Word: fla
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...Harvard Students Against Sweatshops (HSAS), a campaign of the Progressive Students Labor Movement, believes Harvard made a serious mistake when it signed with the attractively misnamed Fair Labor Association (FLA) rather than the Workers' Rights Consortium (WRC). The WRC is a third-party industry monitoring group with no ties to the industries it investigates while the FLA's governing board is dominated by these industries. Harvard's decision to sign with the FLA suggests that, while Harvard has formally committed in principle to fight sweatshop production of apparel and other insignia goods, it has not yet effectively embraced this commitment...
...other hand, business and industry organizes and continues to run the FLA. Indeed, it recently announced that it intends to hire Price Waterhouse Coopers, a business services corporation with ties to most major garment manufacturers, to do its field-work. The FLA also has bad inspection policies. It does not require the results of site visits be made public, it announces where and when it will inspect factories, it allows companies to select monitors and list which factories should be monitored and it deals with third party complaints in a convoluted way. The FLA leaves such matters in the hands...
Clearly, the administration should switch from the FLA to the WRC. Pure logic sides with the WRC, and it costs Harvard next to nothing to switch. But why hasn't Harvard done as many universities recently have and made the change? The WRC has set April 1 as its cut-off date for universities to particpate in the first round of agenda-setting and decision-making...
Last year, a Crimson poll showed that two-thirds of the students supported the HSAS's efforts, and just a few weeks ago, the Undergraduate Council passed a resolution recommending the administration switch from the FLA to the WRC by a huge majority. Clearly, as has been suggested in the past, the HSAS does not represent just a small fraction of students. The students deserve to be not only heard, but to have a vote when it comes to making sweatshop policy decisions. More to the point, Harvard should switch from the FLA...
...matter. E-noses have other, more practical uses. Osmetech, a British e-nose company, has dedicated itself to the detection of diseases. Its e-nose can sniff out six of the seven types of bacteria responsible for urinary-tract infections. Microsensor Systems of Orlando, Fla., makes a $9,800 portable device equipped with crystal sensors that can sniff out spoiling food and chemical weapons with equal ease. Caltech researchers sent one of their chips on John Glenn's space-shuttle mission last year to keep tabs on the quality of the cabin air. An adventurous Cyranose was even used...