In spite of the recent death of Fair Labor Association (FLA) chair Charles A. Ruff and in the face of mounting pressure from campus labor groups, Harvard has no intention of quitting the FLA, attorneys said yesterday.

In an interview, University Attorney Allan A. Ryan Jr. said Ruff's death would not impact the efficacy of the group, which monitors labor conditions of international apparel factories. As a result, he said, Harvard has no reason to consider leaving the group in favor of the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), another labor watchdog organization.

"[Ruff's death] will have at least a temporary impact on the FLA," Ryan said. "Chuck was very dedicated to doing good in the world. It won't be easy to replace him."

Ruff, former White House counsel to President Clinton, had served as chair of the FLA for 14 months until his death Sunday.

Princeton University Vice President Robert Durkee, the university representative to the group, said the FLA is saddened by the loss of Ruff but hopes to move forward with its monitoring plans.

"It seems to me the right way to honor Chuck is to press ahead as actively and aggressively as we can," he said. "We need to hold the FLA to the high standards that Chuck had."

Ruff's major contributions to the FLA during his tenure included leading the process that named Sam W. Brown, Jr. as FLA's executive director and overseeing the drafting and adoption of the "Monitoring Guidance and Compliance Benchmarks," a document that provides explicit guidelines for factory monitoring.

FLA, a fairly new organization, grew out of the Apparel Industry Partnership, a White House initiative, in 1996.