EDITORIAL A significant step in fight against
sweatshops
In human rights circles, the story of exploited labor,
particularly child labor, was, sadly, a well-known tale. It was one of those
nagging woes of the world about which, it seemed, little could be done.
Sweatshops are an awful injustice, but one normally removed from
the daily experience of most U.S. consumers. And the clothes and sneakers they
produced were cheap.
But in the mid-90s, the news began to break through. A child rug
maker in India was shot and killed. The clothing lines endorsed by high profile
U.S. celebrities, it became known, were the work of child slaves and oppressed
adults who labored in horrible conditions.
Suddenly there was a groundswell of concern and activism to
augment the documentation by human rights groups. Sometimes right-minded and
organized human concern can make a difference.
Earlier this month an array of interests first organized under the
Apparel Industry Partnership, a group initiated by the White House in August
1996, announced the formation of a Fair Labor Association, a nonprofit outfit
intended to put teeth into the concern about sweatshops.
The Fair Labor Association will administer a workplace code of
conduct designed to assure that products are not manufactured under sweatshop
conditions.
The code itself was worked out by representatives of the apparel
and footwear industries, human rights groups, labor, religious organizations,
university interests and consumer advocates. (For details, see the Web site of
the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights:
www.lchr.org/sweatshop/faq.htm)
In the face of galloping globalization the initiative, though not
perfect, is a welcome balance to the unconscionable extremes of human abuse
that we now know occur without oversight. It is a first attempt, agreed to by
powerful components of the apparel industry, to hold clothing and footwear
companies accountable for the conduct of their subcontractors around the
world.
To assure compliance, the Fair Labor Associations code
establishes workplace standards, training programs for company monitors,
provides for periodic visits and audits to ensure compliance and provides
factory workers with confidential reporting mechanisms.
The monitoring also will include periodic announced and
unannounced visits and audits; conducting confidential employee interviews; and
communicating the results of the monitoring in annual public reports on each
company.
One element of the new plan will allow colleges and universities,
concerned with the conditions under which items bearing their logos are
manufactured, to affiliate with the Fair Labor Association.
A downside to the initiative is the lack of a living wage
provision in the original agreement. The U.S. Department of Labor, as part of
the Apparel Industry Partnership, will do a six-month study of the
relationship between wages and basic needs of workers around the
world.
Ultimately, consideration of wages will give the whole effort
validity. It will also, presumably, be the most difficult element to tie
down.
In the meantime, we can only commend the governmental agencies,
business interests and human rights groups for the diligent work that has
brought the process this far.
National Catholic Reporter, April 2,
1999
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