A rare sight befell students and tour groups wandering the Main Green just after noon Thursday - 70 students lying head-to-foot protesting the Brown Bookstore's alleged ties to vendors that use sweatshop labor. The students, whose bodies formed a line that almost spanned the length of the Green, said they were lying down to stand up for the rights of workers.
Chanting, "What's disgusting? Union busting. What's outrageous? Unfair wages," and holding signs exhorting the University to "honor your promise" and "take sweatshops out of our bookstore," the protest, affiliated with the Student Labor Alliance, drew the attention of students enjoying the day's unseasonably warm weather.
The protesters called on the University to join the Designated Suppliers Program, which would require vendors that sell to Brown to ensure their factories allow workers to unionize, pay living wages and, for at least three years, commit to operating factories that fit the first two stipulations, according to a handout.
"We're standing in solidarity with the workers who make clothing for our bookstore here," said Miriam Rollock '15. "We benefit from their labor, and, if they're being treated unfairly, we should do something about it."
The University promised to adopt the Designated Suppliers Program as soon as it was certified by the Department of Justice, Mariela Martinez '14 said.
In December, the program passed the review, "so we wanted to remind the University of its promise," said Stephanie Medina '14. The Herald reported in 2009 that the University had taken steps toward adopting the program.
The University reportedly expressed keen interest in joining the Designated Suppliers Program in a meeting between protest organizers and Executive Vice President for Finance and Administration Beppie Huidekoper. University officials have spoken with the Workers Rights Consortium and are working with vendors as well as the Designated Suppliers Program.
Medina said the University has often positioned itself as a leader among its peer institutions in prioritizing the rights of workers and should not stop now. "The protest wasn't antagonistic towards Brown," she said. "It was just another way to engage the community."
Currently, the Brown Bookstore employs the Fair Labor Association to monitor the factories that produce the store's wares. Protesters criticized the association, calling it complicit in permitting sweatshop labor. "Many of those who run the (association) also preside on the boards of the companies they claim to monitor," the group's handout read.
While Martinez was visiting factories in Honduras and El Salvador, one of the workers she spoke to called the association "a mass facade," she said.
The Fair Labor Association has not done enough to confront the Chinese electronics manufacturer FoxConn, which runs facilities where many Apple products are produced, for their failure to confront "mass worker suicides," Medina said. Calling the relationship between the University and the association "unsavory," the group advocated disaffiliating with the association.
Director of the Brown Bookstore Steven Souza defended the store's affiliation with the Fair Labor Association in a letter to The Herald Monday. "The Brown Bookstore has received no complaints of unfair labor practices from the Fair Labor Association, Worker Rights Consortium or Licensing Resource Group regarding any vendors who furnish Brown-licensed apparel," Souza wrote.
Souza also wrote that the bookstore maintains strict regulations through its Vendor Code of Conduct, with which all of the store's vendors must comply. "The Brown Bookstore has refused to carry merchandise from suppliers who insist on exemptions from provisions of the University's Vendor Code of Conduct," he wrote.
