---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 15 Nov 1998 19:34:00 -0500 From: Robert Weissman <rob at essential.org> To: Multiple recipients of list CORP-FOCUS <corp-focus at essential.org> Subject: Sweatshop Deal: Factories Free to Let the Army in?
Isn't a factory that pays less than a living wage a sweatshop? Not according to the recently announced White House sweatshop agreement.
Two years ago, following revelations that clothes in the Kathie Lee Gifford line were manufactured in sweatshops, the Clinton White House established an "Apparel Industry Partnership." The idea was to bring together clothing and related industry manufacturers, labor unions and public interest groups to work out a consensus approach to addressing the sweatshop issue.
Industry was not eager to come to the bargaining table. Years of agitation by a small group of activists had generated a mushrooming public outrage at sweatshop practices.
The anti-sweatshop campaign pierced the veil of deception by which manufacturers and retailers denied responsibility for the conditions in which their products are made. As manufacturers moved production overseas, most employed contractors to do their actual production. At first, the manufacturers and retailers denied any responsibility for the way their contractors treated workers. Then, they adopted codes of conduct, and claimed they were doing what they could to hold contractors to a higher standard.
But the anti-sweatshop campaigners cut through the obfuscations: Nike, Liz Claiborne, Disney, J.C. Penney, Wal-Mart and other manufacturers and retailers are responsible for the way the workers who make the products the companies sell are treated, the activists asserted. And, the campaigners insisted, aspirational codes of conduct are not good enough: workers must be guaranteed a living wage, the right to organize, safe working conditions and other basic rights.
With activists and the media carefully documenting the actual conditions in which the contractor workers toil, the criticisms began to sting clothing and shoe makers. Consumers do not want to buy shoes made with child labor, shirts sewn in hot and dusty conditions, sweaters knitted by workers working 70 or more hours a week or pants manufactured by laborers earning less than a living wage -- especially while U.S. executives at the firms indirectly employing the workers routinely pull in seven-figure salaries.
Grudgingly, the companies agreed to bargain over the sweatshop issue -- for purpose of protecting corporate reputations and preventing a backlash against free trade, notes Trim Bissell, of the Campaign for Labor Rights.
Two years later, the companies and some human rights groups have reached an agreement -- but the two unions and one public interest group that were part of the Apparel Industry Partnership have balked at the deal.
The Apparel Industry Partnership proposal would create a new organization, the Fair Labor Association (FLA), with a board equally divided between business representatives on the one hand, and labor and public interest organizations on the other. The FLA will accredit independent monitors to determine if companies are meeting a Workplace Code of Conduct. The Code that prohibits forced or child labor (by children under 14 or 15), bans harassment or abuse, recognizes employees' right to organize and sets a maximum 60-hour work week. Employers that are certified as in compliance with the Code of Conduct will be able to tout the FLA's seal of approval.
Legitimate labor rights groups agreed to the FLA proposal, but it was denounced by many others.
"The Fair Labor Association neither represents labor nor is fair," says Medea Benjamin, co-director of the human rights group Global Exchange. "This agreement will allow corporations to continue paying poverty wages, violate labor rights and hide their factories overseas."
The deal does not recognize the right of workers to a living wage, the most basic of demands.
Assuming that company recognition of employees' right to organize has any meaning whatsoever, it is very unclear what effect it would have in countries where governments do not respect workers' organizing rights (say China, to take one not-so-incidental example). The Apparel Industry Partnership agreement says that in these countries, companies and their contractors "shall not affirmatively seek the assistance of state authorities to prevent workers from exercising these rights."
As UNITE, the clothing and textile union, explained in a searing commentary, "This presumably means you can let the army in the door, but you can't call them."
Critics have also raised serious issues about the basic workings of the plan. The independent monitoring scheme effectively lets companies pick which of their factories will be monitored, for example.
Serious questions deserve to be raised about any approach to global production questions which accepts the principle that corporations have a right to move factories wherever they wish. And it is clear why Big Business's concern with the bottom line would prevent them from conceding on this principle.
But far less is at stake in dollars-and-cents terms when it comes to paying a living wage in poor countries -- whether Nike workers make five dollars a day instead of two, say, will have little discernible effect on the company's bottom line.
Could it be that the real corporate fear in genuinely recognizing the right of Third World workers to earn a living wage and organize without intimidation is that workers in the United States might demand such rights, too?
Russell Mokhiber is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Corporate Crime Reporter. Robert Weissman is editor of the Washington, D.C.-based Multinational Monitor.
(c) Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman
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