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Cantwell’s cheaper shoes are pinching

originally published on Crosscut.com on July 7, 2011

Sens. Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray have a proposal to lift tariffs from imported shoe wear, saving consumers (or shoe companies) close to $1 billion annually. But what’s in it for shoemakers in sweatshops?

On the sensibility spectrum, it’s hard to top a title like Sen. Maria Cantwell’s “The Affordable Footwear Act.” The words tumble out bourbon-smooth: affordable footwear.

The bill’s name even bigfoots the evocative Barefoot Schoolboy Act of 1895, the Washington law that established school-levy equalization. Americans sympathize with suffering barefoot schoolboys, but bargain shoes? That one transcends gender, race, and all manner of hoof-related wants.

Cantwell has teamed with Senate colleague Patty Murray and Republicans Pat Roberts and Roy Blunt to craft the legislation that knocks down onerous duties on imported footwear, a legacy of 1930s-era protectionism. The Tri-City Herald reports that the bill would have saved Americans $800 million last year, presupposing shoe distributors and retailers passed the attendant savings along to consumers.

Cantwell’s bill also throws light on the collapse of the nation’s shoe-manufacturing sector. Duties on imported shoes affect all Americans, because almost all shoes are imported nowadays. In a global economy, spookily cheap labor and often-Dickensian working conditions in China, Vietnam, and India are a windfall for American shoppers.

And so the Cantwell bill snaps into place: Erase an outmoded, regressive tariff, and save consumers millions on the price of shoes. Could there be enemies of affordable footwear, organized opposition to something so grossly obvious?

Cantwelll’s bill will pass Congress with the kind of ease that should immediately arouse suspicion in the hearts of Northwest Hobbesians. Life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and, well, you know. This good bill could be a great, substantive bill, one that also addresses some of the less-savory aspects of human nature.

Here’s a modest proposal: Somewhere in the Affordable Footwear Act embed a human rights carrot. Duty waivers would only apply to overseas factories that meet a specific human rights or anti-sweatshop benchmark. Receive the waiver and spur additional business.

Paul Wolfe, a legislative aide for Cantwell, said that such a provision is technically possible. However, various labor and environmental standards are already codified in NAFTA and other free trade agreements. Linking tariff reform to labor and human rights could be redundant or worse, toothless and ineffective.

The potential hitches are significant. Trade acts are dense and arcane, with industry lobbyists whispering to bill scribes and bill scribes scribing away. The central question of government, qui bono? (who benefits?), would reach from Nike’s Phil Knight to poor families hunting for affordable kids’ shoes. The benefits would not, however, extend to drained Vietnamese sweatshop workers (nor should they, many economists would argue).

We live in the post-GATT World Trade Organization era where fiddling with tariffs is a big no-no. This bill, however, offers a rare exception. It’s about eliminating, not creating a trade barrier. Lawmakers can be as innovative and nettlesome or as inspired and meretricious as they want.

There is at least one non-amending option: Sen. Cantwell and company could ape LBJ and convene a come-to-Jesus meeting with America’s shoe barons. We’ll do this, but you’ll be expected to demand X from foreign producers. The philosophy behind a closed-door shakedown is as transactional and crude as it is simple: When you’ve got ’em by the, er, aglets, their hearts and minds will follow.

In the coming years, Vietnam, China, and other developing countries will reach a tipping point. Something will give, worker discontent will manifest itself politically, or universal standards will ultimately shame the shameless.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, last spring’s Solomon Katz lecturer at the University of Washington and the author of The Honor Code, How Moral Revolutions Happen, posits that appealing to a nation’s honor is one of the most effective catalysts for advancing human rights. Tinkering with international trade could, however, produce a Niebuhr-esque outcome, underlining American hubris and the limits of prescriptive power. Would a human rights benchmark appeal to a country’s sense of national or cultural honor or would it have just the opposite effect?

In the end, a re-jiggered Affordable Footwear Act would attempt to harmonize men-are-no-angels American realism with the Judaic notion of Tikkun olam, to repair the world. Okay, yes, it’s a pretentious-sounding argument.  Advocates should nix any reference to Federalist No. 51 or Jewish mysticism. How about this: Cheaper shoes for fewer sweatshops?

July 7, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Why a Seattle church takes up the cause of a Guantanamo detainee

originally published on Crosscut.com on April 25, 2011

Adnan Latif, who suffers from mental health issues, was once cleared for release from Guantanamo. But he remains trapped by bizarre circumstances and political pressures.

