The Fair Labor Association: Fair or Foul?

Georgetown Solidarity is planning a protest against the Fair Labor Association later this week. In the interest of not blowing up their spot (even though no one reads this blog), you'll have to contact Solidarity for time and place info. The long and short of it is that Solidarity claims the misleadingly titled Fair Labor Association should probably be called the Unfair Bunch of Dicks. The email says:

In one of the most egregious cases I've ever seen, workers at the PT Victoria factory in Indonesia were forced to work a 24 hour shift to finish an order for Eddie Bauer. When they returned to the factory the next day they found the gates locked and their livelihood taken away. Even worse, the workers were denied their pay and legal severance. An Indonesian court ruled that the workers are owed the equivalent of one million US dollars. Eddie Bauer refuses to pay the workers the money they are owed.

The FLA says of itself:

The growth of the global economy has outstripped the mechanisms for regulating labor rights around the world. In principle, governments should adopt ILO Conventions and incorporate them into national labor laws enforced by labor inspectors. Trade unions and employers should negotiate collective agreements to fix wages and working conditions at sectoral or firm level and workers should have recourse to internal grievance procedures or external labor tribunals. In practice however, many of these protections have broken down. The FLA initiative is designed to complement international and national efforts to promote respect for labor rights.

Corpwatch.org says the FLA isn't doing a good enough job. Which is interesting, because all these groups are .orgs, which used to inspire the Kindly Planner's immediate confidence! Nonprofits fighting each other? Calling each other evil? Who knew? The debate will rage on at the appointed time and place, which is fine; the Kindly Planner didn't even know these things existed before!

In an interesting sidenote, Georgetown University isn't a listed FLA affiliate to begin with. The Solidarity Committee might want to investigate why their university doesn't even put up the PR effort to affiliate with a window-dressing organization such as that.