Maine Clean Clothes Alliance
update: August 30, 2006-- The State of Maine Purchasing Code of Conduct Working Group held its first meeting on August 30. Consisting of four Maine-based advocates for worker rights and four Maine-based businesses that do or could sell apparel or textiles to the state of Maine, the group quickly reached consensus that a multi state and city consortium for monitoring and investigating code of conduct violations is desirable. The group provided the following reasons: 1) A Consortium will pool resources and knowledge for the labor intensive task of discovering actual working conditions of supplier factories; 2) A Consortium will level the playing field for ethical businesses by creating uniform standards and expectations for businesses supplying the government purchasing market; 3) A Consortium will make possible effective enforcement of codes of conduct; 4) A Consortium will expand the market for sweatfree products. The Working Group will advise the State on the creation and use of a Consortium, including necessary legislation, by January 15, 2007.
Worker-advocate members of the Working Group are Bjorn Claeson, SweatFree Communities; Sean Donahue, Peace through Interamerican Community Action; Ernie Loring, UNITE HERE; and Lee Sharkey, University of Maine, Farmington. Business members are John D’Amico, Tri-State Police and Fire; Carl Nickerson, W.S. Emerson Co.; Eric Odier-Fink, Justice Clothing; and Tom Opper, Liberty Graphics. Betty Lamoreau, Director, Division of Purchases, serves as an ex-officio non-voting member.
update: February 28, 2006-- Maine Governor John E. Baldacci today wrote all governors inviting them to join a coalition to stop tax subsidies of sweathops. Governor Baldacci's proposed Coalition for Sweatfree Procurement and Workers' Rights has the potential to create a hundred billion dollar market for sweatfree products and services, completely transforming apparel and other industries characterized by sweatshop abuse.
Take action to persuade your governor to join this effort.
Read Governor Baldacci's letter here.
update: January 27, 2006--
Sample Testimony to Joint Standing Committe on State and Local Government at Public Hearing, January 27, 2006
Testimony in favor of LD 1769, An Act to Strengthen the State Purchasing Code of Conduct
• Betty Lamoreau, Director of the Division of Purchases. Excerpt: "... as a practical and fiscal matter, the Division of Purchases simply does not have the personnel and fiscal resources to conduct in-depth investigations into complaints, especially when a contractor or subcontractor subject to the Code, and central to a complaint, is based in a foreign country and travel would be necessary to look into the allegations. One possible means of remedying that problem is introduced through the bill's creation of a Code of Conduct Working Group, which would explore the viability of creating a multi-State and -city consortium to independently investigate complaints brought under the code. ..." [view pdf]
• Sean Donahue, Director of Peace through Interamerican Community Action (PICA). Excerpt: "One of the plant managers told me that it was hard to keep a factory open even in Nicaragua, which has the lowest wages in Central America, because factories in China were producing cheaper goods. He said: 'Sooner or later someone is going to have to put a stop to this, and that someone is going to have to be at the purchasing end.'" [view pdf]
• Cynthia Phinney, Business Manager of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1837. Excerpt: "Our members live and work in Maine and pay taxes here. While most of our jobs are not directly threatened by sweatshop competitors, we do rely on a healthy Maine economy to keep our members' jobs viable. The existence of sweatshops threatens every business that tries to do the right thing by its workers, and when Maine businesses can't compete, we all lose." [view pdf]
• Joyce Schelling. Excerpt: "As a member of Maine Businesses for Social Responsibility and as a distributor of 100% post-consumer, processes chlorine free paper, I know how important it is to grow the market for companies that are choosing to be responsible, since businesses understand incentives." [view pdf]
• Lee Sharkey, Chair of University of Maine at Farmington's Purchasing Policy Practices Committee. Excerpt: "One can imagine a few years down the road a consortium of states, municipalities, and universities with enough economic clout to create incentives for businesses to sustain - or regain - their fair labor practices. The turning of the tide against sweatshops will begin with initiatives like those set out in LD 1769." [view pdf]
• Mary Anne Turowski, Maine State Employees Association - Service Employees International Union, Local 1989. Excerpt: "MSEA is an 11,000 member union, of which the majority are state workers. This workforce wears the products purchased by the State of Maine under this code of conduct..." [view pdf]
The only testimony opposed to LD 1769:
• Katherine Newman, President of Associated Builders and Contractors of Maine. Excerpt: "We symphathize with members of the garment industry that are facing the unions' latest scheme - independent monitors and independent fact finding consortiums." [view pdf]
Maine Division of Purchases response to testimony (September 28, 2005) [view pdf]
Nuevas reglas propuestas por la Oficina de Compras [español].
