4 - The Michigan Daily - Tuesday, March 28, 2006 OPINION The£dip&g DoNN M. FRESARD Editor in Chief EMILY BEAM CHRISTOPHER ZBROZEK Editorial Page Editors ASHLEY DINGES Managing Editor EDITED AND MANAGED BY STUDENTS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SINCE 1890 420 MAYNARD STREET ANN ARBOR, MI 48109 tothedaily@michigandaily.com NOTABLE QUOTABLE So obviously animal cruelty is a common thing in Washtenaw County." - Tanya Hilgendorf, executive director of the Human Society of Huron Valley, discussing the string of dog slayings in Superior Township, as reported yesterday by the Ann Arbor News. 40A COLIN DALY THE MICHIGAN DALY 0 t L.O~'w f y ouIK( Unsigned editorials reflect the official position of the Daily's editorial board. All other signed articles and illustrations represent solely the views of their author. ,I' T Paradise lost SAM SINGER SAM'S CLUM think the come- dic value of the anti-French joke peaked sometime back in 2003, during those hot-blooded months of diplomatic wran- gling before U.S. forc- es invaded Iraq. The French have grown increasingly coopera- tive since then, and tensions have begun to cool. Meanwhile, I've been getting worried. It's almost April. My time at this University is drawing to a rapid close, and the thought of forfeiting this column space without tak- ing a parting shot at the French was making me uneasy. Of course, that was earlier this month, before thousands of well-to-do French students began tearing Paris to pieces. Their object of contention: a law that makes it legal to fire people. Well, there's a little more to it, but not much. The bill relaxes France's First Employ- ment Contract, a provision that effectively guarantees permanent job security for citi- zens who work full-time. Under the proposed changes, employers will have a two-year win- dow in which they can fire new workers with- out having to defend their reasoning in court. After two years, the old rules take effect, and French workers get to fall back on comfortable lifetime employment contracts and oversized pension packages. It's a fairly moderate reform, though you wouldn't know it from the noisy reception they gave it in Paris. I took one look at the mayhem on CNN and was certain the Eiffel Tower had fallen. Cars were flipped on their sides and left to smolder in the streets. Storefront windows were shattered. Students rushed police barri- cades. The signs being hoisted in the streets seemed to suggest that a national birthright was under assault. Students apparently feel entitled to a steady paycheck as they do to clean water and military defense. Nevermind the French economy, which is literally sinking under the weight of its unemployed; these stu- dents would give up croissants before living one minute in a social compact that doesn't bring jobs through a feeding tube. After all, that's the system that served their parents. It's everything organized labor was marching for in 1968, the last time demonstra- tors took to the streets in such large numbers. Since then, France's command economy has expanded at a suffocating pace. The French workforce now operates in a vacuum of compe- tition. For those on the inside, the work weeks are brief and the wages are healthy. Summer vacations are often compensated and lavish pension plans give workers freedom to retire early. It's a structure that institutionalizes lazi- ness. It's what Disney Land would look like if Karl Marx were in charge. As for the involun- tarily unemployed, that unfortunate 10 percent residing outside the ivory walls of the worker state? C'est la vie. The system has survived as a tacit covenant between the voting public and the political left: The French workforce gets its bed of roses and politicians keep their jobs. And despite their better judgments - the majority of French lawmakers recognize that excessive regulation is drowning the economy - French lawmak- ers continue to support costly interventions in the labor market. In the rare occasion that Par- liament considers peeling away employment protections, French workers do what they do best - they strike. But bowing to Big Labor won't be as easy this time. The devastating riots that engulfed Paris's poor, largely Muslim suburbs last year marked a sea change in French politics. Law- makers now have an entirely new variety of working class on their hands. Most of these workers are of North African descent. They're the children of the laborers France brought in by the thousands in the 1950s to help rebuild the country after World War II. They're young, they're poor and, because of France's rigid naturalization requirements, few of them are citizens. As a result, many remain ineli- gible for the extravagant employment benefits France offers to full-time, naturalized workers. They're France's real proletariat, the workers the labor unions left behind. That's what is so ironic about the French brand of socialism. By denying foreign nationals citizenship while profiting off their labor, the French model is actually reinforc- ing inequality. Economic playing fields aren't exactly even back here in the states, but at least we don't have the audacity to call ourselves socialists. 