Guantanamo Bay muddles the American narrative on wartime conduct. Torture and unjust detention are nothing new, but arbitrary, indefinite detention is.

On a Sunday in March, the University of Washington’s Jamie Mayerfeld spoke to congregants from the University Temple United Methodist Church about the case of Adnan Latif, a Guantanamo Bay inmate since 2002. Latif’s detention is one of the more bracing instances of knucklehead injustice, a Guantanamo prison saga that would have roused Kafka or Dario Fo.

The latest WikiLeaks revelations from The New York Times and other papers underline the problems and confusion that have marked the overall Guantanamo operations, including the particular problems for Yemenis like Latif with weak or no ties to terrorism. The newly published documents seem to confirm much of what critics have been saying about the lack of remedies where individuals appear to be wrongly or unnecessarily held.

Latif’s existential detour began in 2001 when the Yemeni national was snatched by Pakistani security and handed over to American forces for a $5,000 bounty. Mayerfeld, an associate professor of political science who writes extensively on human rights, observed that only 5 percent of Guantanamo prisoners were captured by the U.S. The rest were nabbed by others in a spirit of post-9/11 bonhomie. Bonhomie and, well, the hook of liberal bounties, sweeteners to lasso America’s real or perceived enemies.

Latif became a victim of wrong-place, wrong-time circumstance. He had suffered severe brain damage in a 1994 car accident, a condition that magnified his despair and greased subsequent suicide attempts. And his prison timeline hasn’t helped on the despair front. With no documented link to terrorism or a terrorist network, Latif was recommended for release in 2004. It didn’t happen. His release was cleared in 2007. No action was taken.

In 2009, the Obama administration initially consented to a transfer back to his native Yemen. Finally in 2010, federal District Judge Henry Kennedy, Jr. heard Latif’s habeas corpus petition and ordered his immediate release. The Obama administration needed to take “all necessary and appropriate diplomatic steps to facilitate Latif’s release,” Judge Kennedy wrote. This time, however, the Obama administration decided to appeal.

Latif’s nationality presaged the administration’s reversal. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the so-called underwear bomber and a citizen of Nigeria, was trained and equipped in Yemen. After Abdulmutallab’s unsuccessful attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines Airbus A330 over Detroit in December of 2009, the administration adopted a blanket ban on releasing Yemeni detainees. Largely as a result, Yemenis form the the largest group of current Guantanamo prisoners. It’s Camus meets the accident of birth.

Mayerfeld offered a primer: Guantanamo Bay held 779 prisoners in January of 2002. Today that number is just 172 (seven have died while incarcerated). All the while and as early as 2002, one CIA report declared that one-third to one-half of detainees had no ties to terrorism. Nevertheless, a utilitarian calculus infected executive-branch decision making. There are evil actors at Guantanamo. Better to delay justice for a few, the conventional wisdom goes, than imperil American security over the long term.

Most of Guantanamo’s overarching questions transcend partisanship. Separating the innocent from the merely suspect has been delegated to a body called the “Guantanamo Review Task Force.” Mayerfeld terms it “trial by bureaucracy.”

Improvements have taken place, Mayerfeld said, and the consensus is that by the summer of 2009 detainee treatment drew closer to international norms. There are still flagrant violations of normative justice, however, such as arbitrary detention, deprivation of due process, and the denial of a fair trial. The question of solitary confinement also looms large. “Imagine living and sleeping in your own bathroom for 23 hours a day,” Mayerfeld said.

Mayerfeld, whose scholarship revolves around issues of torture and human rights, teaches a UW class on Guantanamo. In addition to extensive research, students are required to keep journals documenting the quotidian and often soul-deadening anomie of specific detainees. Individual profiles range from an Adnan Latif to unabashed killers such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In a recent Crosscut interview, Dr. Esther Brimmer, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, said, “The president has said that he plans to close Guantanamo, and cases are under active, regular review. We’ve moved out 68 prisoners to third countries.” Brimmer, who said that she was not familiar with details of Latif’s case, insisted that Guantanamo’s future also depends on the consent of Congress.

For Mayerfeld the essential question centers on Guantanamo’s afterlife. The conundrum of arbitrary, indefinite detention will not disappear if the United States shutters Guantanamo tomorrow and simply scatters prisoners to mainland purgatory.

Here the proverbial lessons of history don’t apply. “The fallacy of prediction by analogy occurs when analogy is used to anticipate future events — as it often is, in the absence of anything better,” David Hackett Fischer wrote more than 40 years ago. It’s an axiom that resonates still.

