SU denies No Sweat support
AN ATTEMPT to persuade the Students’ Union to support the anti-sweatshop campaign has been quashed in its first stages by Rules Committee, and York students will not be allowed to vote on the issue.
A motion submitted to the union’s central decision-making body, the UGM, asked the SU to “investigate the origins of university apparel…and if necessary change suppliers to ensure that the workers involved in their production receive a living wage, work in safe and healthy conditions and are free to join an independent union.”
If this motion were passed, SU officers would have been mandated to take action on the issue of ethical student merchandise. However, in a statement to the students who were proposing the motion, Nik Engineer, the Chair of Rules Committee, said the SU would not let this issue be voted on at a UGM, because “it is an issue that does not effect students as students”.
He went onto say that the union needed to “operate…within best practice, which includes not making public statements of such issues.”
This has sparked a furious reaction from NoSweat campaigner, Michael Wood, who said: “instead of getting a democratic mandate this was squashed at the committee stage by a group of right wing hacks with a desire to limit the scope of YUSU’s service provision.”
He had hoped that passing a motion for the SU to support a campaign against sweatshop labour would help prompt decisive change. Already, a large number of unions and union branches are affiliated to NoSweat, but the SU has refused to take a campaigning stance.
Wood continued: “I simply can’t see how this doesn’t affect students as students. After all, students need merchandise to function as students. Plus, the issue of workers’ rights is pertinent to pretty much any student who works, as they don’t do it for the fun of it, but to support themselves as students.”
The decision by the SU to refuse support to NoSweat follows two years of student campaigns to provide University merchandise from ethical sources. In December 2004 Nouse launched its ethical clothing campaign, which met with some success against Fruit of the Loom’s poor workers’ rights record.
Several College JCRCs switched to ethical merchandising, as did many student societies. This prompted an investigation by the then SU Environment Officers, who were prepared to take action on the problem and drew up various policy options.
However, eighteen months later, the SU have withdrawn their support for a campaign that has touched many student groups on campus. They argue that to do so would be in breach of “best practice”. Wood said: “My guess is because it would involve a lot of time, money, and effort in actually changing the union from a body which provides cheap(ish) drinks into one which campaigns on issues students are concerned about.”
