The Latest Corporate Social Responsibility News: Un-Earth Day

On this important occasion, we shift the spotlight from environment to labor rights

April 21, 2009 CSRwire.com

By CSRwire.com Contributing Writer Bill Baue of Sea Change Media

It’s Earth Day, and all eyes are on the environment -- rightfully so, seeing as we're changing our climate irreversibly. Companies, NGOs, and others have appropriately set their sights on Mother Earth this week: SAP and Anheuser-Busch touted solar arrays; Environmental Defense Fund applauded green innovations by companies such as Coca-Cola, Google, and Wal-Mart; and SustainableBusiness.com released the State of Green Investing 2009 report.

Earth Day's deluge of enviro-news creates a perfect opportunity to focus on the other elements of sustainability: social justice and economic equality. Sweatfree Communities celebrated Tax Day last week by releasing Subsidizing Sweatshops II. Like its predecessor, the report unearths how state and local governments use public tax dollars to purchase uniforms manufactured in sweatshop conditions. The research covers eight factories in five countries on three continents producing police, firefighter uniforms for nine major brands.

"One consistent finding is that the global economic crisis has been detrimental to labor rights," states SweatFree Communities Executive Director Bjorn Claeson.

Through interviews with over 100 workers, the report documents child labor, obligatory pregnancy tests, firing and blacklisting of workers who support a union, poverty wages, and forced and unpaid overtime. The remedy? Not pulling out, according to the report, which cites the example of Lion Apparel as best practice. The first Subsidizing Sweatshops report profiled problems with the Ohio-based company, which responded by sending a letter to workers in the Alamode, Honduras factory pledging that the it "will not respond to any complaint by withdrawing business; rather, we will remain in the factory while working to correct any violations."

Other remedies include joining the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium, which advocates for ethical standards in labor conditions at factories where state and local governments source uniforms and other products for public employees. Since the July 2008 publication of the first Subsidizing Sweatshops report, many states and cities have joined the Consortium, including the State of Pennsylvania; the City of Milwaukee, Wisconsin; the City of Portland, Oregon; and the City of Olympia, Washington.

In all fairness, please consider also honoring the environment when celebrating workers' rights this May Day...