About 10 students are core members of USAS under the leadership of Paul Jusseaume, a sophomore from Canton, Ohio. Jusseaume organized the chapter after a September campus appearance by Charles Kernaghan, international labor rights activist and executive director of the National Labor Committee. Jusseaume stands squarely in the WRC camp, emphasizing the consortium's intention to focus on worker freedom to make complaints. At the urging of the students and in recognition of the limitations of the provisions of the FLA, Burkhardt has been evaluating the Workers' Rights Consortium. There are advantages to each of the groups, Burkhardt said.
Companies are responsible for policing themselves for abiding by a corporate code of conduct.
The WRC places more emphasis on living-wage issues and is trying to set up a system where information flows from workers themselves. Drawbacks include the lack of emphasis on fair wages and women's issues by the FLA and unformed monitoring procedures and lack of apparel company alliances with the WRC, Burkhardt said. Just before the end of the year, Burkhardt wrote to the FLA, urging the organization to address women's issues and take a position against mandatory pregnancy testing before hiring, dispensing birth control to women workers and age discrimination. Sweatshop issues certainly fall under these tenets. Catholic social teaching tenets are derived from papal encyclicals and pastoral letters written by bishops.