Guantanamo Bay is not about American servicemen in 1898 learning a novel technique for torturing Filipino POWs called the “water cure;” it is not Camp Harmony, the Puyallup way station for Japanese-Americans in the 1940s; and it is not President Lincoln’s Civil War suspension of habeaus corpus.

If Guantanamo is without clear antecedents, then the model for combatting it seems equally elusive. The civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s isn’t instructive because so much revolved around a judicial strategy in addition to political mobilization. Thurgood Marshall was the linchpin and Martin Luther King, Jr., was the closer. Justice would be revealed in the courts.

Capital punishment may be the closest analogue: a manifestly moral issue that loses juice because the lead characters are often heinous or unsympathetic. Latif — an ill and troubled man, but not a terrorist — has become an accidental metaphor, a force greater than himself.

So on a cold spring morning, two dozen Methodists ask questions and grab letter paper to write their members of Congress about a 34-year-old prisoner.

“What has been done will be done again,” reads Ecclesiastes. “There is nothing new under the sun.” Well, mostly.

No one aims to amend scripture in the basement of a Methodist church. It’s tempting though.

April 25, 2011 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Boeing should make amends for its link to CIA torture case

originally published on Crosscut.com on October 13, 2010

Plaintiffs in the case say Boeing jets were used to transport prisoners for interrogation. As the case winds through the federal appeals process, can the company continue hiding behind the argument that it was merely carrying out a client’s wishes?

The “Lazy B” is in our bones.

From William Boeing’s 1916 B&W Bluebill to Rosie the Riveter and the B29 Superfortress. From Tex Johnston’s 1955 barrel roll to the the Boeing Bust inspiring the infamous billboard, “Would the last person who leaves Seattle please turn out the lights?” From the 2001 move-to-Chicago sucker punch to the more recent Air Force tanker competition:

Boeing defines us.

If we think of the Lazy B as an expression of Northwest values, then the only time the words “Boeing” and “torture” should fall together is to describe Friday afternoons for a mid-level manager.

And yet, a Boeing subsidiary has been entangled in a lawsuit accusing it of helping the CIA fly prisoners to black sites overseas, a policy known as extraordinary rendition. The prisoners were subsequently tortured by bone-breaking friendlies in Afghanistan, Morocco and Egypt.

Last month, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the lawsuit on grounds that it could reveal government secrets.The New York Times quotes Judge Raymond Fisher describing the case as “a painful conflict between human rights and national security.” The ACLU, backing the plaintiffs, has vowed to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In practice the Ninth Circuit ruled that Boeing and its subsidiary, Jeppesen Dataplan, are within their right to hide behind their status as simply the contractor carrying out the government’s plan. It was the CIA, after all, that stage-managed the rendition and torture. And few multinationals delight in saying, “I ain’t gonna help ya” when the CIA comes knocking.

Following President Bush’s example, the Obama Administration invoked the state-secrets privilege, a legal catchall that puts the brakes on justice to safeguard national security. The judicial doctrine dates to a 1953 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, United States v. Reynolds. That case involved the widows of victims of a military airplane crash who were denied accident details for fear of compromising top-secret intelligence. It’s a doctrine that’s been applied legitimately and, in all likelihood, stretched and extended for expediency. On Sept. 8, The New York Times editorial page weighed in:The state secrets doctrine is so blinding and powerful that it should be invoked only when the most grave national security matters are at stake — nuclear weapons details, for example, or the identity of covert agents. It should not be used to defend against allegations that if true, as the dissenting judges wrote, would be “gross violations of the norms of international law.” All too often in the past, the judges pointed out, secrecy privileges have been used to avoid embarrassing the government, not to protect real secrets. In this case, the embarrassment and the shame to America’s reputation are already too well known.

Boeing took the legal and fiscally prudent route. While not technically liable, however, the company was morally wrong to abet torture. Transporting prisoners for purposes of bone-breaking also runs counter to the company’s stated values. The Boeing Company Code of Basic Working Conditions and Human Rights declares that “Boeing is committed to the protection and advancement of human rights in its worldwide operations…” It’s a statement consonant with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Global Sullivan Principles of Social Responsibility. And it doesn’t come with an asterisk and footnote stating “except to secretly jet prisoners overseas for Medieval-style beat-downs.”

So the question looms: Can Boeing make amends for enabling torture while upholding its fiduciary responsibility to shareholders? Well, maybe.

There is the Nick Naylor strategy and there is the sacrament of (qualified) penance.

