For the past 10 years, UCSB sociology professor Richard Applebaum has not just studied the sweat shop conditions prevailing in the garment industry—both internationally, but mostly here in Southern California—but he’s been actively involved in efforts to curb its excesses. Throughout the University of California system, Applebaum has lobbied administrators to impose a code of minimal conduct on the manufacturers of all clothing bearing a UC campus logo. At UCSB, Appelbaum brought anti-sweatshop crusaders like Charles Kernoghan—the man who, among other things, blew the whistle on how Disney products are assembled in Haiti and made Kathy Lee Gifford cry—to campus, where they’ve packed the aisles. While Applelbaum did not go to Seattle two weeks ago to protest the World Trade Organization, he’s spent the better part of the past 10 years addressing pointed questions raised by protestors. This May, the University of California will publish the book he co-authored on the subject, Behind the Label. Last week, Applebaum spoke with reporter Nick Welsh on how human rights can be factored into the garment industry—both abroad and at home—and the following is an edited version of their conversation.

What struck you the most about what happened in Seattle?
I was blown away by the whole thing. Anything that takes these issues—which are so remote and complex—and puts them on the front page of the newspaper and all the TV networks, I think is good. It’s a start in making the WTO more responsible. Right now, global capital is ascendant. I think a lot of people have a fear about what it means to have a handful of huge corporations that are larger than most countries have their representatives in governments sit down behind closed doors and cut deals that are not participated in through any democratic process. As much as I wish that the black-shirted anarchists—or whoever they were—who trashed the stores had not done that, because that really did distract attention away from the issues. But the overall spectacle has raised consciousness about this, and the WTO will never be the same.

You talk about “the race to the bottom.” What do you mean by that?
I mean the fact that in a global economy anything can cross borders except workers. So capital is free to seek out the cheapest labor, the most relaxed environmental restrictions, and the most invisible production sites in the world. This means that a corporation like the Guess corporation, which produced a lot of their jeans in Los Angeles up until a couple years ago and which has come under enormous public scrutiny for their harsh sweatshop working conditions here, responded by moving their production to Mexico. They operate in these huge maquilladoras [factories] that have barbed wire around them and high fences. That exemplifies the race to the bottom, the search for the cheapest wages possible.

Tell me what’s been happening on the campuses.
On about 150 campuses there have been protest demonstrations, sit-ins, teach-ins, and demands that campuses sign a code of conduct in anything that involves licensing of their logo to private manufacturers; to sell the sweatshirt that says “UCSB” in the campus bookstore, for example. Nationally, collegiate licensing is probably somewhere between $2 billion and $3 billion, which is not huge, but it’s enough to make companies like Nike stand up and take notice. Which they have. One of the demands of the Code of Conduct, which have now been fairly standardized by United Students Against Sweatshops and adopted all over the place, is that secrecy be ended. Any licensee must make public every factory that it contracts out to so that those factories can be monitored independently.

In terms of reform, what works? What makes a real difference?
Up until about six months ago Nike absolutely refused to divulge any information on its factories. It said it would reveal too much to competitors. But Nike did a complete about-face and agreed to make public the addresses of all its factories and engage in collegiate licensing. They’ve even run ads in college newspapers saying, in effect, we have nothing to hide. Nike has come around, and I think Reebok may follow.