This fall, University of Alabama fans and students will have an opportunity to buy clothing at the SUPe Store that is produced free from the controversy of sweatshop labor thanks to the actions of a relatively new student group on campus.

UA Students for Fair Labor has convinced the SUPe Store to stock apparel from Alta Gracia, a company based in the Dominican Republic that supplies collegiate apparel. Alta Gracia differs from some apparel companies in that it pays workers a “living wage” rather than a “minimum wage.”

The group has been campaigning for the University to look for alternative clothing companies since spring 2013, instead of companies like Nike, which the group said has been a serial human rights abuser.

According to a 2010 press release, the University had a $30 million licensing agreement with Nike with an assurance that the company would manufacture its products in fair-labor factories.

“A lot of people think that a minimum wage is roughly a living wage, but that isn’t always the case,” Mark Ortiz, a junior in New College and president of UA Students for Fair Labor, said. “In fact, Alta Gracia’s living wage is three times the minimum wage of the Dominican Republic.”

Ortiz said companies like Alta Gracia are alleviating poverty by paying a living wage that allows workers to care for their families in a way that a minimum wage might not.

“A living wage allows families to live, to provide childcare to their children, to provide them with education,” Ortiz said. “Living wage jobs can strengthen communities; they can lift people out of poverty.”

Camden Adrian, a junior in New College and a member of UA Students for Fair Labor, said the management of the SUPe Store was responsive to the group’s push to stock Alta Gracia.

“We did weekly letter drops to the managers of the bookstore along with weekly emails,” she said. “They responded pretty quickly and were pretty supportive of us.”

Many other universities already buy from Alta Gracia, including Notre Dame, the University of Minnesota and Duke, which was the first school to place an order with the company.

Alta Gracia will not be the only brand stocked in the SUPe Store, though. It will be added to the brands that the store currently stocks. UA Students for Fair Labor will work to ensure those brands also follow fair labor standards, said Ortiz.

“We’re hoping to run a number of other campaigns in the fall, the first of which is going to be affiliation with the Worker Rights Consortium,” Ortiz said. “Our next push is going to be to get our school to affiliate with that consortium, which would monitor our supply chains, see where we’re getting our clothes from, and notify us of any abuses.”

Adrian said she too hoped the University would affiliate with the WRC so the school could be made aware of any mistreatment of workers in the factories that supply its apparel.

“My understanding is that they would set off an alarm, let our administration know about any abuses and hopefully improve conditions in the factories that supply us with clothes,” Adrian said.

Adrian also said she has high hopes for the group’s future.

“I’m just really excited to be a part of this group. … We’re just hoping for some more members in the fall, and I’m excited to see what we difference we can make in the lives of workers around the world,” Adrian said.