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State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium

Ending Taxpayer Support for Sweatshops

Background

Motivated by public sentiment to end public purchasing from sweatshops, over 180 states, cities, counties, and school districts in the United States have adopted “sweatfree” procurement policies, requiring apparel vendors and supplier factories to abide by fair labor standards in return for public contracts to supply uniforms and other products. Yet, no single state or local government has the resources to monitor and verify working conditions or enforce sweatfree procurement requirements at supplier factories beyond their immediate jurisdiction.

Because there is a large number of public entities committed to sweatfree procurement, it is now possible to pool resources for factory monitoring and inspections, and to coordinate enforcement of sweatfree procurement policies. In 2006, Governors John Baldacci (Maine), Edward Rendell (Pennsylvania), and Jon Corzine (New Jersey) formed a Governors’ Coalition for Sweatfree Procurement and Worker Rights. Around the same time the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and others called for city and state coordination in the enforcement of sweatfree procurement policies.

The State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium was conceived at a Harrisburg meeting on sweatfree procurement hosted by the Department of General Services of the State of Pennsylvania on March 29, 2007. The meeting with government officials from several states and cities, human rights advocates, and labor rights experts unified then separate state and city sweatfree procurement efforts, established key Consortium principles, and created an interim Consortium Steering Committee to guide the development of the Consortium. Steering committee members include government representatives from Pennsylvania, Maine, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Unified School District, and labor rights experts.

The Consortium will begin operating when its affiliates represent approximately $100 million in annual apparel purchases. This market size will provide incentive for vendors and their subcontractors to make the changes necessary to ensure compliance with sweatfree codes.

Key Principles

The State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium will pool resources for investigations and monitoring of supplier factories, and coordinate the implementation and enforcement of sweatfree procurement standards based on the following key principles:

• Companies producing goods for cities, states, and other public entities are responsible for ensuring that the workers producing those goods do not work under sweatshop conditions.
• Vendors must commit to a Code of Conduct with strong protections for workers in supplier factories, requiring adherence to international standards of workplace fairness and safety and non-poverty wages. Vendors must publicly disclose the locations and working conditions in supplier factories.
• Factory investigations will be primarily complaint-based with the goal of rectifying Code of Conduct violations. An independent monitor, which is neither owned nor controlled in whole or in part by the industry to be monitored, and does not derive any revenue from this industry, will have full control of the investigatory process, working in partnership with organizations, situated in the local factory community, that have demonstrated commitment to the human rights and basic needs of workers.
• Working conditions generally improve when workers have meaningful associational rights, because it is workers who have the greatest incentive and opportunity to monitor working conditions on a day-to-day basis.
• Code of Conduct compliance requires fair purchasing terms between companies and factories, because the product price and other contract terms directly influence the conditions in which factories strive for compliance. The Consortium will develop mechanisms to ensure that supplier factories receive stable and sufficient orders at a fair and competitive price. In return, factories will have to maintain Code of Conduct compliance and be open to inspections by an independent monitor.
• The Consortium will begin work in the apparel sector but will consider expanding its scope to other industries where sweatshops are of concern.
• Consortium affiliation is open to all states, cities, counties, local government agencies, and school districts in the United States that procure apparel and adopt a Code of Conduct with strong protections for workers in supplier factories; require vendors to publicly disclose names, addresses and working conditions of supplier factories; pay annual dues, which will be mutually determined by Consortium members; and, as soon as contractually possible, require vendors to commit to fair purchasing with their suppliers.
• The governing board of the Consortium will include government representatives, who will constitute the majority, and advocates and experts committed to the enforcement of worker rights.
• In order to maintain its independence, the Consortium will not accept any funding from the industries to be monitored.

How to Join the Consortium

In order to become a provisionary member of the State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium, the appropriate legislative body or executive should sign a Resolve, expressing support for the Consortium principles and designate a staff person as liaison to the Consortium. No dues will be payable until the Consortium is operational.

For more information, please see this website or contact:

• Curtis Topper, Deputy Secretary for Procurement, State of Pennsylvania, 717-787-5733, ctopper@state.pa.us
• Bjorn Claeson, Executive Director, SweatFree Communities, 207-262-7277, bjorn@sweatfree.org

Interim Steering Committee members:

• State of Maine represented by Chip Gavin, Director, Bureau of General Services
• State of New York represented by Colleen Crawford Gardner, Executive Assistant for Labor Affairs
• State of Pennsylvania represented by Curtis Topper, Deputy Secretary for Procurement
• City of Los Angeles represented by Farshid Yazdi and Curtis Watts, Department of General Services
• City of San Francisco represented by Nancy Kirshner-Rodriguez, Director of Governmental Affairs, Office of Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Carmen Herrera, Contract Compliance Officer, Office of Labor Standards Enforcement
• Los Angeles Unified School District represented by Marc Monforte, Deputy Director of Purchasing, and Julian Gorgoni, Office of Legislative and Government Affairs
• Bama Athreya, Executive Director, International Labor Rights Forum
• Mark Barenberg, Professor of Law, Columbia University
• Rini Chakraborty, Executive Director, Sweatshop Watch
• Bjorn Claeson, Executive Director, and Victoria Kaplan, Midwest Regional Organizer, SweatFree Communities
• Eric Dirnbach, Deputy Director, Strategic Affairs, and Apparel Industry Coordinator, UNITE HERE