Labor is Not a Commodity

Historic Safety Accord Holds Companies Responsible for Contractors’ Working Conditions—Most U.S. Companies Lagging

By Bjorn Claeson

Get ready to hear more about the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh.  For the first time since apparel brands and retailers started to contract production overseas, a sizable group of major apparel companies have accepted legal responsibility for workers’ safety in contractor factories.

The Accord, a binding and enforceable agreement between unions and so far 40 major apparel brands and retailers, is a radical departure from the voluntary, unenforceable and ineffective codes of conduct and social compliance programs companies have developed over the last 20 years.

The record for corporate voluntary social compliance programs has been dismal, and this year more so than ever. In the last eight months, more than 1,500 workers in Bangladesh and Pakistan have suffocated, burned, and been crushed to death making the most ordinary consumer good: clothing.  Every worker who died made clothing for export, sold mostly by well-known brands and retailers.  These companies assured consumers the clothing was made ethically, the factories audited for compliance and certified to be safe with decent working conditions. Yet, the factories were illegal, lacked building permits, and violated basic safety standards.

By contrast, the Accord requires companies to participate in and fund a program of independent safety inspections, remediation, and worker safety trainings with the involvement of trade unions.  They must maintain commercial terms that enable factories to maintain safe workplaces and finance repairs.  A Steering Committee consisting of an equal number of representatives of trade unions and companies and one representative of the International Labor Organization is empowered to decide disputes between the signatory parties.  The parties may appeal Steering Committee decisions to an Arbitrator, whose decision is final and enforceable in a court of law.

Thus far only two U.S. companies have signed the Accord: PVH Corporation, parent company of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger (the first company to commit to the agreement in March of 2012), and Abercrombie & Fitch.  Gap has said it will not sign the agreement because it is enforceable in courts.  Walmart has announced it will expand its own private, non-binding social auditing efforts with auditing giant, Bureau Veritas, rather than sign the Accord.  The National Retail Federation said the Accord was a narrow “special interest” initiative and joined the American Apparel and Footwear Association in announcing another non-binding program that excludes unions and labor groups. That initiative, which reportedly includes JC Penney, Sears, and Macy’s, has not yet been made public.

The Accord is historic in requiring companies to take legal and financial responsibility for worker safety in contract factories and to work with unions as equal partners.  In the United States, working conditions in the apparel industry improved significantly when buyers, contractors, and unions negotiated  “jobber agreements” that recognized that the lead firm in the industry, the jobber, or “buyer” in today’s terminology, was responsible for wages and working conditions at the bottom of the chain.  The Accord represents an opportunity to make similar advances for garment workers worldwide.  It should be fully implemented in Bangladesh and expanded to other countries where garment workers work in unsafe conditions. Learn more and take action here: laborrights.org/safety.

Bjorn Skorpen Claeson is Senior Policy Analyst with the International Labor Rights Forum, Executive Director of the Sweatfree Purchaing Consortium, and cofounder of SweatFree Communities.

Global Supply Chain Workers Pressure Walmart to Get Serious About Labor Conditions

At First-Ever Meeting, Workers Release Core Principles to Ensure Safe and Legal Working Conditions

By Warehouse Workers United

In an unprecedented meeting, workers from Walmart’s global supply chain gathered Tuesday to release core principles that would ensure basic labor standards in the megaretailer’s global supply chain.

The meeting was timed to correspond with the arrival of two Bangladeshi garment workers to Southern California. One, 19-year-old Sumi Abedin, jumped out of a burning factory that produced clothes for Walmart. The November 2012 fire killed 112 people. The New York Times reported that Walmart played the lead role in blocking increased fire safety protections at Bangladeshi garment factories the year before, claiming the cost would be too high.

Over the course of 2012, guestworkers, factory workers and warehouse workers exposed deadly, unsafe and illegal conditions inside Walmart’s contracted facilities. In response to pressure from workers’ groups, Walmart has accepted responsibility for conditions in its supply chain, but the company’s own solutions fail to uphold its basic standards and the law.

“Walmart must work with workers in each facet of its supply chain to ensure dignity and safety,” said Mike Compton, a warehouse worker from Illinois who traveled to Los Angeles for the meeting. “There is nowhere for workers to go right now – a complaint to Walmart goes into a black hole. There are so many workers laboring to make Walmart successful, the company has to engage with us to make sure working conditions are safe and legal.”

Workers across the Walmart supply chain agreed that standards must be enforceable and credible, and that workers must have a voice in the process.

