Following a campaign to raise awareness of Dining Services workers' health care benefits during contract negotiations last month, the Student Labor Alliance has shifted its focus to graduate student pay and the University's ties to sweatshop labor.
The SLA chooses its agenda based on members' interests as well as those of labor groups that seek the SLA's assistance, according to Madeleine Lipshie-Williams '07.5, an SLA member. "We meet with (union) members, get to know them. We don't just want to fight for what we want, but for things they want," Lipshie-Williams said.
With around 20 core members, the SLA has to prioritize when deciding which issues to pursue. "We're not huge, so we have to pick what we work on. For this semester, the fact that workers' contracts were going to expire made it a priority," Lipshie-Williams said.
During negotiations for the new Dining Services contract, the SLA's goals were "essentially the goals of the union," including affordable health care for all workers, Lipshie-Williams wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
Roxana Rivera, director of Service Employees International Union Local 615, said the SLA was very helpful during Dining Services contract negotiations. "They were important both in bringing attention to the workers and in sending a message to the University," she said.
"We're definitely interested in continuing a relationship with them," Rivera said.
Lipshie-Williams said the SLA also hoped a "strong and successful campaign with the (Dining Services) workers would help strengthen SLA while raising general campus awareness of workers' struggles."
To this end, Lipshie-Williams said the SLA offered to aid student BuDS workers if they decided to join Dining Services workers in the event of a strike. Had there been a strike, Lipshie-Williams said the group planned to arrange discounts for striking students at local restaurants and to organize a strike fund for students who needed financial assistance.
The SLA also organized a rally outside the Sharpe Refectory Oct. 16 in support of Dining Services workers, three days before a contract agreement was reached.
The contract, which was ratified Oct. 19, included a 3.5-percent wage increase for all workers and maintained a 6-percent health care premium while raising pharmacy and emergency room co-pay to the level other non-management University employees pay, according to an Oct. 20 Herald article.
"It was a hugely successful campaign," Lipshie-Williams said, noting that on-campus publicity was an effective tool in the SLA's effort.
In September, Graduate School students approached the SLA seeking help in efforts to attain pay equity between master's and Ph.D. students who work as teaching assistants, according to Jessica Johnson GS. "(Master's) teaching assistants are making less than a third of what Ph.D. students make for the same amount of work," Johnson wrote in an e-mail to The Herald.
Johnson wrote that, thus far, the SLA has "sent representatives to our meetings, assisted in writing and distributing petitions, and raised the grad student pay issue during various events."
Lipshie-Williams said the SLA will soon renew its focus on an anti-sweatshop labor campaign.
In September 2005 the SLA submitted a proposal to the University to adopt the Designated Suppliers Program, according to the SLA's Web site. The DSP would require that licensees contracted to produce University apparel and other products order garments from a list of factories approved by the Workers Rights Consortium, a monitoring group.
Lipshie-Williams said the anti-sweatshop labor effort at Brown is important because, if it joins with other universities, "its international impact on the market is significant."
"It's also a matter of prestige. Brown is a name people know," Lipshie-Williams said.
Rivera commended the SLA for its students' activism. "Brown is known as a liberal institution. Students wanted to ensure that the practices of the University match its mission," Rivera said. "As students, they let the University know what kind of school they want to be at."
Johnson also expressed her appreciation for the SLA's hard work. The group is the embodiment of the classic "'think globally, act locally' mantra," she wrote.
