As the University and other schools nationwide use the leverage of their merchandising to try to change manufacturers' labor practices, activists and economists continue to disagree about whether such pressure is effective.
Workers and activists from the Mexmode factory in Atlixco, Mexico, visited the University Friday as part of a regional meeting of United Students Against Sweatshops. Earlier this year, workers at the Nike-run factory, which produces some Duke sweatshirts, went on strike protesting the company's labor practices. With a labor union now in place and some laborers noting improved conditions, activists are touting the experience as a watershed example of the power of universities' codes governing working conditions.
"The debate in terms of codes of conduct has been in the abstract for years," said Scott Nova, the executive director of the anti-sweatshop group Worker Rights Consortium who is visiting 12 universities with the workers. "We're now actually seeing for the first time how codes of conduct have served in a very concrete way in impacting the lives of workers."
Many economists, however, call the efforts of universities and others, including the WRC, unproductive and anti-worker.
"You'll be hard-pressed to find any economist who thinks these organizations are doing anything to help these people. You can't help people out by taking away their jobs," said Peter Arcidiacono, an assistant professor of economics who teaches a labor economics course.
Arcidiacono said there are two possible outcomes from anti-sweatshop efforts, both injurious to workers: Either the factory will be forced to raise wages, meaning it will hire fewer workers, or the demand for the company's products will fall, thereby reducing workers' salaries.
Enrique Menodza, professor of economics at Duke who received his undergraduate degree in Mexico City and once worked as economist for the Mexican ministry of finance, questioned the motives of groups like the WRC. Last year, Mendoza and Ed Tower, professor of economics, were two of over 200 economists to sign a letter arguing against groups like the WRC and the Fair Labor Association, another anti-sweatshop organization.
"These groups do not bring real, workable solutions to the serious economic and social problems of the developing world," Mendoza wrote in an e-mail. "What they are really working for is to ensure that the developing world remains poor and underdeveloped so their protected interests in the industrial world are not threatened."
But at least some workers from the Mexmode factory said the pressure from universities and groups like the WRC have improved their working conditions. For example, conditions are safer and the food given to workers is more sanitary, said factory worker Marcela Munoz Tepepa. She and others said that largely because of the threat of boycotts from American students, the changes have taken place without putting workers out of their jobs or closing the factory.
"The logic says that if Nike wants to clean up its image, then in fact it's better for Nike to continue to do business at [Mexmode] than to go somewhere where there haven't been these battles," said Huberto Nunez, a professor of economics at the Autonomous University near the factory who helped organize the labor union.
Arcidiacono had a different formula for helping foreign workers.
"[It's] the exact opposite conclusion. Buy from these companies, and by buying from these companies, you increase the demand for the product and that will translate into a higher market-clearing wage and employment level," Arcidiacono said.
He added that if there is genuine concern about workers, the way to help them is to subsidize them with food or money.
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