Our university tour - Day 1 (Columbia U.)

Having just returned from my recent university tour, I am more encouraged than ever by the passion and drive I saw in students to resolve labor and human rights issues worldwide. As they always have, students and universities play a crucial role in campaigning against any form of social injustice… as we did in fighting the apartheid movement in South Africa to fighting sweatshop labor conditions today.

Despite difficult connections, including train delays and some very bumpy flights on small airplanes, Heeral Coleman, the FLA’s University Liaison, and I were able to get to all three of the universities we had scheduled.

On the first day of our tour, at Columbia University, I participated in a panel discussion on "Universities and Labor Standards in the Global Economy.” You can view a video of that meeting here. Later that evening, I was a guest speaker at a Columbia Law School seminar on “Transnational Human and Business Rights.” I found an intelligent and receptive audience for my talk touched on the evolution of the FLA’s work up through the current FLA 3.0, our new generation of labor compliance tools that go beyond mere factory monitoring and dig deeper to uncover and correct root causes of labor violations. If you want to read more about FLA 3. 0, here's where you go.

Auret van Heerden