Uniforms from the sweatshop floor

 

By Adrien Dumoulin-Smith '09 | Guest Room

To do its job, government needs to shop. A firefighter needs his uniform and protective gear just as a police officer needs a holster and prisoners need clothing. Local and state governments around the country end up buying immense amounts of apparel each year from private vendors. The government is a major market player with great influence over the private sector by virtue of conducting even its most basic duties. Just as the government should not subject public employees to illegal and immoral conditions, it should not exert its power over the market to brutally exploit private workers.

In 2006, Cornell University joined forces with colleges from across the country to take steps against sweatshop labor conditions. These schools joined in supporting the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), a student initiative that aims to transform the consumer power of universities into a positive influence on labor conditions in the apparel industry by rewarding factories for improvements rather than punishing them by consistently shifting production to cheaper factories. Student action has spilled over into the public sector as people begin to realize the negative implications of fierce competition mixed with unenforced labor laws. Governments have seen the writing on the wall and are now using the DSP as a model to alter the impact of their own purchases.

Where Do City Uniforms Come From?

The apparel industry is notorious for bad labor conditions. Workers around the world continue to toil in inhumane conditions virtually unthinkable to the consumers buying their products. In 2006—95 years after the deadly Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City spurred the enactment of factory safety legislation in this country—a factory named KTS Textile in Bangladesh that produced clothing for a major US correctional facility burnt down, killing and critically injuring up to 300 trapped garment workers, mostly young women. The workers struggled to leave the burning building, but found only locked doors. One local media source reported that the main gate was intentionally locked to prevent theft from the factory.

Sweatshops like KTS Textile are factories with despicable conditions and policies that show little to no consideration for the health, safety, well-being or livelihood of the human beings working within. Despite local laws and international accords affirming the rights of workers to health and safety, the workers in this plant were never supplied with fire safety equipment nor had the workers ever received fire safety information, not even one fire drill in the history of the factory.

In July of this year, the New York State Department of Labor released a report documenting a sweatshop in Queens that had been operating for years. According to the investigation, this factory of about 100 workers owed over $5 million in unpaid wages and forced employees to work 12-hour days with no overtime paid for 6-7 days a week. This plant supplied major apparel retailers, such as Victoria's Secret and The Gap. Another plant was discovered in 2007 located in New Bedford, Massachusetts that had contracted with the Department of Defense.

Your tax dollars are not only supporting these conditions by sourcing from such factories, but forcing good employers out of business by awarding contracts to the lowest bidder regardless of labor conditions. Most of the worst labor conditions persist in violation of local, US, and international labor standards.

It is shocking that despite large-scale purchases by governments in the US, most localities and states have no oversight over the production of their apparel. The result: governments push for cheaper and cheaper contracts from vendors while ignoring the ramifications of their choices, which worsen conditions in a "race to the bottom." A crucial first step in the enforcement of law and exercise of consumer choice is to bring transparency to the complex, global supply chain.

Collective Action Against Sweatshops

Other governments around the nation have decided to take action. Mayor Ed Boyle of North Olmstead in Ohio in 1997 initiated the first "sweatfree" procurement policy to prevent the North Olmstead local government from using tax dollars to support sweatshop conditions. The Mayor put it plainly when he stated "I will not allow our government to be party to the exploitation of workers of any age in any country."

However, the problem remains: how can governments maintain this promise and enforce sweatfree policies when legal standards are not even enforced? A national movement, the Local and Government Sweatfree Consortium, is a body consisting of state and local government officials who would oversee the enforcement of a transparent and sweatfree apparel procurement. This body, in its final planning stages and due to launch in the coming months, would pool the resources of over 180 government bodies that have already joined to conduct independent monitoring of factories that produce government apparel—all at the minimal cost to the individual government of roughly one percent of annual apparel costs.

Both government agencies and labor advocates have warmly received this consortium. When paired with a sweatfree procurement policy, the consortium becomes an effective tool to eliminate inadvertently pro-sweatshop policies and enforce existing labor laws. In September 2008, the New York State Department of Labor urged Governor Patterson to consider the consortium and a sweatfree procurement policy as "more effective and proactive approaches" towards precisely these goals. The same report cited current state policies as "being of limited effectiveness" and having "constrained local initiatives aimed at sweatshop purchases." The City of Ithaca has not yet signed onto this consortium nor has it passed any sort of legislation following sweatfree principles.

On Tuesday, October 21, the City of Ithaca Community and Organizational Issues Committee considered for the first time a resolution supporting the principles behind this consortium. This resolution is the first step towards a comprehensive sweatfree policy that would ensure just use of taxpayer money. It is time for governments to show responsibility in the purchase of apparel through the adoption of a sweatfree procurement policy and a valid enforcement mechanism.