Joining forces against sweatshops

After more than a decade of campaigns, why haven’t anti-sweatshop organizations made much more progress? When I put that a question to a friend who is a veteran of those campaigns, he replied: “Because the movement is Balkanized.”

In that light, a March 10 public letter of two anti-sweatshop organizations, the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) and the Sweatfree Communities (SFC) is especially good news. Barma Arthrea, ILRF executive director, and Bjorn Claeson, SFC director, wrote that they are “pleased to announce that SFC and ILR will be joining forces in a new collaboration that we hope will stengthen our advocacy efforts to create a sweatfree world.”

Among the benefits expected from working together:

• Expansion of “our work to encourage federal, local, and state government entities to use their purchasing power to promote and enforce strong labor rights standards.”
• “Strengthen our efforts to build a grassroots international labor solidarity movement in the U.S.”

The two groups have already been working together informally, especially in the past year. Now they are doings so more actively “during a one-year transition period followed by an evaluation at which time a final decision will be made on whether to fully merge into one organization.”

Sweatfree Communities, headquarterd in Bangor, Maine, was founded in 2003 by anti-sweatshop activists, including local labor leaders, in Maine, Minnesota, New York, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. Their working together since then has led 39 cities, 15 counties, and eight states to adopt “sweat-free” procurement policies, starting with uniforms for police officers, firefighters, and others, including prisoners.

The International Labor Rights Forum, headquartered in Washington, was founded in1986 by leaders in human rights, labor, academic, and faith-based organizations, to promote global labor standards, especially through trade and aid policies. (Personal disclosure: I’ve been a member of ILRF since the ealy 1990s.)

Both organizations have excellent Websites that inform members and the public on developments affecting the human rights of working men and women.
IRLR: http://www.laborrights.org
SFC: http://www.sweatfree.org

For a copy of 2010 Shopping with a Conscience Guide, see http://www.sweatfree.org/shoppingguide

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Portland (OR) celebrates its progress toward ‘sweat-free’ procurement

“When we put on our uniforms and wear city-supplied hats and T-shirts, we need to be assured these products are not produced under sweatshop conditions.” That’s what Richard Beetle, business manager of the Laborers local union, said when the city council of Portland, Oregon, last year decided that the city would purchase only uniforms and other apparel that are “sweat-free.”

This Friday afternoon, November 18, Portland marks that breakthrough by holding an after-work party in City Hall. Mayor Sam Adams will be there to help celebrate the success of the “SweatFree Procurement Policy” he sponsored while he was a city commissioner. A former garment worker, Gloria Gonzalez, will describe her years in sweatshops and the plight of millions of women and girls still working in them.

City Hall will be adorned with profiles of garment workers around the world painted by Janet Essley. The Essley painting above, of a garment worker in Haiti, is one of the 23 in a traveling exhibit that gives “a human face to the workers behind the uniforms of our police, firefighters, and other public employees.”

The city now spends about $20,000,000 a year on uniforms, almost all made in “sweatfree” workplaces. Under the policy adopted on October 15 last year, the city plans to expand sweat-free procurement to other products, such as computers.

Portland isn’t pursuing this policy alone. It belongs to “SweatFree Communities,” a network of 39 cities, 15 counties, eight states, and more than 100 public school districts, all dedicated to ending the use of taxpayer dollars in global sweatshops and in domestic work places with substandard work places.

Portland has also joined a SweatFree Communities program, the national SweatFree Purchasing Consortium, a pioneering effort seeking to fill a vacuum on the production side.

At present there is a huge shortage of factories in the world that can be counted on to deliver sweat-free goods. With the purchasing power inherent in a much-enlarged group, the Consortium would represent enough demand to build a large set of reliable sweat-free suppliers.

The goal, therefore, is not only negative – to end public procurement from sweatshops -- but also positive: to establish incentives toward the creation of alternative sources.

Taking the “sweat” out of the world’s sweatshops will require a combination of governmental and nongovernmental levers. Public procurement with a conscience is one of them.

(Interested in displaying the Essley garment worker paintings in your community? Check the art section at http://www.sweatfree.org/presenteinfo.)

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