Student activists who support an anti-sweatshop program said that though it wasn't cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice, the program and their advocacy for it won't be put on hold.
Penn State student groups United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) and Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) have been urging the university to support the Designated Supplier Program (DSP) for the past two-and-a-half years. The DSP is a program that would force factories to give their workers a living wage and respectable working conditions, according to the Worker Rights Consortium's (WRC) Web site, workersrights.org.
USAS and SLAP have recently rallied for the university's adoption of the program by holding a press conference, dumping valentines in Old Main and dressing up in trash bags to signify the university's attitude toward the issue.
USAS member Aaron Troisi (graduate-crime, law and justice) said getting the Department of Justice's approval is a formality and isn't absolutely necessary for the DSP to be implemented at some point.
"Even if the Department of Justice made no decision whatsoever and even if it was a negative decision, that would not stand in the way of the DSP being implemented or Penn State adopting it," Troisi said.
Other universities such as Georgetown University and Columbia University support the DSP. Even after the program was withdrawn in January, two more schools have added their names to the list of about 40 schools that support the DSP.
Penn State has been waiting for the Department of Justice to declare the DSP free of any anti-trust violations before supporting it, said Daniel Sieminski, associate vice president for finance and business.
This lack of approval leaves Penn State at a standstill, Sieminski said.
Sieminski said though the university is concerned with labor issues and is a part of the WRC, the Fair Labor Association and also has a labor code of conduct, no decision to join will be made until the anti-trust issues are cleared up.
"This is not an insignificant issue," he said. "It's not as if you can say, 'Well, the justice department won't support this, so what.' "
While Sieminski said Penn State does send a representative to the DSP working group meetings to stay updated, Troisi said that isn't enough. Because Penn State has not signed onto the DSP, it has no vote in the working group meetings, Troisi said -- a vote that would represent the voices of not only the students, but also a large part of the State College community.
Scott Nova, the executive director of the WRC, said the DSP was withdrawn because it was clear it was not going to be granted clearance under the current presidential administration. He added that the DSP's not getting clearance is only "a temporary problem."
"There's no legal need for it," Nova said, "but it's something a number of universities wanted as a form of insurance, and we, therefore, cannot implement the program until we receive that letter."
Dickinson School of Law professor Stephen Ross specializes in anti-trust law and worked in the Department of Justice in the 1980s. Ross read an analysis President Gerald Ford's assistant anti-trust chief, Donald Baker, wrote about the DSP in 2006 that said it did not violate any anti-trust laws. Ross said he read it and found it to be persuasive.
However, Ross said the student activists would be better off starting grassroots initiatives.
"Their unintended result is unintended liberalism," Ross said. "You do something that feels good but accomplishes nothing. So joining this group is not really going to ensure that overseas workers will have better working conditions."
