Pictures of the Fair Trade clothing rack in the University Bookstore. (The first pic shows where the rack is located.) Note the label on bottom right of shirt. Click a picture to enlarge it.

On May 3, 2001, as a result of a successful campaign by CHANGE, Kent State University officially endorsed a vendor code of conduct for fair working conditions in the production of KSU products. The code will be enforced by the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent monitoring organization that inspects factories around the world. When the WRC finds a violation of our code in a factory that produces Kent State products, they will alert the University. The University will then take action to rectify the violation. If licensees are uncooperative, the University may terminate their contract.

While this is a responsible and effective way for Kent State to take a stand against sweatshops, it does not guarantee that all Kent State apparel is made in compliance with the code. Sweatshops are widespread and secretive, and it will be years before every factory can be inspected. Foreign factories are subcontracted by multiple manufacturers, and KSU products may be made in different factories every week or even every day. For these reasons and more, it is unwise to assume that Kent State products are necessarily sweat-free at this time.

Plans are currently being made for Kent State to start its own line of fair trade clothing in Mexico through a partnership with an organization called Equal Exchange. When and if this plan is fully implemented, the University will have direct control over the working conditions of those employees. Meanwhile, there are other things you can do to decrease the likelihood of buying sweatshop goods when shopping for KSU apparel:

There is now a rack of guaranteed fair trade clothing in the center of the University Bookstore. We suspect that this came about as a result of an incident that occurred in spring 2001 between CHANGE, the manager of the bookstore, and the corporate headquarters of Follett (the company that owns the bookstore). The selection is limited but at the present time, these clothes are the only KSU apparel guaranteed to be sweat-free. They can be identified by the stickers on them proclaiming them to be Fair Trade products. (See pictures on right.) [UPDATE (March 25, 2004): This clothing line has been missing for well over a year now, probably because of the unattractiveness of the selection that was made available. We need to work on getting cetified fair trade merchandise in the Bookstore again.]

If you buy other KSU products there is no guarantee that they were made in fair working conditions. Clothing made in the USA is more likely to be sweat-free than clothing made in Asian or Latin American countries, where anti-sweatshop laws are weak and poorly enforced. However, sweatshops do exist in the U.S. They mostly employ illegal aliens or legal aliens whose passports are bought and owned by American employers. These workers face deportation if they speak out. The U.S. Department of Labor estimated that as much as 40% of U.S. apparel jobs could be considered sweatshops. Some estimates are even higher. Still, U.S. products are generally made under more humane conditions than products made for U.S. corporations by workers in other countries, where sweatshop labor may account for almost 100% of the workforce.