The Naylor approach, named for the protagonist of Chris Buckley’s 1994 novel Thank You For Smoking, involves a cynical manipulation of the principle of Corporate Social Responsibility. Naylor labored for the sweetly titled “Academy of Tobacco Studies” that denied a link between smoking and health.

Boeing could ramp up its PR engine or establish a bogus entity that celebrates its partnership with the CIA. Call it the “Academy for Patriotic Rendition.” It would be an entertainingly shallow response.

The second alternative, a qualified-penance approach, aligns with Boeing’s stated values. The company could sidestep the torture question (“Er, that’s being adjudicated”) and point to its investment in substantive human rights advocacy and scholarship. Drop a few million bucks and create an unrestricted endowment at Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch or the University of Washington’s new Center for Human Rights (obnoxious-bias alert: I’m a Center booster). The company might also double its humanitarian airlifts, a laudable program that’s benefited thousands of disaster victims around the country and the world.

No one in Western Washington wants to tear down Boeing. Jet City is shorthand for the Lazy B. It’s a generous company. It pays mortgages and gins the economy.

All the while, until Congress and the Executive branch find a way to mitigate the overuse of the state secrets privilege, let’s encourage a Boeing payout. Yes, it’s something like an indulgence in Catholic theology. It’s cynical, it bypasses a direct admission of guilt, and it denies justice to the plaintiffs in the extraordinary rendition case.

Yet we live in an imperfect world with imperfect justice. Better to reach an approximation of justice than no justice at all.

October 13, 2010 phjackson Leave a response , ,

A Northwest take on the Nobel Peace Prize

originally published on Crosscut.com on October 9, 2010

Maybe next year for Billy Frank, Jr.

If Las Vegas had accepted wagers on Friday’s Nobel Peace Prize (there must be a receptive Sin City bookie) I would have bet on “no recipient” or perhaps on Liu Xiaobo, the imprisoned Chinese writer and dissident who has galvanized support across the globe and the PRC and did win the prize.

Sadly, this has been a year of bloodletting unbound, and the Nobel Committee has a history of voting for none-of-the-above, most recently in 1972, 1967, and 1966. It’s a cold, illustrative gesture by a committee of cold, Nordic depressives that peacemaking, like life, is ephemeral. 

Liu Xiaobo merits recognition for his courage and leadership advancing Charter 08, a manifesto that calls for human rights and constitutional government in China. Vaclav Havel, in arguing for Liu, compares Charter 08 to Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77 of three decades ago. “That document called on the Communist Party to respect human rights, and said clearly that we no longer wanted to live in fear of state repression,” Havel writes.

There is a political dimension to a Liu nod, but that’s fine. The Chinese, soon to rule the world, demand some human rights humbling. Moreover, think of Jimmy Carter’s 2002 Nobel (message: W. don’t invade Iraq) and President Obama last year (message: Thank you America for a post-W world). The Nobel committee is comprised of political animals, and sometimes they make inspired choices.  

The first and only Northwest Peace Nobelist was that pusher of all-things Vitamin C and disarmament-related, Linus Pauling.  Pauling was born in Portland and educated at Oregon State. He also won the Nobel for Chemistry in 1954.

My Nobel Peace Prize candidate after tomorrow is also a Northwesterner: Billy Frank Jr. Frank was one of the seminal figures during the Indian fish-ins of the 1960s and 70s, a campaign that culminated in the 1974 Boldt decision. Frank is noteworthy because he made the jump from activist of the MLK non-violent civil disobedience school to the administrative, political maw of natural resources management (for 30 years he’s been chair of the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission).

Frank sews together indigenous rights, environmental sustainability and, yes, peacemaking of the methodical, mind-numbing sort (incremental steps and thousands and thousands of meetings).

Too far afield or random? Not necessarily. Who understands the intense politics of fishing and fisheries conservation better than the Norwegians? When the committee musters all the facts about Billy Frank, Jr.’s life and leadership, chances are they’ll preface their 2011 Nobel announcement with, “Sorry this took so damn long.”

October 9, 2010 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Execution: State history offers some hope of ending barbarity

originally published on Crosscut.com on September 9, 2010

Sen. Ed Murray has repeatedly tried to end capital punishment in Washington state. Appeals to moral reasoning have actually worked before here.

Cal Coburn Brown, who was executed early Friday morning, was a death penalty poster child: Overfed, ugly, unrepentant.

In a statement denying clemency for Brown, Gov. Chris Gregoire said, “The post-conviction review by the courts has been thorough. Since Cal Brown’s conviction, the U. S. Supreme Court, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and the Washington State Supreme Court have reviewed his case and have found no basis to reverse his conviction or to change the death sentence imposed by the jury.”

