Environment and Planning A 2000, volume 32, pages 1193 ^ 1213
DOI:10.1068/a3255
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn: UNITE and the
Stop Sweatshops Campaign
Rebecca Johns
Department of Geography, University of South Florida, St Petersburg, FL 33701, USA;
e-mail: [email protected]
Leyla Vural
Independent scholar, 245 W. 107th Street #8C, New York, NY 10025, USA
Received 2 April 1999; in revised form 6 November 1999
Abstract. The late 20th century has seen unions in the industrial and postindustrial countries retrench
and struggle to develop new strategies and tactics in the face of a changing political economy.
A challenge to the traditional conceptions of the appropriate place and scope of union activity comes
from the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees and its innovative leadership in the
US-based Stop Sweatshops Campaign. Based on an analysis of the shifting locus of power in the
garment industry, the union shifted its focus from the point of production to the place of consumption
to pressure retailers who set prices within the industry. This strategy, which fulfills the prophecy of the
consumptive turn earlier this century, applies a new geography and politics to labor struggles, and
forces labor geographers to consider anew the relationship between consumption and production in
our understanding of the changing economic landscape.
``Is it possible to change this system, to convince powerful corporations to end the
systematic abuse of sweatshops? We believe the answer is yes, just as was done
earlier in this century, when sweatshops in this country were spread over a territory
that seemed as vast to our predecessors as the new global economy seems to us
today. They did it by joining together, consumers and workers and people of good
will across the social spectrum, to demand an end to the inhumanity of the sweatshop.''
Jay Mazur, President, UNITE
Linda Golodner, President, National Consumers League (NCL, 1996)
Introduction
Once thought a frightening relic of the early decades of the 20th century, the sweatshop
has returned with a vengeance and is now widely recognized as a main evil of our time.
Until recently the common perception was that sweatshops were a problem of the
developing world. The exposure of sweatshop conditions in the United States, such as
when workers on 38th Street in Manhattan's garment district complained that they had
not been paid for several weeks, reveals that sweatshops are again becoming the norm
in the garment industry.(1)
Where does the responsibility lie for the sweatshop resurgence? How can workers
and their unions once again garner enough power in the industry to bring decent
working conditions to those who make the clothes we wear? These are questions that
UNITE, the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, has grappled
with since its creation in 1995. UNITE was forged through the merger of the two
prominent garment unions in the United States, the International Ladies Garment
Workers Union (ILGWU) and the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
(1) See ``Santa's little sweatshop'' by Jeff Elliott, Albion Monitor (http://www.monitor.net/monitor/
sweatshops/ss-intro.html; http:www.uniteunion.org/sweatshops/sweatshoparchive/kathielee.html).
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(ACTWU). Since its inception, UNITE has worked in coalition with consumer, human
rights, and other antisweatshop organizations in an attempt at effecting positive change
in the garment industry and thereby improving the lives of garment workers. Much of
the work of the union involves building a broad, consumer-based coalition to fight
sweatshops. While reminiscent of antisweatshop campaigns in the early decades of this
century, this nonetheless represents an innovative and adaptive strategy to confront
directly the contours of the economy at the end of the millennium. UNITE's role in the
Stop Sweatshops Campaign, and the ideas and tactics that underpin that work serve to
validate the assertion (Soja, 1989) that contemporary working-class politics must be
spatialized to be effective. Indeed, the Stop Sweatshops campaign moves beyond the
focus on spatial differentiation of production to highlight the need to identify differing
spaces of production and consumption, and to use that spatial understanding to the
advantage of working people.
In their early periods both the ILGWU and ACTWU had a radical vision of new
social order, ``a worker-controlled cooperative commonwealth'' (Vural, 1994), which
they hoped to achieve by attending not only to the shopfloor needs of their members,
but also to the needs of workers in the community outside the factory. Thus, the
ILGWU and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA) were instrumental in promoting working-class education, cooperative housing, union-owned
banks, and other broad social programs such as social security and unemployment
insurance (Fraser, 1991; Vural, 1994).
Beginning with the New Deal of the 1930s, both the ILGWU and the ACWA
began to move away from the broad social visions of their founding years. With a
solid place in the emerging social contract among labor, business, and government,
the goal of building a worker-controlled cooperative commonwealth seemed outdated
and unnecessary. Decades of growth within the unions' ranks, and steady gains for
garment workers, including wages that rose to the level of the wages of auto and steel
workers, seemed to validate the wisdom of shifting to what many call `business
unionism'.
Beginning in the 1970s, shifts in the garment industry and the accelerated movement
of production to dozens of countries across the globeöreflective of the overall restructuring of the international economy öforced the needletrade unions to reexamine their
fundamental premises and strategies. The Stop Sweatshops Campaign was one part
of the union's attempt to respond to major transformations in the garment industry and
the international economic landscape.
With its founding convention in 1995, UNITE began a return to the community.
This time it was not a journey into workers' neighborhoods and lives, but rather a
voyage into the community of consumers. UNITE immediately began to build the Stop
Sweatshops Campaign (hereafter `the Campaign'), bringing together a number of
groups with a commitment to fight sweatshops. Led by UNITE and the National
Consumers League (NCL), this group agreed that consumers can play a powerful
role in restructuring power relations in the garment industry. The strategy and logic
behind the Campaign pose interesting questions about the nature of power in the
garment industry and how workers can challenge it.
