I was pleased to see the front-page story in Tuesday's Chronicle, "Duke Signs New Apparel Policy." Since 1999, when Duke became the first university in the nation to require specified working standards in plants that manufacture apparel with Duke's logo, the University has been a national leader in the anti-sweatshop movement, as have Duke Students Against Sweatshops.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of errors in the story. The article mistakenly indicated that, "... the number of manufacturers of Duke logo apparel will be slashed by 25 percent... ." Under the pilot program we have agreed to develop, Duke will require that 25 percent of the production of Duke logo apparel be moved to a smaller number of designated factories that meet all of our requirements and which can more easily be monitored.
The article also attributes a statement that misrepresents Duke's position on collective bargaining issues. Duke is not opposed to unions or to collective bargaining. Indeed, we feel it is important that workers have the right to determine for themselves whether or not they wish to bargain collectively through a union without being dictated to do so by Duke. The proposal that was presented to us by Students Against Sweatshops specifically mentioned unions as the appropriate representative group, and, for the reasons noted above, I removed that reference.
Tallman Trask
Executive Vice President
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