Gregoire continued:

“The torture, rape and murder of Holly Washa were horrible acts of brutality. My sympathies and prayers are with Holly Washa’s family, who has suffered immeasurably from Cal Brown’s actions. No one can do anything to take away or lessen their pain. As a mother, my heart goes out to them for their tragic loss. I pray for Holly Washa. I will also pray for Cal Brown.”

The only problem with all of this politically and legally sound reasoning is that capital punishment remains a grotesque relic of the Dark Ages. It throws the United States in league with such human rights cretins as Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and China. It’s unjust and arbitrary (think of the Green River Killer, Gary Ridgway, who pled guilty to 48 sadistic murders in exchange for a life sentence). It’s not a deterrent, and it costs Washington State millions.

Professor Hubert Locke, along with the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, have underlined an especially horrific possibility: the likelihood of executing an innocent person (nationwide, 138 death-row inmates have been released since 1973 after being found innocent, according to the Coalition). The reasons for abolishing the death penalty, both moral and practical, are endless.

All the while, extending mercy to the merciless — and Brown acted mercilessly — runs counter to human nature. Imagine evil incarnate. (Brown even has that giveaway madman signature of three names, like John Wilkes Booth or John Wayne Gacy).

President Reagan’s former Solicitor General, Charles Fried, presents a surprisingly cogent and persuasive argument against the death penalty in his just-published book (co-written with his son, Gregory), “Because It Is Wrong: Torture, Privacy and Presidential Power in the Age of Terror”:Abstracting from everything about the death penalty except the ending of life makes vivid what the death penalty really is: a live person completely helpless in the hands of his captors is put to death without hope or opportunity of resistance or remonstrance. Much more than killing on the battlefield, it enacts the total subjection and subsequent annihilation of one person by another. All moral equality between executioner and victim is denied. The condemned for that moment exists only to be killed. Worse still, it is not only the executioner who has this total power over the condemned, but society as a whole that has organized itself to kill.

Legislative session after legislative session, state Sen. Ed Murray has, like a latter-day William Wilberforce, introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty. And, year after year, Murray has watched his spirited efforts crumble. It’s politically untenable. Citizens support the death penalty.

“Regardless of the hideous crime committed, state-sanctioned murder has never been a deterrent,” Murray said in an e-mail. “It’s regrettable we have a long way to go in Washington towards abolishing the death penalty.”

A winning strategy probably requires that moral sentiment be disguised and recast in political terms. The death penalty translates into millions of dollars for greedy suits, resources that could otherwise go to cops on the street or to locking up career thugs. It’s politics, raw and embellished, with an unexpressed moral end. That’s because efforts to promulgate morality (think Prohibition) generally crash and burn, and no one likes moralizers.

History can, of course, repeat itself. In 1913, state Rep. Frank P. Goss of Seattle introduced a bill to abolish the death penalty. According to a 2003 HistoryLink essay, Goss said on the state House floor, “I deny the abstract right of a government to take a life. I recognize only one right to kill and that is in self-defense.”

It was nearly a century ago, but this time the moralizing took. Gov. Ernest Lister signed the Goss bill into law. Capital punishment was abolished, not to be undone for six years.

Ed Murray and fellow opponents of the death penalty, take heart.

September 9, 2010 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Who will speak up for Seattle cartoonist under fatwa threat?

originally published on Crosscut.com

Seattle cartoonist Molly Norris lives with a metaphorical anvil over her head (she is, after all, a cartoonist).

Last month Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Islamic cleric holed up in Yemen, declared Norris a target for execution. Her transgression? Earlier this year, Norris responded to a censored episode of Comedy Central’s “South Park” that featured the prophet Mohammed dressed in a bear suit (Jesus and other religious figures appeared dressed as themselves). All references to Mohammed were bleeped after the network knuckled to threats by a handful of New Yorkers who dub themselves “Revolution Muslim.”

Norris watched the bleep-filled, image-blanked episode and was repelled. To express her free-speech solidarity, she launched a facetious protest that proclaimed May 20 “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” The faux sponsor’s Twain-esque name? “Citizens Against Citizens Against Humor.”

Sadly, at least among a select class of extremists, irreverence of the cartooning sort is a big no-no. And in the 21st century, satire can get you killed.