“We faced brutal conditions, including threats of deportation and violence against us and our families if we complained,” said Ana Rosa Diaz, a former guestworker at Walmart supplier C.J’s Seafood in Louisiana and a member of the National Guestworker Alliance. “When we went on strike, Walmart tried to cover up the abuse. Only after hundreds of thousands of people stood up to support us, Walmart ended its contract with C.J.’s.”

Workers in today’s international convening are responding to Walmart’s “Standards for Suppliers” with their own set of core principles.

“What workers have shown is that Walmart’s standards are nothing more than a sheet of paper,” said Guadalupe Palma, director of Warehouse Workers United. “Today workers have put forward a solution that would lift working standards globally and create enforceable, credible standards that are centered around workers.”

Tuesday’s meeting included workers from the National Guestworker Alliance, Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, Warehouse Workers United, New Labor, Warehouse Workers for Justice and Jobs with Justice, along with professors, community leaders and others.

Workers, regardless of geography, will stay in contact over social media channels and workers on the east coast will hold a similar convening April 18.

Remembering Stephen Coats / Recordando a Stephen Coats

By Judy Gearhart, Executive Director, International Labor Rights Forum

It is with great sadness that we post this news.  Stephen Coats, Executive Director of USLEAP, passed away on April 2, 2013.  Stephen was a tremendous friend and a tireless advocate of workers’ rights.  He touched so many people around the world, serving as a leader in building worker solidarity in the Americas.  Stephen’s dedication and humility inspired so many worker rights advocates.  This is a tremendous loss for all.

Es con tremenda tristeza que pegamos estas noticias.  Stephen Coats, Director Ejecutiva de USLEAP, se falleció el 2 de abril 2013.  Stephen fue un gran amigo y un promotor de derechos laborales sin cansancio.  Toco tantas personas a través del mundo, sirviendo como líder en la construcción de la solidaridad obrera en las Américas.  El compromiso y dedicación de Stephen a este trabajo inspiro miles de promotores de derechos laborales.  Es una perdida tremenda para todos/as.

Securing Fair Trade: A Response to Theo Chocolate

By Judy Gearhart, Executive Director, International Labor Rights Forum

This week the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) released a new report that adds to the growing body of evidence that certifications need added safeguards to ensure they are legally accountable to workers in the supply chains they monitor.

The report, titled Aiding and Abetting, exposes how Swiss-based Institute for Marketecology (IMO), which certifies companies using the Fair for Life label, branded Theo Chocolate, a Seattle-based chocolate company, with its fair trade label despite being informed by Theo workers that the company had hired an anti-union consultant and was violating the international labor standards promoted by Fair For Life during a union organizing campaign.

Shortly after we released the report Theo Chocolate issued a statement disputing the report’s findings.

Theo’s response to our report was expected. The report is based on interviews with workers whose organizing drive was thwarted, so it does not surprise us that Theo management has a different perspective. In such cases management often seeks to portray grievances raised as those of a disgruntled few. Yet several things remain unexplained about the Theo case. 

What happened at Theo after two-thirds of workers formally expressed an interest in forming a union that would push the majority of workers to sign a petition against unionizing within a year?  Why did Theo hire a consultant who advertised his services in union-avoidance strategies?  And how can a fair trade auditor paid by management objectively review a complaint by workers about management?

Answers to these questions cannot be determined via an ILRF delegation to Theo’s factory organized by Theo management, as suggested by Joe Whinney, Theo Chocolate CEO. Nor is ILRF as an outside party in a position to resolve the dispute. It must be noted however, that the ILRF’s report is not a demand that Theo workers be forced to organize. 

The recommendations in Aiding and Abetting are intended to balance out Theo’s past communications to workers about unions and organizing, in short an equalizing follow-up to Theo having hired ACG, which publicized its union-avoidance consulting services on its website. The only way for Theo to repair the damage done during Theo management’s anti-union drive would be to enter into a dialogue with the union in order to establish an agreement that would create an environment in which workers could organize, if they so choose, without fear of retaliation. Then workers would be able to choose for themselves if and how to organize.

Sadly, Theo’s use of union busting tactics and Theo management’s unwillingness to atone for labor rights violations is typical in the United States.

