To the Editor:
As an affiliate of the Fair Labor Association, Brown University has been an advocate for workers' rights across the globe for more than a decade.
A recent opinions column by Ian Trupin '13 ("Celebrating 10 years of the Worker Rights Consortium," Sept. 27) made several inaccurate claims about the work that the association and its affiliates are doing to ensure that fair labor standards are upheld in supplier factories. First, and most importantly: The association does not certify companies. Because conditions in factories are always changing, it is impossible to certify whether a brand is always in compliance with standards. Every factory faces compliance challenges and it is the joint responsibility of sourcing brands and factory management to identify and remedy those issues in a sustainable way. The association provides tools, resources and training to assist companies in these efforts.
Each year, Fair Labor Association-accredited monitors visit 5 percent of each affiliates' factories. Since 1999, the association has conducted more than 1,000 such unannounced factory audits. Contrary to what the column states, the factories visited are selected at random by Fair Labor Association staff without involvement by the brands. Neither the brand nor the factories are advised in advance of monitoring visits. As part of the audits, interviews with workers are conducted both in the factory and outside of the factory. In addition to in-person interviews, more than 16,000 workers have participated in standardized, quantitative questionnaires which are completed anonymously by a randomly selected, representative sample of workers. These questionnaires help us understand workers' perception of the factories they work in.
The association's board has an independent chair and 18 other members: six representing colleges and universities, six from NGOs and six from businesses. All critical decisions of the board must be approved by a supermajority of board members — that is, four out of six members of all three groups. The board has no say over whether an assessment report is published. In fact, reports of all monitoring visits have been published, and will continue to be published, on our website.
The affiliation of brands with the association is voluntary. But as long as they are a part of the association, all companies must conduct internal monitoring to ensure compliance with the association's code of conduct, remedy code violations in a systematic way and subject their supply chains to the association's independent assessments.
Long-term solutions to systemic labor issues are possible only if companies, civil society and universities work together. The commitment of Brown University and other leading institutions is essential to protecting workers everywhere.
Jorge Perez-Lopez
Executive Director of the Fair Labor Association