Today relationships among the member organizations in the Campaign are irreparably strained. It seems clear that the coalition that drove the Campaign will not
survive. Nonetheless, the Stop Sweatshops Campaign has been innovative in several
ways. The recent rift between the NCL and UNITE is primarily a conflict over
independent monitoring of company behavior; consumer groups tend to think monitoring is sufficient to ensure the elimination of sweatshops, while the union strongly
feels that it is not. The division suggests that a geographic and political strategy that
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
1195
relies on consumers as important agents of change may be insufficient to preserve a
strong union presence among garment workers. Nonetheless, the union's commitment
to the Campaign over the last several years indicates clearly the willingness of labor
leaders to read and understand changes in the economic landscape, and to devise
programs intended to shape that landscape in ways that benefit the union, its members,
and unorganized garment workers.
The Campaign was significant in three ways. First, the Campaign did not target the
manufacturer at the point of production as is the case in most traditional union
struggles. Instead, it focused on the influential and visible retailers who sell the
products made under sweatshop conditions in the lucrative US market: it focused on
the point of sale. Second, and related to the first tactic, the Campaign was based on the
mobilization not just of union members, but primarily on a vaguely defined community of consumers, those individuals who frequent the high-profile shops and discount
chain department stores making a profit from sweatshop labor. As such the Campaign
brings the `consumerist turn' of the early 20th century to its final culmination. This
tactic should not be mistaken for an abandonment of class-based goals which arise
from the production process; to the contrary, as we will show, the union's primary
commitment remains to working-class organization at the point of production. Third,
the Campaign avoids the privileging of the local or national group of workers at the
expense of workers in other places that has been so common in other union attempts
to counter capital mobility.
Labor geography
Over the last several decades geographers have responded to the lack of spatiality in
social analysis by crafting a comprehensive body of work examining the social construction of landscapes and, in particular, the role that capital has played in the
shaping of geography of capitalism to its own advantage (Harvey, 1982; Massey, 1984;
1995; Smith, 1990; Soja, 1989). The early critique of neoclassical location theory and its
prominence in traditional economic geography began with the premise that social life,
social relations, and social identities are fundamentally spatial, and proceeded to build
an analysis of the construction of economic geographies that focused on the reproduction of capitalist social relations as an ongoing struggle for power between unequal
social groups. Even more recently, this radical geography has been expanded to focus
more carefully on workers as agents in the struggle over the geography of capitalism
(Herod, 1997; 1998). The constitution of workers as a social group in particular places;
the relationships between home, community, and workplace; variations in state and
local labor regulations and traditions of militancy or acquiescence are all part of the
context in which the struggle over social relations is conducted (for example, Berman,
1998; Cope, 1998; Martin et al, 1994). In addition, geographers have pondered the
myriad ways working people and their organizations have confronted capital's use of
space, altered the scale and substance of their own activities, and in so doing, influenced the economic geography of production and of capitalist development itself
(Johns, 1998; Jonas, 1998; Tufts, 1998).
One of the key premises of Edward Soja's Postmodern Geographies (1989) was
that, in order for progressive political change to occur within the context of today's
global economy, political actors must confront capitalism's spatiality head-on.
Labor's struggle cannot go forward without a grasp of the spatial aspects of relations
of production, and the ability to attack or manipulate capitalism's spatial organization in its favor. A heightened awareness of capitalism's spatiality allows a critique of
the dialectic or tension between the interests of workers in particular places with the
interests of workers as a class across space. Much of the literature discussing the
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relationship between place-based social action and class-based interests has focused
on the realm (or space) of production itself (Beynon and Hudson, 1993; Fitzgerald,
1991; Harvey, 1985; Massey, 1984). Ray Hudson and David Sadler (1986), for example, focused on the struggle between communities of workers for the right to sell their
labor power. Even Neil Smith's (1990) astute and ground-breaking analysis of the
spatial requirements of capitalism focused on production and did not prioritize the
relationship between spaces of production and spaces of consumption. Soja himself,
in asserting that ``concrete spatiality ö actual human geographyö is thus a competitive arena for struggles over social production and reproduction, for social practices
aimed at the maintenance and reinforcement of existing spatiality or at significant
restructuring and/or radical transformation'' (1989, pages 129 ^ 130) subsumes consumption within reproduction, but does not conceptualize consumption as an arena of
struggle in its own right. Jamie Peck's work (1996) on labor markets, while a rich
analysis of the construction of workers and markets within a spatialized political
economy, ignores consumption as a social space, process, and place. In general,
geographers concerned with spatializing our analysis of the political economy have
not clearly conceptualized the role of consumption, nor have they adequately problematized it as a placeölocational and socialöin struggles for change.
Discussions among labor theorists themselves about new strategies for organized
labor in the face of increased international competition, relocation of manufacturing,
globalization of capital markets, and neoliberal policies that undermine unions and
redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich (Figueroa, 1998; Shailor and Kourpias,
1998) have likewise not included an understanding of the spatialization of consumption
nor its potential as a space of struggle. Collectively, these omissions make the work of
UNITE in the Campaign all the more exciting for what it can tell us about labor's
thinking about using spaces of consumption to further workers' rights.
