Sweatshop Deal: Factories Free to Let the Army in?

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

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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