President Powers confirms The University of Texas will join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) after meeting with several representatives from the Make UT Sweatshop-Free Coalition. This comes after a year full of protests, sit-ins and even student arrests.

This is a clear change from the previous stance of the university, when earlier in the year Powers was reported on several occasions saying that the “issue was closed” and UT spokesperson Gary Susswein said that the university had no intention of leaving the Fair Labor Association (FLA), UT’s current worker’s rights monitoring service.

The decision was reached that the university would indeed keep its membership to the FLA, but also join the WRC, effectively having two organizations that would monitor for worker’s rights violations at factories that produce UT apparel.

“Students escalated their campaign despite the administration’s affirmation that the case was closed because they knew it was the right thing to do,” Alonzo Mendoza, spokesperson for Make UT Sweatshop-Free Coalition, said.

The Make UT Sweatshop-Free Coalition has advocated for the university to affiliate with the WRC as the factory monitoring service that makes UT apparel instead of the FLA because the group believes the FLA does not fairly monitor factories due to conflicts of interest on the board.

Members of Nike and UT Director of Athletics Craig Westemeier currently sit on the FLA board, which the group sees as a possible conflict.

“For many years, the University of Texas has ranked as the most profitable University with the respect to sale of its college-logo apparel; apparel companies like Nike and Russell make more money off selling Longhorn apparel than any other school in the world,” a press release from the group said.

Throughout the spring semester, the Make UT Sweatshop-Free Coalition was involved in several protests around campus, the most notable happening in April, when nineteen members were arrested after staging as sit-in at Powers office.

All of the protesters were released from jail the following day and continued to advocate and protest their cause.

Two weeks after the arrests, eighteen members of the group staged another sit-in at the Vice President and Chief Financial Officer’s office, but no arrests were made.

UDems, who support the cause of the protesters, have shown excitement in the universities decision to affiliate with the WRC.

“The University Democrats are very happy with this decision. Just this previous semester, our membership voted unanimously to support UT switching to the WRC. All in all, UDems support workers' and laborers' rights to fair and safe labor practices,” spokesperson for UDems Andre Treiber said.

According to The Daily Texan, Powers says that the money that used to fund the $50,000 required to join the WRC will be funded by the UT athletics department’s licensing budget and no student tuition would go towards paying fees.

Moving forward, the group is also calling on other large universities, such as LSU and TCU, to join the WRC and increase their dedication to worker’s rights.

“By taking concrete measures to protect workers’ rights, the University of Texas at Austin has achieved one more step to ensure that what starts here changes the world,” Mendoza said.