The core recommendation of the report is directed toward IMO which neglected to intervene to uphold its commitment to fair trade standards as the Theo case played out. The Theo case illustrates how certification bodies, paid directly by employers, can harm efforts by workers to unionize rather than help them. It also shows how workers, seeking to use certification codes and processes constructively, are put at a disadvantage when there is no transparency around the grievance process and no independent appeal of findings from a certifier’s investigation. To be sure, the workers should have filed with the National Labor Relations Board, but their employer had committed – in the language of the Fair for Life code – to maintain an open attitude towards unions.  Filing a legal complaint would have been a more aggressive approach than trying to work through the certification process, which promised to ensure remedies for violations of the code.

In response to the Theo case, IMO Fair for Life actually diluted its standards. Currently, IMO’s code encourages employers to hire consultants to talk to workers about the advantages and possible disadvantages of unionization; effectively sanctioning management interference with workers’ organizing decisions. This approach does nothing to ensure that employers are kept from seeking to influence workers’ organizing decisions.

Our vision is to establish a process that could serve any labor rights certification and monitoring program; a proposal for creating a more credible and independent mechanism for reviewing investigations by certifying organizations in cases where workers’ rights to organize and bargain collectively are at risk. Specifically, we believe fair trade certifiers should make their auditing results transparent and establish an “International Fair Trade Board of Appeal” to assess and remedy instances where fair trade organizations mishandle cases involving allegations of workers’ rights violations. By addressing the inherent conflict-of-interest created when monitors are paid by the company they audit, the proposed solution will provide workers a useful tool in their efforts to win dignified treatment in the workplace.

Although the ILRF has no financial stake in the fair trade movement, we are interested in ensuring that the fair trade movement maintains a higher standard than more mainstream codes of conduct.  And as there are now a growing number of fair trade certified work places with wage laborers, we want to make sure the fair trade community fully understands what it means to ensure workers’ rights to organize. 

If the fair trade movement gets this right, they’ll win on two levels: the movement will stay true to their mission; and it will build a bridge to another social movement that is also concerned with building collective power:  the labor movement.

Workers’ Rights Movement in Pakistan Gains Momentum: Court Orders Arrest of Ali Enterprises Owners

By Hanna Claeson

It is Saturday, October 6^th, 8:30 AM and members of the Workers’ Rights Movement in Pakistan are out front of the City Court in Karachi, protesting to make sure that bail is not granted again to the owners of the garment factory Ali enterprises, where 289 workers died on September 11^th in the deadliest factory fire in history to date. 

The owners have been granted bail three times already, on September 14, on September 21, and on October 1: catastrophic kicks in the stomach to efforts of trade unions, labor rights activists and factory workers, and families of victims to hold the owners responsible for atrocious conditions that led to the fires, and properly mourn the deaths of their friends, coworkers and family. So today workers and family members are out in numbers, bearing pictures of the dead and signs demanding justice. They are making sure that this does not happen again. Already in the early morning there is a small victory: all major news channels have broken the news about the demonstration outside of the courthouse.

H&M: Hypocrisy & Minimum wage

By Hanna Claeson

Maybe you’ve read it in the news lately. H&M’s CEO, Karl-Johan Persson, started to feel bad that he outsources most of his clothing production to countries where workers are hardly paid the money necessary to eat. He flew from Stockholm to Bangladesh, sat down with Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheik Hasina, and kindly asked her to raise the minimum wage. The press is going wild.

What is wrong with this picture? If Persson is really sincere, he has got flawed logic. H&M gets about 25% of its products from Bangladesh. That is a lot of weight to throw around, not just with Bangladesh’s prime minister, but with its producers as well. What does that mean?

A Swedish film crew visited a producer in Hong Kong who said that it is especially hard working for H&M because they can stop placing orders before you can blink your eye. In China this meant that workers were subject to increasingly stressful and unhealthy working conditions. The film crew found children as young as 16 working without safety equipment in factories “dense with chlorine gas.” When they were under pressure to fill and order, they worked 13-14 hours a day, seven days a week.

So you’re trying to tell me that a CEO with that much influence couldn’t have simply asked their producers to raise wages?

Contractualization Slammed in “Global Day of Action”

By Partido ng Manggagawa

Today nationwide rallies denounced contractualization as labor groups in the Philippines marked the “Global Day of Action against Outsourcing.” Meanwhile airline unions and other workers abroad held protests spanning four continents in an expression of global resistance to outsourcing.

“Actions by workers, on the same day, in a coordinated way, all over the world, gives the struggle against outsourcing strength and effectivity,” declared Gerry Rivera, president of the Philippine Airlines Employees' Association (PALEA) and vice chair of Partido ng Manggagawa (PM).

