono will deliver his response directly to the signers of the letter.
LSA sophomore Mark Tallents told The Daily he believes everyone who wears University apparel should care about what is happening at Hong Seng Knitting.
“I think this is not only an issue just for people who care about labor issues, but this is an issue for everyone that wears (U-M) apparel,” Tallents said. “When you bring your family and friends to The MDen, sometimes (the apparel) is made unethically and off the backs of overworked and underpaid people in underdeveloped countries. I think that’s a problem we all have to reconcile with. We all have to challenge that.”
Daily Staff Reporter Miles Anderson can be reached at milesand@umich.edu.