SLAM Asks Worker to Visit Campus

Responding to fears that Harvard may reinstate its licensing contract with Russell Athletic—a sportswear company accused by labor groups of mistreating its workers—Harvard’s Student Labor Action Movement brought a former garment worker to campus last Thursday in order to speak about the company’s violations of worker rights.

Harvard ended its licensing agreement with Russell Athletics last December, as the company faced allegations that it shut down a Honduran factory because of workers’ attempts to unionize.

Yet Rick Calixto, director of the Harvard University Trademark Program, wrote in an e-mail in February that Harvard would consider renewing its contract with Russell if the company followed recommendations of the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a global workers’ rights group of which Harvard is a member.

Alyssa M. Aguilera ’08-’09, a SLAM member, said that SLAM is concerned that the investigation leading to the FLA’s recommendations were flawed. In response, SLAM brought Salma Mirza, a member of the national staff of the United Students Against Sweatshops, and Mirna Chavarría Lopez, a 37-year-old former worker in Russell’s Honduran factory, to campus in order to talk to administrators.

“We’re very concerned that Harvard said they were going to wait for the FLA recommendations,” Mirza said. “The FLA has really mishandled this case in terms of their investigation.”

Mirza and Chavarría Lopez have sent a letter to Harvard President Drew G. Faust, and they spoke to students outside the Science Center early in the afternoon on Thursday, although they have been unable to set up a meeting with Calixto.

Following this talk with students, Chavarría Lopez sat down to discuss her experience as a worker in the Honduras factory. As Mirza translated, Chavarría Lopez described working eleven hour days for minimum wage, without benefits. She said that when the workers tried to form a union, their factory was closed and they were blacklisted.

“We want our jobs back, and if the company doesn’t give our jobs back then they have stolen from us,” Chavarría Lopez said. She also criticized the FLA investigation, saying that the group failed to take testimonies from factory workers or from the Honduran Ministry of Labor.

Both Mirza and Chavarría Lopez called for Harvard to wait for the recommendations from the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC)—another labor rights group—before it decided whether or not to renew its contract with Russell. According to Mirza, the WRC investigation was more exhaustive and its recommendations would likely be more stringent.

“We’re not trying to condemn Harvard,” Mirza said. “We’re just trying to get them to listen to these facts.”

—Staff writer Evan T. R. Rosenman can be reached at erosenm@fas.harvard.edu.