0 Singer can be reached at singers@umich.edu. VIEWPOINT Fast for Justice: A call for a SweatFree 'U' BY ADRI MILLER If you've passed through Angell Hall or the Diag recently, you've probably seen a Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equal- ity member chained to a sewing machine. It's probably obvious that SOLE is protest- ing sweatshops. What is less clear is why sweatshops are still a critical issue on cam- pus and why we, as University students, are in a unique position to affect positive, lasting change in the way our clothing is produced. Six months ago, SOLE, in coordination with United Students Against Sweatshops and student activists nationwide, kicked off the SweatFree Campus Campaign. The cam- paign brings us one step closer toward elimi- nating the use of sweatshop labor to produce University apparel. SweatFree would require that all clothing with the University logo be made in factories that pay workers a liv- ing wage and where workers are represented by a legitimate, independent organization. We understands that many may be unfamil- iar with SweatFree, and so we have tried to address those questions here today. How do we know that University cloth- ing is made in sweatshops? We have heard it from the workers them- selves. Twice this past year, SOLE brought workers from Latin America, Africa and Southeast Asia to campus to speak about their experiences in sweatshops. They told us how workers in their factories - predominantly women - are subjected to unpaid overtime, dangerous working conditions, toxic chemi- cals, sexual abuse and rape. All this while earning wages too low to provide for their families and being actively persecuted for any attempt to speak out. The University is the number-two seller of collegiate apparel in the country. Making our University Sweat- Free would directly impact and improve the lives of thousands of workers. Why do we need a new code of con- duct? In the late 1990s, student activists at uni- versities nationwide won anti-sweatshop codes of conduct, including at the University. While this was an important victory on paper, in practice it has not succeeded in stemming exploitative industry wide practices. Under the current system, in the rare cases when workers are able to organize and win high- er wages and better conditions, brands just move to another (read: cheaper) factory. The SweatFree Campus Campaign is the result of extensive evaluation and cooperation among workers, human rights organizations and industry experts. SweatFree creates a "race to the top," in which brands seeking the privilege of producing University clothing must respect workers and human rights. Seven universities - including the University of Indiana, the University of Wisconsin and Duke University - have already enacted SweatFree. The Uni- versity of Michigan has not followed in the footsteps of its more justice-oriented peers. I know sweatshops are bad, but isn't a job in a sweatshop better than no job at all? It is true that factories that produce for multinational brands tend to pay higher than average wages. What this fact conceals is that sweatshop wages are still not high enough to meet workers' basic needs. Sweatshop work- ers are predominantly women who are sup- porting entire families, not just themselves, on these extremely low wages. Claiming that sweatshops are the lesser of two evils is no excuse for exploitation, abuse, discrimination and oppression. So how can we make the University a SweatFree University? SOLE has repeatedly requested a meeting with President Mary Sue Coleman, yet she refuses to meet with us. Workers came from halfway around the world to ask Coleman to use her power and enact SweatFree, and again she blatantly ignored them. President Coleman and her advisors have been stalling on Sweat- Free for over six months. SOLE is aware that we are not the only students being shut out by the administration. While she was president of University of Iowa, Coleman had student anti-sweatshop protesters dragged out of her office and arrested by the Iowa City police. She has continued this tradition of silencing student voices at the University. Coleman courts private donations and multinational corporate sponsors while hiking tuition and profiting off sweatshop labor. It is time for students to take action and demand account- ability from our administration. SOLE stands in solidarity with the students and workers who are fighting for justice on campus and around the world. On Wednesday, SOLE is asking the cam- pus community to participate in a one-day fast. The Fast for Justice will culminate in a rally on the steps of the Union at 5:10 p.m. SOLE will be on the Diag today and Wednes- day distributing red solidarity armbands and answering questions about SweatFree. We demand that Coleman take seriously her responsibility toward the workers who pro- duce our clothing. We demand that our Uni- versity be SweatFree. Miller is a RC sophomore and a member of SOLE. 0 40 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Send all letters to the editor to tothedailyomichigandaily.com. Men benefit widely from preference in admissions TO THE DAILY: Dana Christensen's viewpoint urging women to oppose the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative on the grounds that affirmative action increases women's educational oppor- tunities (A reflection on Women's History Month, 03/27/2006) may leave readers with ued applicants ... the standards for admission to today's most selective colleges are stiffer for women than men," she wrote. Whatever one's position on gender-based affirmative action, failing to discuss this phe- nomenon provides an incomplete picture. Julia Lipman Rackham MSA candidate apologizes reading their e-mail and additionally requir- ing intervention by Information Technology Central Services. What I did was completely inappropriate and damaged the good reputation of both MSA and the student body as a whole. Additionally, I recognize the degree to which I interfered with University business and caused unneces- sary work for support personnel on this cam- pus. I am ashamed to have done this, and I promise to never again send such an e-mail. Editorial Board Members: Amy Anspach, Andrew Bielak, Kevin Bunkley, Gabrielle D'Angelo, Whitney Dibo, Milly Dick, Sara Eber, Jesse Forester, Mara Gay, Jared Goldberg, Mark Kuehn, Frank Manley, Kirsty McNamara, Suhael Momin, Rajiv Prabhakar, Katherine Seid, Gavin Stern, Ben Taylor, Jessica Teng, Rachel Wagner, Jason Yost. I