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Anti-Sweatshop Activism in the United States

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Anti-Sweatshop Activism in the United States Sewing Alliances: Anti-Sweatshop Activism in the United States By Dan La Botz icketers surround a chainstore clothing outlet and hand out leaflets about labor conditions on the Pacific island of P Saipan. A mainline church sponsors a talk on how the world’s largest sneaker companies use Indonesian sweatshop labor. Students at the local college take over a campus building, demanding that the school quit licensing its logo to appear on goods made in sweatshops. These are just some of the events happening with coherence around strategy, vision, or how to move ever-greater frequency in cities across the United States. forward,” says Lynda Yanz, director of the Toronto- Dozens of overlapping activist networks and hundreds based Maquila Solidarity Network. of groups—some with paid staffing and thousands of supporters—are mobilizing to improve wages and con- Sweatshop History ditions in sweatshops. Most United States anti- United States-based organizing against sweatshops sweatshop groups specialize in one of four areas: gener- dates back to the 1890s, when progressives helped ating mainstream media attention, mobilizing activists garment workers organize legislative campaigns. But 63 nationwide, developing a base in a particular sweatshops remained widespread until workers formed community, or supporting workers at a particular unions and carried out industry-wide strikes. The company or location. International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, formed Picking up steam since the early 1990s, the in 1900, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of movement has pushed the sweatshop issue into the America, founded in 1914, won labor contracts that national consciousness, forcing corporations to adopt dramatically improved wages and working conditions “codes of conduct” for their suppliers, creating organiza- and set up programs for worker healthcare, pensions, tions to monitor compliance with the codes, and and even housing. By mid-century, the two unions and helping workers in at least two overseas sweatshops the Textile Workers Union of America, formed in 1939, forge union contracts. “There have been great represented nearly one million workers. advances,” says Stephen Coats, executive director of the In the 1960s, however, apparel production began Chicago-based United States/Labor Education in the relocating from northern cities to the United States Americas Project (US/LEAP). “We are light years ahead South and eventually to Central America, the in terms of the power we can bring to bear on Caribbean, and Asia. Factories in more than 60 nations companies.” now supply the United States market. And, as But the movement has yet to significantly improve unionized factories have closed in the United States, the industry’s wages and labor conditions, either in the shady garment-assembly shops have made a comeback, United States or abroad. The missing ingredients, especially in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. leading activists say, include sweat-free alternatives for More than half of the apparel production in this country consumers, resources for workers to organize industry- now happens in illegal sweatshops, according to the wide, and enforceable laws and international pacts pro- United States Labor Department. tecting worker rights. All told, about 75 percent of clothing sold in this “[Inside] the movement there’s not enough country is made in sweatshops. The typical worker is a Race, Poverty & the Environment | Spring 2007 Organizing young woman whose wages leave Mobilizing the Masses her struggling at less than one- Groups focusing on mass mobiliza- third of her country’s official tion constitute the movement’s second poverty level. Her work week pillar. Two based in Washington, may extend to 80 hours or more. D.C.—the Campaign for Labor Her chances of encountering Rights (CLR), founded in 1993, and sexual harassment, pregnancy dis- United Students Against Sweatshops crimination, and safety hazards (USAS), initiated in 1997—have are high. She’d likely be fired for created communication networks to trying to form a union. mobilize supporters in dozens of Mergers among the three locations simultaneously. “We work apparel and textile unions led to on campaigns that support workers the 1995 creation of the Union of when they’re trying to organize sweat- Needletrades, Industrial and shops,” says Daisy Pitkin, CLR’s Textile Employees. Faced with national coordinator. “We become dwindling resources and a membership of just 150,000, involved when a United States retail company is UNITE further merged with the Hotel and involved, because that’s how grassroots activists can get Restauraunt Employees union to form UNITE HERE. a handle. We never work on a campaign alone. We Working as part of the Change to Win coalition, their always work in coalition with other groups.” current campaign focuses on CINTAS, the largest USAS chapters pressure universities across the uniform manufacturing company in the United States. country to keep school names