Continue reading →

August 27, 2010 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Nike move on labor issues is relief for UW

originally published on Crosscut.com on July 26, 2010

Nike has announced a watershed agreement with CGT, the union representing workers at two Honduran factories, Hugger and Vision Tex. According to the terms of the agreement unveiled Monday (July 26), Nike will pony up $1.5 million to a workers’ relief fund that will underwrite social security and health-care costs for laid-off employees.

The Nike-CGT severance resolution, the culmination of nationwide pressure largely emanating from anti-sweatshop activists, students, and professors at the University of Washington and elsewhere, comes at a critical time.

Last December, members of the UW’s Advisory Committee on Trademarks and Licensing voted to put Nike on notice for disregarding the university’s code of conduct. Charges included Nike’s multiple failures to abide by mandated disclosure standards as well as its refusal to pay severance to workers at the Honduran Hugger and Vision Tex factories.

The narrative grew complicated after UW Provost and soon-to-be interim President Phyllis Wise announced her appointment to Nike’s corporate board. Wise said that she would recuse herself from all university decisions involving the company and subsequently reported plans to donate her Nike income to a scholarship fund.

But the timing of Wise’s announcement was, in a word, awful, and it quickly ignited a backlash among campus activists and higher-ed politicos. In January, the UW chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) issued a formal statement calling for Wise to step down from the Nike board. Wise declined.

Finally on June 8, the UW’s Advisory Committee on Trademarks and Licensing (ACTL) voted unanimously to quash the end-of-year renewal of Nike’s university contract. To ratchet up pressure, members of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) along with labor, community, and academic pashas issued a July 15 open letter to UW President Mark Emmert requesting that he act on the committee’s recommendation posthaste.

After Monday’s announcement, however, the Nike tempest looks to be over.

ACTL committee chair, Professor Margaret Levi, said in an email:ACTL recommended the ending of the Nike contract in the absence of the historic agreement reached between Nike and the CGT, representing the workers of Vision Tex and Hugger in Honduras. I am sure the members of the committee share my delight in this outcome, which represents a significant victory in the struggle for workers’ rights. However, the struggle is on-going. Our committee is dedicated to working hard to ensure that licensed goods at the University of Washington are produced under sustainable conditions for workers and for the environment — whether they be provided by Nike, Russell, or any other brand. We shall continue to work to improve the supply chain model or supersede it with a better model.

The agreement is inspired news for international labor and for the UW. For one shining, hopefully long moment, corporate lions and labor lambs (or labor lions and corporate lambs) are lying down together.

“We are delighted at this outcome,” Emmert said in a statement. “More than taking responsibility for correcting the violations of its subcontractors, Nike’s actions chart a responsible course for its competitors to follow in similar situations.”

At the UW, the sword (or Nike swoosh) of Damocles is gone for now. It’s also a sweet coda to President Emmert’s tenure. In the fall, Emmert moves on to run the NCAA.

Said one UW professor, “Sometimes the good guys win.”

July 26, 2010 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

UW committee advises end to Nike relationship

originally published on Crosscut.com on June 11, 2010

In a move that reaffirms the University of Washington as a bellwether of workers’ rights and anti-sweatshop elbowing, the UW’s Advisory Committee on Trademarks and Licensing voted unanimously on June 8 to sandbag renewal of Nike’s lucrative university contract set to expire Dec. 31.

The committee’s recommendation, the administrative equivalent of a post-quarter exam, will test the mettle of the university’s NCAA-bound president, Mark Emmert, and his likely interim successor, Provost Phyllis Wise, who sits on Nike’s board.

Nationwide, colleges have led the way in needling Nike and other apparel companies to safeguard fair-labor standards. It’s a student- and faculty-driven trend that looks to be growing (Cornell, for example, is considering similar action).

Presupposing that President Emmert approves the committee’s decision (thus far Emmert has accepted all committee recommendations), the UW will become only the second university in the United States, after Wisconsin, to sever ties with the Oregon corporation based on human rights and transparency concerns.

Last December, members of the same UW committee voted to put Nike on notice for disregarding the university’s code of conduct. Charges included Nike’s multiple failures to abide by mandated disclosure standards as well as its refusal to pay severance to workers at two Honduran factories.

Dr. Margaret Levi, the committee’s chair and Emmert’s former professor, wrote in a June 8 email:In the absence of evidence that the workers of Vision Tex and Hugger: a) receive the terminal compensation owed them under Honduran law; or b) have, through recognized and legitimate representatives, reached a settlement agreement regarding terminal compensation, ACTL advises the University of Washington not to renew its collegiate licensing agreement with Nike when it comes up for renewal in December 2010.