Testimony to State of Maine by worker advocacy organizations:
• Batay Ouvriye, Haiti [English]
• Centro de Estudios y Apoyo Laboral, El Salvador [English] [español] • Profesionales para la Auditoria Social y Empresial, Nicaragua [English] [español] • Confederación Sindical de Trabajadores "José Benito Escobar", Nicaragua [español]
update: December 22, 2005-- Thanks to strong grassroots pressure and testimony from worker rights groups in Central America, Hong Kong, and Haiti, the State Division of Purchases has accepted all requests from the Maine Clean Clothes Alliance to strengthen the enforcement of the sweatfree procurement law of 2001. The Division is submitting “An Act To Strengthen the State Purchasing Code of Conduct Law” for the 2006 legislative session. The Act authorizes the Purchasing Agent to employ an independent monitor – defined as a not-for-profit organization neither funded nor controlled by the industry being monitored -- to investigate worker rights violations. The Act also provides for stronger sanctions of non-compliant companies and establishes a working group to investigate the creation and use of an independent consortium to monitor and investigate worker rights violations.
update: October 14, 2005
MAKE MAINE'S RULES ABOUT SWEATSHOP CLOTHING EVEN TOUGHER
The Maine Division of Purchases has put forth a revised set of rules for implementing the state's sweatfree purchasing law based on comments received in August and early September. Thanks to the hard work of people around the state, comments from allied sweatfree groups around the country, and very helpful testimony from worker advocacy groups in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Haiti, there are some real improvements. Most importantly, the Division is making it easier for workers and human rights groups to file complaints about a company doing business with the state, and is introducing legislation to require all vendors doing business with the state to disclose the names and addresses of the factories they contract with. However, we still are concerned that the state has not made any provisions for independent monitoring, and that the Division has not clearly spelled out a process of punitive action for companies that fail to address workers' rights violations.
· For more information contact Sean at the PICA office -- sean@pica.ws, 207-947-4203.
· For a copy of the revised rules, summary of testimony, and the Division’s response to the testimony, go here.
ACTION: Comments on the new rules are being accepted through October 31.
Thank you to all who took action to:
- Thank the Division for improving the rules for filing complaints about workers' rights violations and for strengthening the disclosure requirements.
- Urge the Division to include a rule requiring the State to contract with an independent monitor, not funded or controlled in whole or in part by the companies, to investigate workers' rights complaints.
- Urge the Division to include in the rules a set of consequences for failing to take corrective action when workers' rights violations take place. Early steps should include fines and the cancellation of individual contracts. Companies that repeatedly fail to address violations should be barred from bidding on future contracts.
update: September, 2005
In August, over a dozen people, representing sweatfree campaigns, unions, universities, and fair trade campaigns, spoke convincingly and eloquently on the need for strengthening the state’s sweatfree procurement rules, making sure that workers’ voices are heard by the State and that it takes effective action to compel a company that is violating workers’ rights to change its behavior. The campaign received testimony from activists, unions, and human rights groups from as far away as Los Angeles, El Salvador, Haiti, and Hong Kong. The State’s Division of Purchases listened and has improved their proposed rules. Check out the testimony and more.
We’ve got the Law: They Won’t Play by the Rules
August 17, 2005
The State of Maine’s Division of Purchases has drafted a new set of rules for implementing the sweatfree purchasing law which was enacted in June 2001. The Maine Clean Clothes Alliance (MECCA), a coalition of unions and community and university-based Clean Clothes Campaigns, has enjoyed a good working relationship with the Division, working together to develop procedures of implementation and address contract challenges over several years. MECCA last met with the Division in April of this year, recommending that monitoring by an independent auditor with knowledge of worker rights issues be an integral part of the implementation of the law so that purchasing staff would not have to evaluate the merits of allegations of vendor violations of the sweatfree Code of Conduct. Purchasing staff have neither the expertise nor the resources to fairly and accurately evaluate such challenges. Unfortunately, the Division did not heed the recommendation for independent monitoring. Instead, their proposed rules would significantly weaken the law, investing seemingly total and arbitrary control for evaluating the merits of contract challenges with the State Purchasing Agent.