and logos off sweatshop “Taking on the retail industry requires an interna- clothing. “The organization functions like an informa- tional solution,” union organizer Ginny Coughlin says. tion clearinghouse,” says Amber Gallup, who became 64 Toward that end, the United States-based union has the USAS field coordinator after volunteering for the strengthened ties with unions and worker organizations Indiana University chapter. “We have the strategy of in the garment and textile sectors of 10 countries, national, coordinated grassroots action that seems to including Mexico, the Dominican Republic, have worked really well in a couple of campaigns. We Guatemala, China, Thailand, and Indonesia. have built student power on campus to leverage our The National Labor Committee did extensive work administrators and then leverage large companies to focusing public attention on sweatshop practices. The make real changes in workers’ lives.” committee captured extensive media coverage with a The third type of anti-sweatshop group focuses on a series of exposés, including a 1996 disclosure that Wal- local base, like churches or K–12 schools. The most Mart clothing marketed under Kathie Lee Gifford’s powerful example is the New York State Labor-Religion name was produced in Honduras by 13-year-old girls Coalition, a network of nine affiliates. Last year, the working 13-hour shifts for 31 cents an hour. When coalition convinced the state legislature and Gov. Gifford cried on TV, the movement was on the national George Pataki to enact a law permitting schools to radar. reject bids from companies for using sweatshop labor. Global Exchange expanded the awareness with The coalition now works with teacher unions and child- high-profile litigation, including a 1999 lawsuit labor activists on a campaign for sweat-free purchasing against United States corporations that held workers in policies in the state’s 740 school districts. ■ virtual slavery on Saipan, the largest island of the The fourth anti-sweatshop pillar—groups focusing United States “commonwealth” known as the on a particular company or location—includes Photo: An immigrant Northern Marianas. Global Exchange backed the suit US/LEAP, Educating for Justice, Sweatshop Watch, worker from India feeds napkins into an ironing with demonstrations and picket lines at Gap stores and STITCH, Make the Road by Walking, and many machine in Oakland, company headquarters in San Francisco. Most of the others. California retailers eventually settled, agreeing to pay for inde- The power all four types of groups can wield when © David Bacon pendent monitoring of the plants. coordinated is evident at Mex Mode, a Korean-owned Race, Poverty & the Environment | Spring 2007 sweatshop in the central Mexican state of Puebla. The commercial monitors that plant, formerly called Kukdong, makes fleece garments come in for two days,” says for Reebok and Nike. When its workers went on strike Yanz, the Maquila Solidarity for union recognition in January 2001, the AFL-CIO’s Network director. Mexico City office relayed the news to United States anti-sweatshop groups. Coordinating the USAS sent members to investigate the factory and Coalition used its involvement in a factory-monitoring organiza- The movement’s effect tion called the Worker Rights Consortium to pressure on labor conditions ulti- university administrations. “We created listservs and mately depends on greater conference calls and we started coordinating this coordination among anti- campaign together,” Gallup says. “We got 30 schools to sweatshop actors: agreeing send letters to Nike on the same day. Nike was forced on which corporations to by the pressure of these administrators—and the fear of target and which union losing this college market and having its public image organizing to support; affected—to get its manufacturer to recognize an inde- joining forces behind pro- pendent union, and it was forced to keep the produc- worker legislation and treaty proposals; and linking tion there.” local grassroots bases for nationwide responses when CLR, for its part, mobilized religious groups, union workers are fired for organizing. “We’re often behind in locals, and others to visit 40 of Mexico’s 45 consular bringing all of our leverage to bear,” Coats says. “By the offices across the United States last July. Others rallying time people in the north hear about a problem, it’s for the Kukdong workers included Global Exchange, often too late.” US/LEAP, the International Labor Rights Fund, and a A large antisweatshop alliance could convince foun- myriad of local groups in Canada, the United States, dations to devote more money to the movement. A 65 Europe, and Australia. national coordinating center, perhaps modeled after The workers won their first union contract in Canada’s Maquila Solidarity Network, could enable September and another this April. “This is the first unions, NGOs, faith-based groups, and students to time that workers in [Mexico’s] maquiladora zones have develop a coherent strategy and increase the been able to create an independent union,” Gallup says. movement’s political power. Two initiatives appear to be steps in the right direction.
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