Our analysis of the Campaign, and of the union's critical role in shaping and
leading it, has led us to the belief that a reconceptualization of the spaces of production and consumption is needed if progressive forces are to develop potent strategies
for social change in these times. The space of consumption öboth geographic and
social spaceöis not the same as the space of production. The exact limits of these
spaces need to be explored. While we cannot speak definitively of other industries,
within the garment industry not only is there a separation between the places in which
labor produces garments and the places in which those garments are consumed, but
the latter is the place in which the decisions are made that set the conditions of
production. Manipulating the complex relationship between workers and consumers,
across physical and social space, is what the Campaign is all about. We contend that
labor geographers have much to learn and think about based on this nascent reconceptualization.
The Stop Sweatshops Campaign
During the 1950s garment workers in the USA earned wages comparable with those of
auto and steel workers. This is particularly astounding when one considers the recent
return of sweatshop conditions to garment shops in the United States. Once on a par
with workers in labor's elite industries öin terms of payöwomen apparal workers are
again the embodiment of outrageous exploitation (boxes 1 and 2). UNITE has led and
shaped a discussion with the public around these issues, and the union's leadership in
the Campaign is the direct result of the analysis by union policymakers of the restructuring specific to the industry.
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
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Box 1. What is a sweatshop? (source: compiled by UNITE's Research Department and
distributed as part of a Campaign information packet).
The word sweatshop was originally used in the 19th century to describe a subcontracting
system in which the middlemen earned their profit from the margin between the amount they
received for a contract and the amount they paid workers with whom they subcontracted.
This margin was said to be `sweated' from the workers because they received minimal wages
for excessive hours worked under unsanitary conditions.
Today's subcontracting system functions on a global basis. Large clothing companies produce
apparel in 160 countries, often with shockingly low wages and horrible working conditions.
Apparel workers in Bangladesh earn 20 cents an hour, and in the free-trade zones in
El Salvador they earn 56 cents an hour, just to give two examples. The clothing companies
then export that apparel to 30 developed countries, such as the United States and Canada.
Meanwhile, apparel workers in the developed world are forced to compete against those
conditions.
A sweatshop is characterized by the systematic violation of one or more fundamental workers'
rights that have been codified in international and US law. These rights include the prohibition of child labor, forced or compulsory labor, and discrimination in employment based on
any personal characteristic other than the ability to do the job; the right to a safe and healthy
work environment that does not expose workers to degrading or dangerous working conditions; freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively. A sweatshop
is also characterized by wages that do not permit workers to feed, clothe, and shelter
themselves and their families, and hours of work so long that education and a decent family
life are out of reach.
Sweatshops in the USA are often lawless operations in other ways, evading not only wage
and hour laws, but also paying no taxes, violating fire and building codes, seeking out and
exploiting undocumented immigrants, and operating in the underground economy, hidden
from public view.
Box 2. Sweatshops in the United States (source: as box 1).
New York City: In 1994, the General Accounting Office (GAO) reported an estimate that
2000 of the 6000 garment shops in New York City are sweatshops.
Los Angeles: In 1994, The Gap reported an estimate that 4500 of 5000 garment shops were
sweatshops.
Miami: 400 of the total 500 garment shops are sweatshops.
El Paso: 50 of 180 are sweatshops.
New Orleans: 25 of 100 apparel firms are sweatshops.
The GAO also reported that there are apparel sweatshops in parts of New Jersey, Chicago,
Philadelphia, San Antonio, and Portland (OR).
The structure of the apparel industry
As the economy of the USA has shifted from an industrial base in garment, textile,
steel, and auto manufacturers to a postindustrial economy with a base in services,
information technology, and the finance sector, individual industries have restructed
in response. The organization of the apparel industry has changed profoundly in the
last generation. Historically, manufacturers were the force in the industryö making
designs, cutting cloth, and sending sewing to subcontractors. Manufacturers competed
with one another for businessöbut if a department store would not pay a reasonable
price for garments, the manufacturer could reject that store and turn elsewhere. The
unions of the era, primarily the ILGWU, ACWA, and, later, ACTWU, succeeded
in organizing a majority of the domestic industry, setting decent standards by
which most manufacturers, and therefore their subcontractors, were compelled to
abide. Garment workers made a decent living and the unions were stable influential
institutions.
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In the last twenty years there has been a significant conglomeration at the point of
sale. Today a few major stores and conglomerates dominate the retail industry. Huge
corporations, with no particular attachment or commitment to any group of workers,
now set the standards in a completely internationalized industry. According to the
NCL, ``Retails play [a critical role] in the new global economy. With their concentrated
purchasing power, they contract for production wherever labor costs are lowest,
whether in our country or abroad'' (1996). This restructuring has two major implications for garment production. First, with fewer potential customers, manufacturers
have lost much of their bargaining power. Retailers now set prices and manufacturers
who reject those prices have fewer potential customers from whom they can receive
work. Second, retailers have become manufacturers in their own right. As part of a
strategy for distinguishing themselves from one another, the major department stores
now design their own labels and act as their own manufacturers. At the same time,
major manufacturers are moving into the retail business öthe burgeoning of GUESS
stores across the USA being but one example. As in other footloose industries, capital
in the garment trade is unconnected to particular places of production, yet the site of
consumption remains readily identifiable and relatively constant. The importance of
this structural shift for the strategies of UNITE cannot be underestimated.
