You asked what kind of impact anti-sweatshop efforts in the U. S. have had on overseas apparel factories and whether such efforts have led to improved working conditions or a loss of business at factories found to be sweatshops. The General Assembly is currently considering SB 1148, which would prohibit the state from buying apparel from factories that do not meet certain standards if they do not take prompt action to improve any cited deficiencies.

SUMMARY

In recent years there has been a growing effort to attempt to insure that clothing and other apparel sold in the United States is not produced in an overseas factory with exploitive working conditions. Much of the effort has focused on getting name brand clothing companies and universities to agree to procure apparel from factories that meet certain standards.

The two major anti-sweatshop monitoring groups both focus on improving the conditions at existing contractors’ factories and encouraging a contracting entity to keep its business at a factory as long as it is making a good-faith effort to improve its conditions. When individual factories and companies are scrutinized, many take steps to

improve conditions in an attempt to keep their contracts and avoid negative publicity. But many in the anti-sweatshop movement see the progress made so far as only the beginning of a long process to reform the world’s textile industry, which operates thousands of factories with huge variations in working conditions in more than 100 countries. In other words, anti-sweatshop efforts in the U. S. do not appear to have had a major effect on the overall global industry. What success there is appears to be in individual cases.

The two major organizations involved in monitoring the apparel industry are the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) (http: //www. workersrights. org/), which is independent of the apparel industry, and the Fair Labor Association (FLA) (http: //www. fairlabor. org/), which is partially sponsored by industry giants including Adidas, Eddie Bauer, Nike, and Reebok. (The bill pending in the General Assembly requires a monitor with no links to the apparel industry to ensure proper conditions where Connecticut state licensed apparel is made. )

WRC APPROACH

The WRC lists more than 100 colleges and universities that have adopted its code of conduct against sweatshop conditions in apparel procurement. WRC is a non-profit organization created by university administrations, students, and labor rights experts. It reports its findings to colleges and universities and the public. When WRC receives a complaint about an apparel factory it can assemble a team to go to the factory and assess the situation by a variety of means including researching the applicable laws of that country and conducting confidential interviews with employees and former employees.

Scott Nova, WRC executive director, says his organization works with factory owners and managers during the assessment in an attempt to improve conditions or at least set changes in motion so the company or university doing business with the factory will not have to switch to another vendor in order to honor the code of conduct. The code of conduct requires vendors and their source factories to honor the labor and safety laws of the country they operate in and any applicable international labor conventions. WRC has found that in many third world countries labor rights and health and safety work laws exist but are not well enforced.

Nova said WRC has had success with individual factories even when the assessment turns up numerous violations. “The factories are usually responsive to their customers if the expectation is clear. If they know their customers want us there, and want the conditions to improve, they would rather take steps to correct things than risk losing the contract,” he said. “We try to get the licensee buying the goods to stay at the factory and use its leverage to improve conditions there. ”

But he said it is difficult to gauge the overall effect on the global textile and apparel industry. “There are tens of thousands of factories around the world and the anti-sweatshop policy can’t change them all, but it can improve the lives of thousands of people,” he said. He stated that due to limits of staff and money, his organization does only about a dozen full assessments a year.

WRC THAILAND CASE

As a recent example Nova cited WRC’s February 8, 2005 report on two factories in Thailand, Far East Garment Textile Co. Ltd. , and First Apparel Co. Ltd. , owned by the same parent company. WRC assembled a five member team including: (1) two WRC staffers assigned to Southeast Asia, (2) an economist from a university in Bangkok, and (3) two people from Thai non-governmental organizations with experience in labor and economics and health and safety issues.

Both factories (which combined employ about 800) supplied goods to the Gap Inc. and Levi Strauss & Co. WRC indicated both companies cooperated with the assessment and the effort to remedy the various issues.

Violations

The assessment team found violations of Thai law at Far East Garment including:

1. interference with freedom of association, including pressuring employees not to participate in unions and unlawfully terminating a union leader;

2. failure to meet wage and hour standards, including pressuring employees to work overtime and denying them proper breaks when they do so; and

3. failure to continue an occupational health and safety (OHS) committee and act on complaints brought to the committee when it was first formed.

The assessment team found violations of Thai law at First Apparel including:

1. interference with freedom of association, including pressuring employees transferred from Far East Garment to First Apparel to give up their union membership and refrain from joining any union;

2. failure to compensate workers for working on their “weekly day of rest” (Sunday) as provided under Thai law; and

3. failure to pay the required holiday pay rate and improper rescheduling of planned holidays.

Remedies

In these instances the factory managers and owners at both locations agreed to take steps to remedy the violations at their facilities, including:

1. agreeing with a WRC proposal to draft and publicize a policy explicitly allowing workers to unionize or associate as they wish (this was done before the WRC report was published);

2. offering reinstatement to the terminated union member at Far East Garment;

3. agreeing to hold Far East-First Apparel joint activities to allow employees from both plants to participate in teamwork training;

4. agreeing with WRC proposal to draft and publicize an overtime policy that states all overtime is voluntary;

5. including in the new overtime policy a clear statement on paid breaks before working overtime;

6. agreeing to pay closer attention to health and safety issues and naming a new administrator to be trained for, and chair, the OHS Committee; and

7. agreeing to pay employees back wages for uncompensated days of rest and under-compensated holiday pay; and

8. pledging any future overtime or holiday work will be voluntary and to install new mechanisms to ensure such time is documented and properly paid.

Issues Not in Violation of Thai Law

WRC identified other issues that were not explicitly prohibited by Thai law and management agreed to address them, including:

1. ending the practice of requiring employees to use tokens in order to access the restrooms at First Apparel;

2. remedying rainy season flooding and dry season excessively high temperatures in the work area at Far East; and

3. taking steps, including line manager training, to end verbal harassment of employees (both locations).

FLA

The FLA mission is similar to WRC. It is nonprofit and its board of directors consists of representatives from non-governmental organizations (such as Educators for Socially Responsible Apparel Business and the National Consumers League), universities, and apparel companies (including Eddie Bauer, Reebok and Adidas). FLA’s code of conduct for the apparel industry is similar to WRC’s in that both (1) ban forced labor and harassment and abuse, (2) call for freedom of association, (3) require safe and healthy working environments, and (4) specify other considerations such as nondiscrimination policies.

Earlier this month the FLA board voted to approve the compliance programs of six of its participating companies: Adidas-Salomon, Eddie Bauer, Liz Claiborne, Inc, Nike, Phillips-Van Heusen, and Reebok. The approval means the companies each completed a three-year implementation period and were found to meet FLA requirements in factories making their products. The approval followed extensive performance reviews based on factory monitoring and reports of supplier facilities conducted by accredited external monitors, according to an FLA statement.

“Collectively these companies are responsible for consumer products made in 2,800 factories in 62 countries,” said Auret van Heerden, FLA president and chief executive officer. “Each of them has worked hard to establish a workplace standards program that complies with FLA’s considerable requirements. ”

JM: ts