In an unprecedented international campaign to organize garment
workers, unions in the United States, Asia and Central America are
joining with student and religious groups to target the real powers
in the global apparel business: big brand-name merchandisers like
Eddie Bauer, Ann Taylor, Gap, J. Crew, Abercrombie & Fitch and the
major retail chains.
The clothing industry has changed dramatically in the past few
decades: Roughly 30 major retailers now dominate the business, subcontracting
work to thousands of workplaces employing 2 million people in 150
countries, whether in massive factories in China or Indonesia, highly
mobile small workshops in Central America, or even individual homework
in the United States. "Retailers led by the Wal-Marts of the world
determine the price, and the contractors have no choice," says new
UNITE President Bruce Raynor,
who is spearheading the global organizing drive. "It's their decision
whether a product will be made in a sweatshop."
UNITE estimates that 80 percent of the workers producing clothing
for U.S. retailers "are working under conditions that systematically
violate local and international law." "Retailers know if a seam
is one-eighth inch off, but they say they don't know it's made with
child labor," Raynor says. "Bullshit. They know exactly what's going
on, and we'll hold them accountable."
Beyond fashion and style, retailers increasingly are selling their
brand image, and none of them wants its hipness compromised by association
with child labor, prison labor, unsafe working conditions or sexual
exploitation. The new retailer campaign, building on the anti-sweatshop
efforts focused on individual companies like Nike, aims to tackle
the entire industry.
Economist Robert Pollin estimates that only about $55 of the $1,831
spent annually by the average American family on clothing actually
goes to production workers. Quadrupling worker wages would cost
each family of four a little over $150. Surveys show that 85 percent
of Americans say they would willingly pay more for clothes to make
sure they weren't made under sweatshop conditions.
The UNITE campaign is starting with publicity and demonstrations
aimed at roughly 10 companies, drawing on mobilization of campus
and church supporters--especially a new Progressive Religious Partnership--as
well as UNITE's own members. The field will be narrowed to one principal
target for the all-important Christmas season, based on consultations
with allies around the world and on how willing each company is
to negotiate with UNITE and its partners. (At least one major retailer
has already approached the union to discuss how to improve conditions
in contractor factories and avoid being targeted.)
UNITE expects retailers to support a living wage, safe working
conditions and the right of workers to organize a union. In July,
for example, UNITE and other groups persuaded Liz Claiborne to issue
a statement supporting the right to organize a union at two factories
in Guatemala where pro-union workers had been physically attacked,
forced to resign and threatened with death, apparently with the
encouragement of the Korean contractors. After the statement, the
union workers were able to return to their jobs.
UNITE also wants to persuade retailers to direct more of their
domestic work to union shops. This would be a prelude to new organizing
of domestic companies, but UNITE has no plans for a massive organizing
drive targeting one company, as it did several years ago with GUESS--which
promptly shifted most of its jeans production to Mexico as the union
gained ground in its Los Angeles factories. Traditional organizing
efforts don't "deal with the reality retailers have created," says
UNITE organizing director Mark Fleishman, but if the new Global
Justice for Garment Workers campaign is successful, "we'll organize
here."
UNITE recognizes that such a campaign must deliver victories for
its partners overseas, which now include unions or workers rights
groups in Thailand, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico, Dominican Republic,
Hong Kong and Canada. Fleishman envisions unions in each of these
countries increasingly coordinating work and sharing information
in organizing drives, taking advantage of the leverage that UNITE
can negotiate in advance with the major retailers through its campaign
to pressure the industry.
Because the dynamics of the industry affect every company, UNITE
hopes to change the rules of the business rather than try to find
a few good companies and certify their behavior. It has criticized
most of the efforts to set codes and invite monitors to inspect
factories, arguing that ultimately workers organized in unions must
be able to bargain with employers and enforce standards in their
own workplaces.
Although raising standards overseas may help the apparel industry
in the United States, "work isn't going to come back to the United
States from Central America, Cambodia or China," acknowledges UNITE
Vice President Susan Cowell. "The globalization of the industry
is complete and irreversible. What is still to be determined is
what the conditions are like everywhere, what regulatory apparatus,
what rights, what rules of the game. Unless we change the rules,
it will be bad for the industry everywhere."
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