Union response to the changing apparel landscape
The apparel unions floundered as the nature of the industry changed. Several times in
the last twenty years, the ILGWU and ACTWU fought for trade agreements that
would limit imports. Although there was some internal debate as to the wisdom of
this strategy, ultimately both unions pursued a protectionist agenda as the best way to
save union jobs within the USA and maintain decent standards in the apparel industry.
This approach failed. Trade bills got progressively less favorable to protectionists in
an era of neoliberal free trade. In addition, both unions undermined their legitimacy as
class-based organizations. Rather than addressing the issues of workplace injustice
through the lens of fundamental workers' rights, both the ILGWU and ACTWU
addressed the decline of decent standards in the apparel industry as a `USA versus
the world' problem. Unable to stop imports and the reemergence of the American
sweatshop, the ILGWU and ACTWU both witnessed a steady decline in membership
and in the unions' power within the industry. In the 1980s and early 1990s sections of the
garment unions rejected the protectionist solution and experimented with alternative
strategies focused on international organizations and solidarity, and diversification into
other sectors.
The Stop Sweatshops Campaign was born in June 1995 when three teenage garment
workers from Central America told the UNITE founding convention's 3000 delegates of
the abuses they faced while making clothing for The Gap stores.(2) In early August that
year, news broke of eighty-three Thai garment workers sewing major label clothing
while forced to live as hostages in a house in El Monte, California. At the very moment
that the ILGWU and ACTWU had come together in a new institution, working
conditions in the apparel industry were becoming a subject of public concern. As a
fledgling institution UNITE found a mission and a public presence reminiscent of both
unions' early histories.
In the Fall of 1995 UNITE began to formalize an antisweatshop coalition and
agenda. The union asked the NCL to cochair what it named ``The Stop Sweatshops
Campaign''. This coalition first met in January 1996. By 1997 there were sixty member
organizations. Some of these organizations, such as the National Council of Jewish
Women and the Federation of Women's Clubs, were originally formed to oppose
(2) Ann
Hoffman, UNITE's legislative director, personal interview, 14th July 1997.
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
1199
sweatshops early in the century. Member organizations represented a broad spectrum of
societal concerns, including women's groups, ethnic organizations (Jewish, AfricanAmerican, and Latino, primarily), veterans groups, students' groups, environmental
organizations, labor organizations, civil rights organizations, and religious groups.
The campaign, under UNITE's leadership, sent weekly news bulletins to all coalition
members. Member organizations used this information to set their own agendas and
stage their own activities.
The campaign's public face often assumed a religious complexion, intending to
make sweatshops a moral issue in the larger community. As Labor Secretary Robert
Reich noted in a press statement issued on 22 October 1996:
``Our message is this: Sweatshops are wrongöwrong not only for our country's
economic future, but wrong simply because the exploitation of working people is
antithetical to America's valuesöour family values, our community values and our
moral and religious values ... . The religious leaders joining us in this effort have
pledged to do everything possible to remind Americans that this is a moral issue''
(Reich, 1996).
This is also reflected in a statement made before the US Department of Labor by
Reverend Pharis J Harvey of the United Methodist General Board of Global Ministries:
``Sweatshop labor, which we thought banned from American life, is back ... .We
know that we ignore these conditions at the peril of our own well being, our own
moral integrity, our own faith and calling to be ``our neighbors' keepers'' (Harvey,
1996).
Rabbi David Saperstein echoed these sentiments at the same news conference on
22 October, 1996, ``We stand here today in support of strong anti-sweatshop measures
because mistreating workers is an affront to God, to humanity and to decency''.(3) The
religious/moral emphasis of the Campaign derives from its driving logic, which begins
with the assertion that labor rights are fundamentally human rights. Recognizing
workers' struggles as simply another form of the human struggle for dignity, the public
not only supports workers, it actively helps them realize their goals, reasoned the
Campaign's architects:
``I believe that this is the message of what we have accomplished so far ... . A
message of corporate responsibility in this new global economy... . A message
about the rights of workers being human rights. A message about extending
democracy to the work place. A message about the moral dimension of the dignity
of labor'' (Mazur, 1997).
UNITE and the Campaign maintain that manufacturers and retailers acting as
manufacturers are responsible for the goods they make and sell. Manufacturers
set high production standards and they monitor contractors' compliance with those
standards. The Campaign argues that manufacturers can, and must, do the same
with labor standards. Furthermore, the Campaign contends that the fear of consumers' anger (created through labor/human rights education) and a tainted public
image that would eventually hurt their bottom line can force retailers and manufacturers to accept at least some of their responsibility for creating the global sweatshop
industry. The Campaign's leaders expect that this vulnerability could be used to
pressure retailers and manufacturers both to set decent labor standards and to live
by them.
(3) News
conference on sweatshops, Washington, DC, 22 October 1996. ``Statement of Rabbi
David Siperstein, Director, Religious Action Center of Reform Judism, on behalf of the Union
of American Hebrew Congregations and the Central Conference of American Rabbis''.
