Made in America: Garment Workers in the Bay Area Fighting Back: Local and Global Resistance to Sweatshops |
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| Community Based Advocacy Groups | Unions | Consumer Pressure | Law and Broader Solutions | My Expectations of the Bay Area |
The injustice of the garment industry and, more broadly, global capitalism, is devastating. While I applaud efforts to create "sweat free" clothing lines and "free trade" products, the only real solution to this global crisis will come when companies can not compete in a "race to the bottom." Governments world wide must take forceful action to eliminate the option of exploiting workers to lower expenses. The current system puts all the power in the hands of large, profit driven corporations, who place prices and profits over human lives.
Combating sweatshops is an enormously complex issue; to truly eradicate sweatshops of all kinds, the world must take collaborative action against "New Global Capitalism," a system that inherently leads to great profits for some at the terrible expense of many others. However, anti-sweatshop efforts at the local level can also yield important results. Often times in the midst of debate over ending the sweatshop crisis, the voices of the workers, the most important element of any solution, are left out. In this section I will summarize some of the local strategies that are being taken to put an end to sweatshop abuses, and also discuss where I think we need more action.
Community Based Advocacy Groups Immigrant women in the garment industry should not be seen just as victims. Many of Based on the personal experiences of the women interviewed in Sweatshop Warriors, it appears that unions may not be sufficiently effective. For example, when garment worker Jenny Chen went to her union, ILGWU/UNITE, after her employer withheld $60,000 in wages, she was met with hostility.
Unions may have trouble exerting influence in the garment industry to the greatest possible extent because of the low percentage of garment workers that are union members. Also, many garment factories are small, and workers constantly move from job to job as shops close down. Still, unions can help bring forward lawsuites against manufacturers and contractors, work with the government to influence labor policies, and help secure wages and benefits. One thing that consumers can do is organize boycotts to put pressure on manufactures to take responsibility for the conditions of their suppliers' factories. Boycotting has had a profound effect is some cases, such as the Jessica McClintock case. Students at Berkeley High School, as well as members of the community advocacy group AIWA, helped organize a boycott campaign against the designer. McClintock had refused to take responsibility when the designer's supplier went out of business without paying workers for months of work. The boycott was successful in demanding McClintock had a moral responsibility to pay the workers, even if she did not have to legally. Another way consumers can help out is by putting pressure on institutions, like colleges, churches, or sports teams, not to purchase clothing produced in sweatshops. The Law, and Broader Solutions Law: In 1999 California passed what appeared to be a strong anti-sweatshop bill (AB 633) aimed at helping garment workers recover wages; it makes retailers and manufacturers take legal responsibility as "guarantors," who must ensure that the workers who produce their clothing are paid minimum wage and overtime. While there have been an increase in wage claims filed by garment workers, most still receive a dismal fraction of what they are truly owed. Most "guarantors" do not end up paying anything to the workers, however, when ordered to, they do seem to comply with the law. Learn more about how effective this bill has been at "Reinforcing the Seams" (external link). It seems that stronger anti-sweatshop legislation could be effective— the government must see to it that manufacturers and retailers really are held responsible for the workplace conditions and wages of the garment workers. Broader Solutions and Attacking Sweatshops Globally: One of the biggest problems of "corporate led globalization" is that giant businesses can avoid contact with the workers who sew their clothing, and evade responsibility for the labor abuses that occur at the sewing plants (2). "Gone were the old-fashioned worries of how to keep your workforce union-free or lower your payroll taxes. No need to haggle with workers over maternity benefits or sick leave," explains Medea Benjamin. Manufacturers like Levi or Gap, who contract their work to offshore factories, claim they have no idea what kind of abuses occur in the shops that produce their clothes. Furthermore, when they take their business out of the United States, garment workers (and subcontractors) here either lose their jobs, or are subjected to even worse work conditions as, as local factories must compete with those in countries of extreme poverty. Recently, many well known manufacturers have realized that being associated publicly with abusive sweatshops is bad for the company's image (and profits). Many have gone to great lengths to publicly denounce these conditions, making a big deal about the code of conduct they have adopted (with no input from the actual workers). But do these "codes of conduct" really mean better working conditions for the garment laborers, or are they just good PR for the companies? Enforcing labor standards is a critical issue, and many cannot agree on how to carry out the enforcement best. Union say we should focus instead of helping workers form independent unions, but in some countries unions are illegal, and in other places unions are kept "in line" by their governments and businesses. Another problem is that manufacturers would like to use companies they are "comfortable with" to oversee the enforcement of labor standards— but are companies cozy with manufacturers really the best option to protect workers? Probably not. In a democracy forum on "raising global labor standards," Fung, O'Rourke, and Sabel put forward an approach to end sweatshops globally. The idea is termed "Ratcheting Labor Standards" and is based on two concepts. First, there must be an international system of monitoring working conditions. The results must be made public, in order to put legal, financial, and consumer pressure on manufacturers to take responsibility for the factories of their suppliers. Secondly, the openness of this approach would create a public "pool of information with which the best practices of leading firms could be publicly identified, compared, and diffused to others in comparable settings." The monitors in this scenario would be non-governmental organizations or auditing companies, who who report the findings to a "super monitor," some larger organization like the World Bank. I think that the idea of holding manufacturers accountable for the conditions of their supplier factories is key; I also think we need more regulation and oversight. However, I wonder if within this bureaucracy of monitors, the voice of the workers would once again be lost. In response to Fung, O'Rourke and Sabel's ideas, many other interesting alternatives have been put forward. For example, one criticism argues that the role of consumer and monitor pressure should be to strengthen unions and governmental regulation. |
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these women are fighting against the tyranny of the system, banding together in ethnic, community based advocacy groups. In the Bay Area, a dominant group, located in Oakland Chinatown is called Asian Immigrant Women Advocates. According to Miriam Louie, who published Sweatshop Warriors, a book dedicated to the women leaders of such groups, "these women are the real experts about the inner workings of the global economy, labor markets, and immigrant communities— speaking to us from the bottom of the sweatshop industry pyramid. They stand steadfast as the first line of wistle-blowers and flak-catchers against corporate greed, government negligence, and racial wrongs" (4, page 3).
