Workers from the Mexican Kukdong garment factory who recently established an independent labor union visited Georgetown Wednesday to celebrate their advances with university students and administrators who have supported their efforts for several years. The culmination of years of work, Kukdong’s breakthrough is recognized as one of the most important victories in worker’s rights in the world this year, according to a press release.

Kukdong was one of many apparel factories in Mexico and around the world that suffered from poor working conditions, intolerant or resource-starved governments and unstable wages. With the aid of university codes of conduct and organizations such as the Georgetown Solidarity Committee, however, the factory has been able to eliminate its illegal and unrepresentative labor union. According to GSC member Michael Levinson (MSB ’02), GSC and similar campus groups across the country began organizing around the issue four years ago. In 1998, GSC had a sit-in in then-University President Leo J. O’Donovan’s, S.J., office demanding that companies such as Nike adopt Georgetown’s code of conduct and disclose the location of factories that produced the university’s licensed apparel.

“Students were calling for transparency of factory locations, because if you don’t have that information, there’s no way to inspect the factories and see if they’re upholding a code of conduct,” GSC president Vanessa Waldref (COL ’02) said.

“This was unheard of at the time, but as more and more student groups won consent, the apparel industry buckled and gave in. At Georgetown, we also negotiated the formation of the Licensing Implementation Committee, to recommend further courses of action concerning licensing policy to the Office of the President,” Levinson said. Georgetown and Duke were the first two universities to gain factory adherence to their codes of conduct.

Georgetown students later joined the Workers’ Rights Consortium, which gives universities power as consumers, in 1999. The university eventually became the fifth member of WRC, which now has over 90 member universities and an annual budget over $500,000.

“What we needed was a monitoring group to actually look at the factories and see if the codes of conduct are being upheld. [The WRC] is used to investigate the factories where Georgetown apparel is made,” Waldref said.

In conjunction with member universities across the country, Kukdong was the first factory the WRC investigated.

“We pressured Nike and Reebok through letters from the Office of the President to rectify the abuses there and support the workers in their struggle to organize – and after three long years of capacity building and consciousness shifting, it worked,” Levinson said.

The WRC’s pressure on Nike and Reebok prompted them to pressure Kukdong management to reinstate the workers, and recognize the union. The resulting Mexmode factory is now the first democratically elected union in an apparel factory in the region.

“It was the first victory in this burst of student activism. The workers at the Kukdong factory were able to form this union, which was a huge step for workers rights. This is really a whole new type of global solidarity where the workers are really winning,” Waldref said.

Marcella Munoz Tepepa, a Kukdong worker who spoke Wednesday, voiced her thanks to the audience.

“We now go to work enthusiastically with smiles on our faces. No longer do we fear abuse from the management,” she said.

GSC is continuing to work on improving labor rights issues and is currently pressuring a baseball cap manufacturing company in New York to review their procedures and policies.

“We are working with the Georgetown Fair Trade Student Association to make all the coffee consumed on campus is fair trade coffee,” Levinson added. Fair trade coffee means that coffee farmers in developing nations are paid a living wage for their coffee.

Levinson emphasized students’ obligation to correct infringements on labor rights. “We, as members of our university and often consumers of Georgetown apparel, have a responsibility to ensure that the goods that bear our logo are made in just conditions,” he said.

“If every university student performed the simple act of writing a letter of concern about working conditions when they bought a piece of clothing, I guarantee you that the apparel industry would be transformed,” Levinson added. “The lives of millions of workers across the world would be transformed.”