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The consumerist turn comes of age
The consumerist turn in organized labor's ideology began in the 1890s. As Lawrence
Glickman (1997) has definitively shown, both the union-label campaign and struggles
for the eight-hour day transformed working-class consciousness from a producer-based
focus to one that prioritized consumption. This posited workers-cum-consumers as
employers and ``rooted even the labor theory of value, the quintessential element of
producerism, in consumption'' (Glickman, 1997, page 96). The consumerist turn in labor
ideology fit well with an economic outlook that saw increased consumption as the key
to economic growth and directly related to higher wages for workers:
``No longer treating production as singularly paramount or discrete, labor leaders
began to understand the economy as a dynamic system to which both forces were
essential, and they tried to understand how they were related. Some considered
production and consumption equally important ... . Increasingly, however, workingclass leaders considered consumption the more important aspect of the equation,
and they began to see high wages as based on consumption'' (page 95).
Consumer-oriented campaigns in the 19th century sought to raise workers' wages
through socially conscious consumption to promote economic growth. Workers used
their leisure time (gained through the eight-hour day) and higher wages (gained through
the spread of unionization, prompted and supported by union-label campaigns) to
consume ever-increasing quantities of goods (Glickman, 1997, pages 101 ^ 112). The
early consumerist turn also evoked ethical and moral principles in admonishing consumers to use their purchasing power to eliminate oppression (pages 124 ^ 125), openly
linking producerist working-class consciousness with consumer consciousness and
asserted the primary role of workers as citizens in public life. Despite its emphasis
on consumerism, the union label did not completely sunder the essential working-class
connection to production. The movement did not promote consumption for its own sake
but tied necessary consumption to working-class interests (page 116).
In contrast, the contemporary Campaign downplays images of the working class as
a unique location in the economy's structure. UNITE relies on consumer politics as a
lever to pry open space for organizing, but such production-based goals are at least
partially masked behind the politics of consumption. Furthermore, the Campaign does
define consumers as workers. The Campaign deliberately avoids entering into messy
debates about the actual relationship between consumers and producers. Unlike the
Campaign's 19th century predecessor, here there is little or no discussion of the degree
to which these groups may or may not overlap. The Campaign is designed as a broad
movement of morally minded middle-class consumers rather than as a movement of
organized labor seeking to empower the working class.
The contemporary campaign brought the earlier partnership between the NCL and
the unions to full maturity with equal leadership between the NCL and UNITE in the
Stop Sweatshops Campaign. It subsumes producerist concerns under the moral
responsibility invested in consumption. This shift in ideological strategy reflects the
radically different political climates of the early and late 20th century.
The Campaign is based on the belief that US shoppers, while perhaps not predisposed to pro-worker policies, once informed about sweatshop conditions are sufficiently
appalled to take action in supporting abused apparel workers. With this as a premise,
Campaign coordinators sought to expose sweatshop abuses. For instance, during the
1996 holiday shopping season UNITE's Research Department issued two reports on
private label clothing made in sweatshops around the globe for the May Company and
the Federated Stores. These types of educational activities were designed to mobilize the
consumer public on behalf of garment workers. The Campaign drew upon consumers'
stated concern about garment workers. A poll conducted by U.S. News and World Report
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
1201
indicated that nine out of ten Americans were concerned about working conditions in
Latin America and Asia in sectors producing for the US market. A similar poll found
that 89.3% of consumers were willing to pay more for a product made under safe and
humane working conditions (MacMillan, 1996).
Linda F Golodner, President of the NCL, issued a statement reiterating the power
of consumers on 14 April 1997 at the White House Press Conference following the
completion of the Report by the Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP) to the President:
``Consumers demand assurance öassurance that a woman or child on the other side
of the globeöor here in the United Statesöis not abused, is not working 14 ^ 15
hours a day, 7 days a week for pennies an hour. Teenagers don't want to wear
clothes that children in Indonesia or Los Angeles have given up their childhood to
make. Consumers demand sweatshop free clothing! People want to change the way
they shop'' (Golodner, 1997).(4)
Thus Campaign leaders designed a strategy that relied on consumers as weapons
against the immense power of the retailer. Consequently, much of the actual activity
of the campaign took place in the neighborhood of consumption, rather than that of
production.
Shifting the location of struggle
The campaign educated and organized consumers to pressure retailers, with the
expectation that they, in turn, would put pressure on manufacturers and subcontractors to improve labor conditions. This chain reaction involves a fundamentally different
geographic strategy from that usually employed by garment unions as it implicitly
recognizes that consumption and production take place in different social and physical
spaces, and identifies the locus of power within the space of consumption. Rather than
occurring at the workplace, `shopping actions'öa major component of the sweatshop
campaignötook place at the point of sale. These activities involved organizing a group
of individuals to go to a mall, shopping center, or specific retailer and talk to the store
manager about the conditions under which the garments are made. Based on the
Consumer Guide to Decent Clothes (box 3), shoppers asked a series of questions about
the origin of the garments and the policies of the retailer.
Box 3: Consumer guide to decent clothes (source: as box 1).
Were these clothes made under decent conditions?
The care tag tells you how to treat the garment, but not how the worker who made it was
treated. A union label is one way to know. If you don't find one, here are some questions to
ask the store manager.
) Do you know how the workers who made this garment were treated?
) Does your store have a code of conduct for all factories that make the clothes you sell?
) Does it forbid child labor and protect human rights? Does it specify living wages? Is the
code of conduct posted in every factory?
) Is there an independent monitoring agency to make sure that everybody lives up to the code?
) LOOK FOR THE UNION LABEL!
