New York Times - August 8, 2001
Labor Groups Join Coalition to Eliminate Sweatshops
By STEVEN GREENHOUSE
The continuing fight against exploitative conditions in garment factories took a new turn yesterday when labor unions from around the world formed a new coalition to undertake the biggest campaign to fix the problem of overseas sweatshops.
The coalition began its campaign with a noisy protest march down Broadway in Manhattan, followed by demonstrations in front of Ann Taylor, Banana Republic and Eddie Bauer stores in SoHo.
Frustrated that they have made little headway in fighting sweatshops, unions from the United States, Mexico, Canada, Guatemala, Honduras, Hong Kong, Thailand, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic formed the new coalition, pledging a global fight to improve conditions in garment factories.
Executives from Ann Taylor, Banana Republic and Eddie Bauer say they have worked hard to ensure that the factories they use are not sweatshops, but the coalition's leaders say that virtually all large apparel companies use overseas factories that can be classified as sweatshops.
"Despite years of public pressure against sweatshops, today's global retailers are greedier than ever, and more workers around the world are toiling in sweatshops to make their goods," said Bruce Raynor, president of Unite, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, North America's largest apparel union. That union organized the new coalition, which includes the A.F.L.-C.I.O., religious groups and United Students Against Sweatshops, which has chapters on more than 200 college campuses.
"For some years, we have observed the lack of real progress on the sweatshop issue, and this is a big concern to us," said the Rev. David Dyson, a Brooklyn pastor who is co- founder of the Progressive Religious Partnership, a group of 10,000 congregations from around the country that has joined the coalition. "In today's global economy, the apparel workers of the world have really become the wretched of the earth," he said.
During yesterday's demonstrations, which attracted more than 500 protesters, the coalition's leaders talked of garment workers in China who toiled for 96 hours a week, of a factory in El Salvador that required employees to continue working through the night, and of child laborers in Cambodia who did not see their parents for months.
Executives at several apparel companies objected to having been singled out. Lurma Rackley, director of public affairs and social responsibility at Eddie Bauer, said, "To make a blanket statement that all big companies maintain sweatshop conditions is unfair."
Denying that Eddie Bauer uses sweatshops, she said, "We are very, very careful in the selection of factories."
Alan Marks, a spokesman for Gap Inc., Banana Republic's parent company, said Gap had a 100-person compliance team to monitor factories to ensure that adequate working conditions. Ann Taylor executives said they required all suppliers to be socially responsible.
The coalition's leaders predicted that their efforts would be more effective than previous anti-sweatshop campaigns, which they say have been uncoordinated, piecemeal and inadequately financed.
Unite organized the new coalition after facing severe criticism for doing too little to fight sweatshops in the United States and overseas, and brought foreign unions into the coalition partly to show that it was not undertaking a campaign to keep jobs in the United States.
"This isn't about protectionism," Mr. Raynor said. "It is about improving worldwide standards."
He said the coalition would focus on pressuring large retailers because they often determine what prices are paid to overseas factories. Those prices, the coalition says, are usually so low that factories are forced to skimp on safety and pay their workers too little to live on.
Mr. Raynor said, "We want consumers to reward good behavior and to punish retailers who pay prices so low that their factories are forced to abuse workers, whether it is in Brooklyn or Bangladesh."