The Committee feels strongly that it has done its due diligence re Nike’s actions and proposals. It also feels strongly that we have waited long enough for Nike to meet its responsibility re the workers in its supply chain. We urge you to accept our advice.

The crux of the matter for Emmert will be whether or not to embrace the committee’s recommendation and drop a collegiate-apparel colossus before heading to the NCAA. If Emmert gives the okay, it will stand as a gutsy coda to his nearly six-year tenure as UW president. If not, the decision will rest with his interim successor. However, if the conventional wisdom is correct and that successor is Provost Wise, the decision will need to be kicked down the ladder to sidestep any real or perceived conflict of interest.

It’s this Rube Goldberg shuffling to ensure a Nike firewall that has some professors huffing.

In a June 7 letter to the committee chair and co-chair, President Emmert wrote:As you know, Provost Wise has recused herself from all matters pertaining to the University’ꀙs relationship with Nike due to her service on Nike’ꀙs Board. Were the Regents to appoint her as interim president, we would need to re-position the Committee elsewhere within the administration. Obviously, this will need to wait until the Regents make their decision.

One UW observer responded in an email that if such an internal move occurred, “sweatshop issues will be effectively demoted and the person in charge of making the tough calls on such matters will report to a president on Nike’s board!”

Despite student and faculty backlash as well as pressure from the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) to resign from Nike’s board, Wise has said that she will continue her service while giving voice to campus concerns and agitating for improved corporate behavior. It’s a “corporation whisperer” philosophy, not without merit, that Nike board membership by a university administrator enhances and informs corporate policy.

For UW pashas, the Nike saga is a catch-22 that brings into focus broader questions about the evolving mission of a public university.

On the one hand, the public and legislature don’t cotton to academics divorced from the real world. It was this perspective, in fact, that made President Emmert’s appointment so inspired. Here was a hometown boy from Fife who attended Green River Community College and as UW president served on the boards of both Expeditors International and Weyerhaeuser. It seemed that Emmert understood policy, how to speak in non-jargonese, and how to shake dinero from the dinero tree.

It was only as the state budget tanked and the UW got pegged for arrogant overreach with its stadium demands that the honeymoon ended. To compound matters, declining state support for the UW had become a multi-year pattern.

State lawmakers, facing another $3 billion budget gap on top of the $12 billion deficit of the past two years, aren’t amused. “The University of Washington is at a historic juncture as one of the premier institutions of higher education in the world, and we need all hands on deck to build a stronger coalition of students, parents, faculty, alumni and administrators going into next year’s budget season,” said state Rep. Reuven Carlyle of Seattle. “The provost’s lucrative position on Nike’s board just doesn’t seem in tune with the cold, hard reality facing our state during this great recession.”

At the same time, academy corporatization seems to aggravate the divide between UW higher-ups and professors and deans saddled with cut-to-the-marrow budgets. The resentment is palpable. Do we price out students with higher tuition or cut quality? Are the two mutually exclusive? Should corporate connections, and the attendant revenue generated from those connections, be a prerequisite to lead a large, public university like the UW or not?

If the corporatization model is in fact the new paradigm, then the UW may be ahead of the curve on that issue, as well as on workers’ rights. Neat trick.

June 11, 2010 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

The Nike Industrial Complex

originally published on Crosscut.com on December 18, 2009

For decades the door-hinge give of a cedar bench at the Blue Moon Tavern (whence I scribble) was required drinking space for Northwest imbibers, just as Rainier Club membership was a sine qua non for Seattle’s business class.

The latest touchstone, at least for University of Washington honchos, is membership on the corporate board of Nike. For the second time in as many weeks, a UW higher-up, in this case a regent nominee, is tied to the Beaverton, Oregon corporation.

Before shuttling off to Copenhagen last Friday, Gov. Gregoire nominated Orin Smith, the venerable former Starbucks CEO, as a member of the university’s Board of Regents. Smith has served on the Nike board since 2004. UW Provost Phyllis Wise, the university’s chief academic officer, was appointed a Nike director on November 19 and will receive an annual compensation of between $132,000 and $217,000 (For a full list of future UW regents and administrators, please click here ).

As Nick Perry of the Seattle Times reported, Wise’s appointment has kindled blowback from faculty, students, and state legislators.

Phil Knight’s invisible hand made visible? The Trilateral Commission writ small?

Supporters of the provost, who is well regarded among Nike-appointment supporters and critics alike, seem flummoxed by the intensity of the backlash. After all, university administrators have accepted corporate directorships at least since the era of former UW President William Gerberding (Safeco). Current UW President Mark Emmert, for example, serves on the boards of both Weyerhaeuser and Expeditors International.