Shopper-activists expected that the managers would not be able to answer their
questions. They asked the manager to contact the corporate headquarters and to pass
along information gained to the delegation. Retailers who were then confirmed as
users of sweatshop labor received a letter from the group, informing the company
that:
(4) President
Clinton established the AIP in 1996, after Kathie Lee Gifford's garments were found
being produced in a sweatshop on 38th Street in Manhattan. The AIP consisted of UNITE, the
NCL, human rights groups, manufacturers, and the US Department of Labor.
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``As a loyal customer for many years, I was disturbed by reports that [your store] is
using sweatshops to produce the clothes you sell ... .You cannot say you saved me
money with this practice. According to [the local paper], you used the low labor costs
to increase your profits, not to cut prices. Regardless, I do not want to buy clothes
produced at such a human cost, and I will not'' (Stop Sweatshops Campaign, sample
letter to retailers).
This differs from traditional union organizing campaigns, which rely on union
members and potential union members as agents of struggle. In traditional union
campaigns, union members, sometimes supported by their families, and occasionally
by workers belonging to other unions, walk picket lines, educate their fellow workers,
and make house calls to potential union members. Even the typical international
solidarity campaignöin which US unions seek to support the organizing efforts of
workers abroadöhas relied primarily on networks of unionists in the USA to pressure
multinational corporations to respect the rights of workers abroad. Corporate campaigns, which utilize similar public relations tactics as those used in the Campaign,
have tended to focus on the shareholders of public companies.
The Campaign's emphasis on consumers as agents of change, rather than union
members, indicates that the union recognizes that the ability to apply economic pressure
on corporations in the garment industry no longer lies primarily with producers. For
much of the history of industrial production, producers pressured employers by withdrawing labor power, by refusing to produce. The strike was the working class's most
powerful weapon. Such traditional union weapons have been largely disarmed by
transportation, communication and information technologies, antilabor legislation,
and the particular vulnerability of immigrants in the low end of the US economy.
Faced with producers withholding their labor power, large corporations and garment
manufacturers of almost any size, may shift production to places where workers are
willing to produce, or hire replacement workers (Herod, 1991; Massey, 1995; Smith,
1990). Furthermore, retail conglomeration, vertical integration, and spatial dispersion
through contracting out the sewing of clothes to approximately 160 countries have
enabled garment manufacturers to deflect the intended financial loss of a strike. Moreover, in many countries workers have very limited ability, if any, to strike. The use of
consumers as agents of change addresses this problem, for retailers are completely
financially dependent upon the behavior of consumers.
Union leaders maintain that companies must fear consumer withdrawal of purchasing power before they will create the conditions that enable decent apparel contractors to
be the industrial norm. Thus, campaign participants organized public actions, both to
spread the word to other consumers and to tell retailers that consumers hold them
responsible for the goods they sell. Almost every month members of the Campaign took
new initiatives, including rallying and leafletting outside stores, speaking out against a
company using sweatshop labor from the pulpit, making visits to stores to ask retail
managers about the conditions under which the clothing were made, and student campus
actions. In the Fall of 1998, with UNITE's assistance, Student Stop Sweatshops groups
from more than fifty US universities (Engels, 1997) brought the message of sweatshops
and corporate responsibility to their classmates in actions against the GUESS company.
In the Spring of 1998 UNITE sponsored young Dominican baseball cap makers in a tour
of US university campuses. Student activists at Duke University, one of the most popular
university labels nationwide, successfully pressured the university to establish a code of
conduct for all those contractors who produce garments with the Duke logo that includes
the right to organize and that requires the licensing agent to disclose all contractors.
By the Fall of 1999 there were active antisweatshop groups on more than 100 university
and college campuses across the USA. Joined in a coalition they call United Students
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
1203
Against Sweatshops (USAS), student groups share strategies and experiences. Although
USAS is independent, its leaders have a close working relationship with UNITE.
Political and legislative action
UNITE's leadership understands that a campaign for workers' rights cannot succeed
without including political and legislative changes to support those rights. There are at
least three political aspects to the Campaign: The Stop Sweatshops Act (HR 23/S.626),
the President's Apparel Industry Task Force, and the Sweatshop-Free Cities movement.
UNITE began lobbying for passage of The Stop Sweatshops Act in 1997 in a further
attempt at laying the responsibility for sweatshops squarely on retailers' shoulders.
Under this legislation manufacturers would be civilly liable for their contractors'
violations of the minimum wage, overtime, child labor, and industrial homework
provisions of the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act (FSLA). The 1997 amendment was
written ``to strengthen the ability of the U. S. Department of Labor to enforce the law in
the garment industry and to provide greater protection for workers in that industry
when their employer violates the FSLA''. Under HR 23, manufacturers and retailers
would be jointly and severely liable to the employees of their contractors for unpaid
minimum wages and overtime, as well as for liquidated damages for the violations that
occurred during the production of goods for that manufacturer or retailer. Passage of
the act would force manufacturers and retailers to take some responsibility for the
clothing that bears their labels and yields their profits.
Although HR 23/S.626 has not yet been passed by Congress, public attention and
pressure growing out of the El Monte discovery and news of the making of Kathie Lee
Gifford's label clothing in sweatshops not only in El Salvador but on 38th Street in
New York City's Garment Center, led President Clinton's administration to conclude
that it would be prudent to take political action on the issue of sweatshops. The
administration chose to emphasize the setting of voluntary standards in the apparel
industry, rather than actively to pursue the passage of HR 23.