Some 1,000 members of PALEA and the labor coalition Nagkaisa staged a rally at Mendiola this morning. This was followed by a motorcade to the PALEA protest camp for an afternoon mass meeting. Mobilizations were also in Cebu at the PALEA picketline near the Mactan International Airport this morning and in Davao at the Buhangin underpass this afternoon.

Beggar-Thy-Neighbor: How Burma Will Take Bangladesh’s Sweatshop Jobs

By Bama Athreya

Burma is poised to step into a special, advantageous trade arrangement with the European Union, and to see an end to the US import ban. Last week, the European Commission adopted a proposal to bring the country back under the so-called 'Everything But Arms' preferential trade agreement, which grants duty-free and quota-free access to the European market for all products except for arms and ammunition. The United States government is poised to reward Burma by removing all import sanctions.

Bangladesh received the same benefits years ago, and saw its garment industry exports skyrocket. Over the past decade, Bangladesh lifted itself out of ‘basket case’ status thanks to these trade benefits from both the United States and European Union. Over three million jobs were created in the ready-made garment sector, employing young women who migrate to Dhaka from throughout the country to take these low-wage jobs. They sew clothing for global brands: H&M, Zara, Tommy Hilfiger, Adidas, Nike, JC Penney, Wal-Mart, Target, Gap, Levi Strauss and others. Bangladesh’s industrialists in this sector are perfectly aware that their single big competitive advantage is an unlimited supply of cheap labor. They are also perfectly aware of where the jobs are coming from: China, where wage rates have risen in recent years.

Burma now wants in on the act. Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, in a much-publicized speech to the World Economic Forum in June, made a point of calling for investment in jobs. “I’m extremely worried about the high level of unemployment in my country, particularly youth unemployment. That’s a time bomb,” she told reporters. We would hope she does not have sweatshop jobs in mind for Burma’s youth. This is a lose-lose scenario for both countries’ working people, but a real boon for investors seeking cheap labor – a classic ‘race to the bottom’ scenario.

Worker Rights Movement Formed, Launching Movement Against Factory Fire Culprits

By Nasir Mansoor

A representative meeting of more than 70 trade union federations, plant level unions, labour bodies from industrial zones, leftist parties, youth, students, women, social organizations, labor rights and human rights organizations, professional organizations, and individuals was held on Saturday, September 22, at Karachi Art Council to discuss the 9/11 factory fire tragedy in Karachi/Lahore and to develop joint action plans to demand justice from the culprits and for workers' rights. Yousuf Masti Khan, of Workers Party Pakistan (WPP), presided over the meeting.

Nasir Mansoor, of the National Trade Union Federation (NTUF), coordinated the meeting and briefed the participants about the current situation and the various measures taken by different organizations including the case in the high court, collection of information about the deceased and injured workers, and proposed future actions to cope with the situation.

The representatives stated that the government has been trying to give safe cover-up to the factory owners and sweep the fire tragedy under the carpet through the formation of a partial commission, which lacks the trust of worker-representative bodies. The fact that the government has yet to initiate any compensation process shows that it has no sympathy toward the deceased and injured workers and the plight of their families. The government is failing to respect the law and punish the culprits responsible for the tragedy. Rather the government is dragging on the process in the hopes that the people will forget it. That is why it allowed the main culprit to go escort-free and facilitated the obtaining of preemptive bail, first from Larkana Bench and than from Rawalpindi. This shows the state apparatus' attitude toward the 300 workers who were burned alive in the tragedy.

The worker representatives resolved that only through joint resistance will workers and their allies be able to change the situation in favor of the working class.

Deadly Denim: Workers Burned Alive Making Jeans for Export

By International Labor Rights Forum

You have ruthless buyers sitting in the U.S. who don't care what you do, as long as you do it on time… We take a hit every time we're late. That means lost margins. That means we do what we need to do to make our orders, fast. This factory owner may have been working extra shifts just for that purpose…

--Ali Ahmad, Owner of Nizam Textiles in Karachi, Pakistan

In the aftermath of the deadly factory fires in Pakistan on September 11, 2012, Pakistani unions have called for the factory owner and local government officials to be held accountable.  ILRF expresses our deep sorrow for the pain, suffering, and loss of life caused by the owner’s, the buyers’ and the government authorities’ unconscionable neglect.  We stand in solidarity with the workers of Pakistan, and support the demands of the unions.  We also call on the brands and retailers that together buy $11 billion of Pakistani apparel each year to take responsibility for making Pakistani factories safe for workers.