Lehigh University - The Brown and White by Annamaria Anselmo - September 7, 2010
The bookstore is now featuring apparel, including unisex T-shirts and fleeces, from a new clothing line called Alta Gracia. These new clothes have much more to offer than the ordinary Lehigh gear retailed at the bookstore.
Employees at the Alta Gracia factory, located in the Dominican Republic, are paid a living wage, which is three times the average pay of the country's apparel workers, said Joseph Bozich, CEO of Knights Apparel, the company that owns the Alta Gracia factory.
Teresa Cheng, international campaigns coordinator of United Students Against Sweatshops, said Alta Gracia also recognizes an independent union of workers, giving its employees a voice.
The Alta Gracia factory employs about 125 workers, Donnie Hodge, president and chief operating officer of Knights Apparel, said.
Steve Schatten, general manager of the bookstore, said the bookstore has sold Alta Gracia apparel for two months, and the clothes have been well-received by students.
According to Schatten, every university and college bookstore run by Barnes and Noble carries this line.
"Anything that can be done to improve working conditions ... and the quality of life [of the workers] is admirable," Schatten said.
What makes Alta Gracia different than other college apparel brands is the wages and benefits it offers its workers, Bozich said.
"This truly can be a pathway out of poverty, and this can truly be potentially life-changing, not just for the people that are making the apparel, but for their families as well," Bozich said.
The Alta Gracia line is the first apparel brand in the world that is compensating the people who are making the goods, he explained.
And Knights Apparel is taking the necessary precautions to maintain the benefits and hospitable working environment offered to their workers.
Alta Gracia is overseen and monitored by The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labor-rights organization that conducts investigations of collegiate apparel factories around the world on behalf of their 186 college and university members, Cheng said.
"No factory has ever been monitored [by the WRC] as intensively as the Alta Gracia facility," Cheng said. Read Full Story Here