The president's apparel industry partnership
In 1996, the Clinton administration recruited ten organizations including UNITE,
human rights groups, and major manufacturers such as Liz Claiborne into membership in the President's Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP). The AIP's mission was to
establish a workplace code of conduct ``as a set of standards defining decent and
humane working conditions'' and principles of monitoring to guide how manufacturers
and contractors will be reviewed (AIP1). In the summer of 1997 the group issued drafts
of both a workplace code of conduct and principles of monitoring. The final code and
monitoring standards were released at the end of 1998. The workplace code of conduct
prohibits forced labor, child labor, harassment and abuse, and discrimination. It limits
work to 60 hours per week (48 regular and 12 overtime) and requires workers to have
at least one day off in every seven-day period.
Controversial issues within the task force itself, and amongst labor and human
rights groups, were the provisions concerning wages and benefits, the right to freedom
of association and collective bargaining, and most of all the question of independent
monitoring. The proposed language on wages stated:
``Employers recognize that wages are essential to meeting employees' basic
needs. Employers shall pay employees, as a floor, at least the minimum wage
required by local law or the prevailing industry wage, whichever is higher, and
shall provide legally mandated benefits'' (AIP2).
Most human rights groups felt that the code should require manufacturers and contractors to pay a `living wage', that is enough to ensure a decent standard of living for
garment workers. Companies refused to agree to that demand and compromised with
1204
R Johns, L Vural
the recognition that wages are essential to meeting a worker's `basic needs'. Companies
also resisted the right to organize.
Adherence to the code of conduct will be strictly voluntary. Companies found by
monitors to be abiding by the code will be rewarded with the right to sew ``No Sweat''
labels into their garments, helping to win public recognition as a responsible garment
manufacturer. As members of the task force wrote: ``The Partnership believes that
consumers can have confidence that products that are manufactured in compliance
with these standards are not produced under exploitative or inhumane conditions''
(AIP2). Opponents to the AIP agreement ultimately were most disturbed by the
monitoring process. The agreement calls on companies to have 10% of their contractors inspected, and for those inspections to take place after a factory has been notified.
Participating companies have established the Fair Labor Association to oversee the
code and its monitoring. Corporate accounting firms such as Price Waterhouse and
Ernst and Young will bear primary responsibility for on-site monitoring.
Sweat free zones of consumption
Another important ongoing aspect of the Campaign are movements to create Sweatshop-Free Cities, Sweat-Free Schools, and Sweat-Free States. Best known, and first,
among these efforts is North Olmstead (Ohio), a suburb of Cleveland. In February
1997 the city council passed a resolution against purchasing goods for the city that
were produced under sweatshop conditions (Boyle, 1997). At an antisweatshop rally,
North Olmstead Mayor Ed Boyle said:
``Government should not be party to the exploitation of children and adults anywhere
in the world. Whether it's children making soccer balls in Pakistan or women making
Gap t-shirts in Guatemala, our democracy must not support these inhumane
practices. And the best way to make our point is not to buy goods from sweatshops.
Period'' (Boyle, 1997).
Enthusiastic and committed to the issue, Boyle presented a resolution to the Conference
of Mayors in June 1997, urging it to pass a resolution calling on all US cities to adopt
sweat-free legislation. Although the conference did not pass Boyle's resolution, at least
eight other Cleveland suburbs have signed on, as has Allentown (Pennsylvania). The city
council in Bangor (Maine) unanimously passed a resolution requesting all clothes sold
in the city to be made under decent conditions. Philadelphia passed a resolution calling
for public hearings examining the city's sweatshops and the local government's contractual relationships with these. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a
measure forbidding the city from purchasing from sweatshop employers. And, many
other cities, including Boston, Flint (Michigan), Portland (Maine), Portland (Oregon),
Austin (Texas), and Burlington (Vermont) asked North Olmstead and the Campaign for
more information about establishing sweat-free government policies. During 1999
several municipalities in New Jersey passed antisweatshop ordinances and legislators
introduced an antisweatshop procurement bill at the state level. New York State also is
considering similar legislation, which would require the state to ensure that it does not
purchase uniforms of any type from sweatshops.
Production and consumption
The Campaign, then, focuses on consumers as actors, consumption as the critical
process, and the site of consumption as the locus of struggle. This strategy raises two
important questions.
First, what is the relationship between consumers and workers? At the grand
theoretical scale, the union is merely asserting that producers are consumers. Thus,
the campaign represents not a `special interest', but rather the interests of the broad
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
1205
community. But are UNITE members the consumers of the goods made in garment
sweatshops? Certainly some union members consume some of those goods, via the
large chain retailers such as Wal-Mart, whose target market is the working class and
the working poor. But the more abstract question hinges on the role price plays in the
creation of sweatshops and in differentiating the interests of workers and consumers.
