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Download the Discussion Paper Here Is Fair Trade a good fit for the garment industry? September 2006 • Maquila Solidarity Network 1 A sweatfree marketplace, collectively and This publication is the first in a Until recently series of MSN Discussion Papers consciously constructed as part of a collaboration between the anti- exploring critical issues, challenges movement strategy, can help advance sweatshop and fair trade movements and debates in the labour rights consumer and worker organizing in the about labour practices in the garment movement as we enter our second apparel industry. It can help sweatfree decade of activism against industry has been surprisingly limited. campaigns involve new activists, mobilize sweatshop abuses in the garment For most of the past ten years, these two allies, establish credibility, and build the power and sportswear industries. We movements have coexisted with limited welcome your comments. necessary to create sweatfree communities. interaction or conflict, as if within In addition to the Discussion Bjorn Skorpen Claeson, parallel universes, while arguably the Papers, MSN continues to publish Sweatfree Communities, USA1 subtleties and intricacies of their periodic Codes Memos profiling recent developments and trends in respective approaches have been lost on ‘Workers who produced this product have voluntary codes of conduct and most consumers. not been exploited in any way – 110% public policy. Both publications are There has been considerably more available on our website: guaranteed.’ It is easy to understand why interaction between the fair trade www.maquilasolidarity.org consumers would prefer products to be movement and trade unions and labour labelled in this way. Yet ETI has deliberately rights NGOs concerning workers’ rights steered clear of supporting or promoting an in agricultural export product industries, ‘ethical label’. In our view, labelling carries particularly in the banana and coffee its own risks. sectors. However, even in those sectors, Ethical Trading Initiative, collaboration has been inconsistent and United Kingdom2 often difficult.3 The fair trade movement has put some attention to environmental, as well as health and safety, concerns related to 2 notes Contents X continued from page 1 the raw materials used in the production Ethical Trade & Fair Trade .................... 2 of apparel products, particularly in the fair trade certification of cotton. Resistance to Fair Trade However, it has generally avoided the certification ........................................... 4 more challenging question of whether MSIs shun labelling .............................. 4 and how to certify that labour practices Arrival of Fair Trade clothes ................. 6 in the manufacture of a particular apparel product are in compliance with Certifying cotton................................... 6 minimum labour standards. ‘Sweatfree’ companies ......................... 9 With the exception of a few American Apparel ................................. 9 alternative trading companies that No Sweat Apparel ................................. 9 market clothing manufactured in worker-owned cooperatives or Blackspot Shoes .................................. 11 unionized factories as ‘sweatfree’ or Making Fair Trade accountable ......... 12 ‘Union Made’, to date there have been CCC ‘Alternative’ or ‘Ethical only minimal efforts to create alternative Trade’ guide ......................................... 12 niche markets for fair trade apparel products. (Another possible exception to Go with the FLO? ................................. 13 this rule is the certification of products US Fair Trade supporters ................... 15 as child labour-free, though these Creating a parallel market ................. 16 initiatives have usually focused on soccer balls and rugs, rather than on Does Union-Made equal clothing.) Sweatfree? ........................................... 17 All of that could change with the The CCC perspective ........................... 18 emergence of a number of new WRC Designated Supplier Program ... 19 initiatives in North America and Europe in which fair trade and/or labour rights Conclusion ........................................... 21 organizations are moving toward the Endnotes .............................................. 26 certification of apparel products as ‘fair trade’ or ‘sweatfree’. Ethical Trade & Fair Trade Over the past ten or more years, the anti-sweatshop movement has focused most of its energies and attention on pressuring giant apparel and sports shoe brands to take responsibility for the working conditions and labour practices in their global supply chains, and on supporting garment workers’ efforts to organize to win improved wages and working conditions at the factory level. By mobilizing consumer pressure on the most high-profile, brand-sensitive 3 retailers and brand merchandisers, the result of the decision from the Swiss anti-sweatshop movement has retailers Migros and Co-op (which attempted to achieve improvements in together represent 75% of the Swiss food labour practices and greater respect for retail market) to promote fair trade workers’ rights in existing supply chains. bananas.7 This approach is often referred to as Better public recognition of fair trade ‘ethical trade.’ labelling may also help fair trade reach a In contrast, the ‘fair trade’ movement wider and more mainstream consumer has concentrated on creating alternative group. In France where, according to niche markets for small producers in the opinion polls, only 9% of the population global South, usually organized as knew about fair trade in 2000, the number producer co-operatives, in order that they of people that are aware of fair trade has can obtain a fair price for their products. jumped to 56% in June 2004 and 74% in During these years, while the anti- June 2005.8 sweatshop activists’ focus on the The distinction between the fair trade garment sector had its share of successes and ethical trade approaches is often in mobilizing consumer pressure on lost on consumers however. By targeting mainstream brands and in influencing a few high-profile companies and raising notes the policies and practices of those consumer awareness of the conditions companies, the fair trade movement has under which brand-name apparel moved beyond the marginal market products are made, the anti-sweatshop niche of its beginnings. movement has raised expectations that Europe “is the biggest market for fair it could direct consumers to alternative trade products, with an estimated 60% sources of apparel and sports shoe to 70% of global sales [of fair trade products made under better working products] and potential for further conditions, if not ‘sweatfree’ conditions. growth” according to a resolution From the movement’s inception, adopted on July 6 by the European anti-sweatshop activists have been Union Parliament calling for increased caught in a fundamental dilemma – support for fair trade from the European while they are encouraging consumers Commission.4 to pressure brand name companies to For example, according to a 2005 take positive action, most consumers are report published by the Fair Trade more interested in knowing where they Advocacy Office, fair trade labelled can buy ‘clean clothes’. coffee now holds a 20% share of the roast In his August 2004 discussion paper and ground coffee market in the UK, “Sweatfree Marketplace: A Movement compared with 1.5% only five years ago.5 Perspective,” Bjorn Skorpen Claeson, (It should be noted, however, that the Executive Director of the US network roast and ground coffee market is less Sweatfree Communities, argued that the than half of the overall coffee market in lack of a list of “sweatfree suppliers” has the UK and fair trade coffee represents been “a significant hurdle for local less than 1% of the larger instant coffee organizing, diminishing [local anti- market, making fair trade’s overall sweatshop activists’] capacity to involve market share much smaller.)6 new activists and allies.”9 Fair Trade bananas now represent 47% In the paper, Claeson pointed to the of the Swiss banana market, largely as a following experience of an activist with 4 notes the New York Labor-Religion Coalition as an example of the dilemma facing the anti-sweatshop movement on how to respond to consumers’ questions about ethical purchasing options: Last month I was invited to New York City to speak to the Executive Committee of the United Federation of Teachers, School Secretaries Chapter… As I completed my presentation the first question was, “Do you have a list of who we can buy from?” As soon as I began explaining why there is no list, I lost the group. There is no question in my mind that that answer discredited me, my organization, and our movement….10 campaigns in Europe since 1990, some of the organizations that have joined the Bama Athreya of the International CCC are also involved in the fair trade Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) agrees with movement. “One of the reasons they Claeson on the need to offer consumers became involved in the CCC was because positive alternatives. “There is no of the difficulties they have faced in trying question that there is consumer interest to apply the fair trade model to the in ethically made clothes,” says garment sector,” says Zeldenrust.12 Athreya.11 “It is a common refrain from While acknowledging the importance the audience in every single talk we give. of creating markets for democratic We need to acknowledge that the public worker cooperatives, which are often
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