MECCA will propose a different set of rules that calls for monitoring of factories and enforcement of the law by a non-profit independent monitor at a public hearing on August 25.
Analysis of the Division of Purchases Proposal
MECCA’s main concern is that the Division of Purchases appears to be more concerned about evaluating the reliability of the person or organization alleging worker rights violations (the complainant) than with determining whether or not violations have, in fact, taken place and, if so, making sure companies take appropriate action to remedy the violations. In the proposed rules, the State Purchasing Agent has authority to determine that the complainant is not a “reliable source” based on any information the Agent “deems relevant.” The rules list a number of factors that the Agent “may consider” in determining the reliability of the source, including whether or not the complainant “is involved in litigation or competition with the vendor…that is the subject of the complaint.” This clause appears to be targeting unions and worker advocacy organizations, often the best monitors of working conditions and the most common source of allegations of worker rights violations.
In order for the state to take action on a complaint, the complainant, if deemed a reliable source, must certify under oath that the vendor is in violation of the Code of Conduct. This requirement seemingly establishes a higher standard of evidence for complainants (workers and worker advocates) than for vendors (companies). Whereas vendors must sign under oath that, to the best of their knowledge, factories are in compliance with the Code of Conduct, worker advocates, who have evidence to the contrary, must sign “under oath before an official authorized by applicable law to administer oaths” that the vendor actually is in violation of the Code. Though the rules do not specify the required evidentiary standard for taking such an oath without risking perjury, it appears to require direct evidence of worker rights violations, a threshold that most local worker advocacy organizations, like MECCA, cannot meet. The taking of an oath itself requires access to officials authorized to administer oaths, a requirement that sweatshop workers themselves may not be able to meet.
If the State Purchasing Agent receives a certified complaint from a “reliable source,” the State will demand a response from the vendor within 15 days. If the vendor does not respond, the state may terminate the contract. If the vendor does respond, the State Purchasing Agent has sole discretion to determine whether or not any evidence of compliance is adequate. The evidentiary standard is not specified in the rules. Should the Purchasing Agent determine that the vendor’s response is inadequate and that the vendor needs to take action to come into compliance with the Code of Conduct, the State may, for example, “request” that the company allows access to a “labor monitoring or auditing organization” which the State Purchasing Agent “deems credible” (the rules do not specify criteria for credibility such as financial independence from the company being monitored). If the vendor ignores such a request, the state does not have the authority to terminate the contract or take other punitive action as long as the vendor has responded in any way to the State Purchasing Agent’s initial request for information in response to an allegation of worker rights violation – be it only by resubmitting an affidavit of compliance with the Code of Conduct. While the rules require the State to prescribe measures the vendor should take in order to gain compliance with the Code of Conduct in case the Purchasing Agent determines the vendor is not in compliance, the rules also deprive the State of the leverage necessary to compel vendors to take the prescribed action.
All these issues may be moot, however, because the Division of Purchases has also eliminated the requirement that vendors disclose the addresses of the factories that make the goods for the State. While the factories must be named in the initial contract bid, the lack of an address may make it difficult for worker advocacy organizations and monitors to identify and locate factories that supply the state in the first place, effectively hiding worker abuse from state scrutiny.
Next Steps
At the August 25 public hearing, MECCA will propose that the State should either contract directly with an independent monitor who will investigate complaints and determine their validity, or commit to joining a consortium of cities and states that will affiliate with an independent monitor who will assist all parties collectively in enforcing their sweatfree codes of conduct. In MECCA’ proposal the independent monitor will be responsible for:
• Receiving and evaluating code of conduct complaints.
• Conducting investigations and reporting findings.
• Consulting with the manufacturer to develop a corrective action plan, and monitoring the implementation of the corrective action plan.
For more information on enforcing a sweatfree purchasing policy with the help of an independent monitor, go here.
