Georgetown University - The Hoya by Sarah Kaplan - September 21, 2010
Starting this fall, some of the apparel sold at the university bookstore carries a story with it: The employees of the manufacturers are paid a living wage and afforded worker benefits as part of an ambitious multinational experiment.
Georgetown is one of more than 300 university bookstores this year to sell products certified by the Workers Rights Consortium, the leading labor rights watchdog organization in the United States. The merchandise is crafted at a factory in Villa Alta Gracia in the Dominican Republic, where 120 employees earn nearly 3.5 times the minimum wage. The factory was established by Knights Apparel, the leading college apparel supplier in the country, as a test of the viability of social responsibility. Workers at the factory are paid a living wage, which is calculated to provide the worker and up to two dependents with food, clothing, shelter, transportation and education, and to allow employees to pay off any debt they may have. Under the agreement, Alta Gracia workers are allowed to unionize and the factory is outfitted with bright lights and ergonomic chairs to improve working conditions.
“This represents a fundamental departure from anything that has been done before. … What Alta Gracia is doing goes far beyond the concept of fair trade,” said Scott Nova, executive director of the WRC.
The factory’s presence has also brought dramatic change to the surrounding town.
“[Villa Alta Gracia] is a small town where the main trade zone closed down several years ago and they were barely making it,” said Georgetown professor of International Business Economy John Kline, who wrote a report on the project and its viability.
“This represents for them a real hope. Just the wage differential allows for them to send their kids to school with the right clothes, to be able to feed them in a decent way, not to borrow money from their relatives or live with their parents,” Kline added. “The impact of it is something that you really have to see and experience.”
Many detractors doubt that the Alta Gracia experiment can be profitable in the highly competitive garment industry. Companies are seen as engaged in a race to the bottom, in an effort to churn out clothing at the lowest costs, regardless of worker conditions. Alta Gracia’s supporters believe the manufacturer represents a viable business model, however.
“What Knights Apparel has really done is create a model factory that represents how apparel should be made and how workers should be treated,” Nova said. Read Full Story Here