Much of the controversy, however, revolves around a very specific corporation at an especially sensitive time.

Critics note that Nike has a record of strong-arming universities that associate with the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), most famously in 2000 when Phil Knight announced he would suspend all future giving to the University of Oregon, including a $30 million pledge to expand Autzen Stadium. Subsequently, the U of O (surprise)! dropped its WRC membership.

In addition, Huskies have been in the vanguard of anti-sweatshop activism for years. The university is only one of a handful of higher-ed institutions affiliated with both the WRC and the Fair Labor Association. (The latter was established during the Clinton Administration in response to the sweatshop controversy surrounding Kathie Lee Gifford’s Wal-Mart clothing line.)

Wise’s appointment comes just weeks before a budget-from-hell legislative session and at an awkward juncture for the UW: On December 3, members of the University of Washington’s Advisory Committee on Trademarks and Licensing voted to put Nike on notice for disregarding the university’s code of conduct. Charges include Nike’s multiple failures to abide by mandated disclosure standards as well as its refusal to pay severance to workers at two Honduran factories.

The university’s next steps, including remediation for the conduct violations and possible contract termination, are in the hands of President Emmert. (The Nike contract is valued at between $35-39 million over ten years.)

Smith’s appointment to the Board of Regents may neutralize the primary argument for Wise’s Nike directorship, namely that the Provost will give voice to campus concerns and agitate for improved corporate behavior.

No need now. We have Regent-designate Orin Smith for that.

December 18, 2009 phjackson Leave a response , , ,

Nike put on notice

originally published on Crosscut.com on December 8, 2009

William Gates Sr., the longtime University of Washington regent, said at a meeting of Crosscut writers Tuesday afternoon that he was not consulted about the recent appointment of UW Provost Phyllis Wise to Nike’s corporate board.

At the same time, Gates said that he saw a benefit to the provost’s appointment. “There’s value to Phyllis having a spot like that,” Gates said. It was a sentiment echoed by UW President Mark Emmert, who said in an interview with Seattle Weekly’s Nina Shapiro that he was “very supportive” of Wise’s directorship and that as a Nike board member Wise would be well positioned to advocate for “appropriate behavior.”

As first reported by the Seattle Times, Wise will be paid between $132,000 and $217,000 a year as a Nike director in addition to her annual university salary of $535,000.

In Victorian parlance, Wise’s appointment might be construed as “ill-timed.”

After deliberating for two hours last Thursday, members of the University of Washington’s Advisory Committee on Trademarks and Licensing voted to put Nike on notice for disregarding the University’s code of conduct. Specific charges include Nike’s multiple failures to abide by mandated disclosure standards as well as its refusal to pay severance to workers at two Honduran factories (a violation of Honduran law).

It was, by any measure, a watershed moment for labor-rights enforcement. As Matt Reed, a member of the UW’s Student Labor Action Project said Tuesday, “This refocuses the narrative, that we don’t do business with corporations that exploit labor.”

The committee’s decision comes on the heels of the UW’s recent action against Russell Athletic as well as student pressure to provide severance for the laid-off workers of the Estofel Apparel Factory in Guatemala City.

On his blog today, state Rep. Reuven Carlyle, a member of the House Higher Education Committee, wrote:

I do believe that Provost Wise, the university’ꀙs chief academic officer, must set a positive example by either rejecting the appearance of a conflict of interest (no matter how slight) or by donating at least 90 percent of her directorship fees to scholarships at the University of Washington. That would still leave her with earning an additional $20,000 a year &mdash 50 percent of the annual earning of a state legislator — for attending five meetings. There can be little question that she is earning these dollars because of her public position and her public role affiliated with the University of Washington. The public should receive compensation, too.

We are facing the most severe economic crisis in generations. Higher education is on the front line of those cuts, and the coming months of the legislative session will be brutally painful for those of us who have to make those decisions. This move by the provost, while made sincerely and with only the best of intentions, is not helpful in our larger efforts to convince our colleagues that our institutions of higher education need more support, and local control, not less. She is in the middle of perfect storm of perception. During normal times, perhaps this would not be an issue, but we don’ꀙt live in normal times. And the fact is the public simply cannot understand why a public servant should benefit so handsomely from an appointment to a private board.

Presupposing that Emmert accepts the advisory committee’s recommendations, the burden will be on Nike to come up with a timely and enforceable remediation plan. If not, Nike will (no pun intended) get the UW boot.

December 8, 2009 phjackson Leave a response , , ,