Wednesday's paper had an article entitled "Greiner Discusses New Era Contract, Role of UB President on WBFO." This article is an interview with President Greiner that explicitly avoids any comment from members of Local 14177, the Derby plant New Era employees on strike, or students. This is bias. A more assertive way to be biased is to include false information such as "the $10 to $14 Derby employees receive per hour for equivalent work." Derby plant New Era employees have been paid $6.50 per hour for nine months now. If that type of pay cut doesn't sound like a reason to strike, it should. The phrase "equivalent work" also suggests that hard-won workers' rights to bearable conditions sprang up magically overseas. They have not.
The president of the New Era Caps Co., Christopher Koch, wrote a surprisingly similar editorial in the University of Michigan's student paper on April 11. Point-for-point it was a series of lies. Go to www.workersrights.org to access 2,000 pages of evidence from the Workers Rights Consortium and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. The most critical lie is President Greiner's assertion, "I'm very dubious about the proposition that it's the responsibility of the university to set the working standards . . ." Exhibit A of SUNY's standard Nonexclusive License Agreement clarifies this. It is a SUNY-wide clause that sets minimum labor standards for a contract to exist with a SUNY school.
The only labor conditions that the university is not responsible for are in companies from which we don't buy. If we, as a university, pay a company, we are enabling the company to continue bad practices. We have already taken a side. If President Greiner is unable to represent the student body and our wishes to respect human rights, we need to take a serious look at how universities are run.
