A blue Jayhawk T-shirt hangs in the Allen Fieldhouse gift shop, but it’s the little tag in the collar, not the school spirit, that attracts the attention of activists, student groups and Kansas Athletics Inc. KU fans might not consider the production of Jayhawk T-shirts, hats or even coffee mugs, but there are labor monitors, non-governmental organizations and companies that do.

In every factory throughout the world that produces KU licensed merchandise, the Fair Labor Association is charged with supervising the labor conditions in which someone sewed that shirt. But even with labor monitoring, it’s still difficult to track where and under what conditions the merchandise was manufactured.

THE PROCESS

Paul Vander Tuig, KU Trademark Licensing director, said Athletics joined the Fair Labor Association in 1999 when the public was becoming aware of sweatshop conditions. The FLA monitors workers’ rights violations and works with factories and companies to improve working conditions.

This year, it cost the University athletic department about $21,000 to be an FLA affiliate, which is about 1 percent of the $2.1 million in gross royalties it receives from KU apparel and merchandise sales.

Kansas Athletics Inc. also coordinates with Collegiate Licensing Company, which works between licensees and Athletics to carry out the decisions Athletics makes. The CLC works with about 180 colleges and universities, including all Big 12 schools.

Liz Kennedy, CLC director of corporate responsibility, said the company handles anything from contracts to artwork approval for product designs. She said although CLC is not related to the FLA, it does what it can to support each university’s labor-monitoring models.

THE GLOBALIZATION FACTOR

Eve Clark, a doctoral candidate studying globalization, said there are still problems with the labor monitoring system even if Athletics works with the FLA and CLC. The biggest problem is finding accountability because now many large companies subcontract the production of its goods. If there’s a violation, a company can direct blame to the subcontractor.

“As consumers, it’s very difficult for us to find fair wage stuff because usually when you buy a big brand they’re not really employing the people anymore,” Clark said.

She said part of the problem is that globalization introduces so many more players into a process as simple as producing a T-shirt.

“The process is so convoluted that this is why the University has to go through a third party and the third party has to have people researching into who the subcontractors are,” Clark said.

A lot of that information also depends on how open a company is about who it’s working with and how much access it has to the subcontractors that are producing the goods. This is one reason it’s difficult for Athletics to know exactly where its merchandise is being produced.

Vander Tuig said there are difficulties with trying to match company violations to specific factory violations. Although there might be a violation at a certain company’s factory, KU merchandise might not have been made at that exact factory. He said if KU items were being produced at a factory in violation, the FLA or CLC would notify him.

Actually tracking and catching violations is a task in and of itself, Clark said, because different pieces of a product may be produced in different places and then assembled somewhere else.

“It is this very nightmarish sort of way to figure out whether or not something’s fair,” Clark said.

It’s usually not until there’s a protest or movement started by factory workers that people learn about inappropriate labor practices, she said.

COMPLAINT FILED

About two years ago a Russell clothing factory in Honduras that produced KU apparel was closed. Russell said closing the factory was a business decision, while another labor monitor, Worker Rights Consortium, and activists said the factory closed because workers had unionized. If the factory closed because of unionization, it would have been a workers’ rights violation for the 1,800 employees at the factory.

Vander Tuig said he was notified of after the incident, but Athletics decided not to cut ties with Russell. At the time, about 90 colleges and universities dropped or suspended licensing agreements with Russell. Vander Tuig said although there would be no legal repercussions for canceling a licensee contract, Athletics decided to stick with Russell to try to remediate the situation.

Associate Athletics Director Jim Marchiony said he told Russell if satisfactory changes weren’t made, Athletics would then terminate its contract.

In November 2009 Russell reached an agreement with the factory workers in which it hired back more than 1,000 workers and agreed to improve its relationship with the union.

FLA VS. WRC

Followers of the fair trade movement have differing opinions on collegiate merchandise when it comes to the two major monitors, the FLA and Worker Rights Consortium.

Last spring, Andrea Peterson, student senator and president of KU Students Against Sweatshops, sponsored a resolution in Senate to encourage Athletics to switch from the FLA to WRC. She said WRC has a much better history of responding to rights violations and has a better system for investigating the violations.

The strengths of WRC were that violations were investigated on an individual basis and it brought in non-government organizations to help, she said.

The FLA has agreements with the licensees and works with them and the factory owners to conduct investigations.

FLA Executive Director Jorge Pérez López said the FLA conducts about 125 to 150 random, unannounced inspections each year. He said it also investigates any complaints, but there are only about two or three a year.

Athletics has its own licensee contract that lays out its conditions for fair labor practices, but Peterson said their good intentions may not be enough to change the system.

“The question is whether or not that’s being enforced and if we’re using the most effective monitoring organization to ensure that it’s being enforced,” Peterson said. “We do have a responsibility once things come out to move forward and look at a more effective way of examining where things with the beloved Jayhawk come from.”

Vander Tuig said Athletics had evaluated its affiliation with the FLA several times after students had initiated the conversation, but Athletics decided the FLA is currently the best option.

He said one factor in the decision is that WRC is only concerned with college apparel. The FLA monitors apparel from many different companies and also licensed merchandise, such as mugs and key chains. Each year Athletics’ trademark royalties are made up of 63 to 65 percent apparel sales and about 35 percent merchandise.

Marchiony said he didn’t want Athletics’ reluctance to switch to WRC to overshadow its concern and interest in labor rights.

“That’s been a concern of ours for over a decade and that’s why we have been a part of the FLA for so long,” Marchiony said. “This institution believes that we need to be involved in the solution.”

Clark said there are still important issues to be resolved within the labor monitoring system, but individuals aren’t to blame for those problems. The system makes it difficult for Athletics, and even the consumer, to track a lot of issues by itself.

“The global economy has made labor issues so hard to track,” Clark said. “It’s not impossible and there are victories. The fact that the University has a commitment to this is a victory in terms of a social movement for labor.

— Edited by Roshni Oommen