The retail price of a garment is set before the garment is sewn öindeed, before the
manufacturer or retail sends the work out to contractors. The retail price is set in
accordance with the market the retailer wishes to pursue, the prices of competitors
in that market, and the perceived price that consumers in that market are willing to
pay. In the latter category the interests of producers and consumers intersect and
diverge in complex ways. The broad consumer public appears ready and willing to
`pay more' for clothing made under decent working conditions. It seems self-evident
that how much more they are willing to pay depends in part on the wages they
themselves earn. Yet even this relationship between the `price' of production and the
`price' of consumption is complicated by the geography of garment production and
consumption. As much of the industry has moved out of the United States, workers in
sweatshops produce goods they can never hope to buy, goods that are shipped to the
US market where much higher paid middle-class consumers enjoy their low prices. The
geographic disjunction between production and consumption, while not complete,
derails the potential power of workers-as-consumers within the industry. The truth is
that labor costs in developing countries are so low that the markup from production
costs is now sometimes up to 1000%, rather than the 100% it was in earlier decades.
There is both a social and a spatial mismatch between producers and consumers of
garments. Indeed, the uneven geography of capitalist development is not solely a
differentiation of types or stages of production (Massey, 1984; Smith, 1990) but also
of spaces of production and consumption. This disjuncture underpins UNITE's strategy
to mobilize a diffuse, ill-defined consumer public against sweatshop conditions, and to
downplay the role of its members as producers.
Masking class interests
Thus, there is a disjuncture between consumers and producers of garments. Capital's
power is located in the space of consumption where prices are set by the powerful
retailers; exploitation of producers occurs at the production site. Assuming that garment
workers do not constitute the bulk of the consumer market for the goods they produce,
the only power workers have still resides at the point of production. The union, then,
must mobilize in the space of consumption to allow an opening in order to organize at
the point of production.
It is our contention that the union invokes the notion of a broad, ideologically
benign community of consumers, not as a move to abandon the goal of workers'
empowerment at the point of production, but as a political strategy to make the
struggle for justice for workers more palatable to the public in an antilabor climate.
Given the domination of the media by corporate interests in the United States, there is
little wonder that the prevailing perspective sees the interests of workers as diametrically opposed to those of consumers. For a long time now workers and unions have
been successfully blamed for the economic downturn in their communities and in
society as a whole. As Gordon Clark noted:
``Industrial unions today are facing very hostile situations in their home domain:
their traditional centers of power and support. Unions are held accountable for the
prosperity (or lack thereof) of communities and regions across the United States.
Rightly or wrongly, plant closings and plant relocations are seen as directly attributable to unions' relationships to employers'' (1989, page 241).
1206
R Johns, L Vural
Thus, this strategy attempts to create a positive image of the union as a standard-bearer
for moral concerns shared widely in society and to divert attention, for the present
moment at least, from its central goal of empowering the working class through
organizing at the global scale.
The union's leaders believe that sweatshop conditions might be reduced through a
campaign of moral outrage that had as its primary demand the creation and enforcement of meaningful labor standardsöas long as the critical labor standard was the
right to organize. Underlying UNITE's commitment to the consumerist strategy is the
firm belief that the corporate ability to create sweatshop conditions can only be
eliminated through worker empowerment at a broad geographic scale: workers are
their own best protectors and advocates. This view of consumerist politics simply as
a vehicle for worker organization at the point of production created tension among the
coalition's partners.
Examining the relationship between organizing versus monitoring
There is ongoing debate among antisweatshop groups over the best methods for
eliminating sweatshop conditions. In particular, the relationship between worker organizing and monitoring codes of conduct remains a contentious issue among groups.
Some human rights and consumer groups tend to agree that independent monitoring
of a company's code of conduct might play an important role in ending sweatshops in
the global apparel industry. They reject the notion of companies monitoring themselvesöan effort that recently has been proven untenable at GUESS factories in
California(5) öbut support the concept of outside parties assessing conditions in apparel
factories. Sometimes these groups do not recognize worker organizing as a necessary
component in creating the mechanism to develop and enforce decent standards in an
apparel factory.
Others, particularly in UNITE, argue that organized workers in a factory can best
assess and improve the conditions under which they work. From this point of view,
employer codes of conduct and independent monitoring can create opportunities for
workers but they cannot replace the power of a workers' institution. As Jeff Hermanson,
UNITE's former Co-Director of Organizing said:
``As an organizer, I have serious reservations about the move toward `independent
monitoring.'... [T]here is no substitute for workers' organized power and collective
bargaining as a means of raising standards.
The question of whether or not `independent monitoring' is helpful in assisting
union organizing can only be answered in practice. There will be many different
`independent monitors' with a great diversity of outlook and practice.
Our limited experience with independent monitors shows some of the problems and
limitations of this approach. Where there is no strong, well organized union in the
factory... the monitors can do very little, and can be used by the company to diffuse
a volatile situation. If monitors `open space,' to use their term, there is no
organization to `occupy' that space. Where there is a strong, well organized
union ... the monitors can see themselves as competing with the union for the
allegiance of the workers, and try to substitute their own action for the action
of the union. In this they are assisted and encouraged by the company, who see the
monitors as the `lesser evil'.
Independent monitors are political. The very concept of `independence' indicates a
sense of superiority, of being above class and class struggle.''(6)
(5) See
http:www.uniteunion.org/sweatshops/sweatshoparchive/guess/guess.html and http://guessboycott.org.
(6) Message to UNITE staff via internal `chat room', 1 August 1997.
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
1207
Similarly, Nick Unger, UNITE Coordinator of many antisweatshop actions fears:
``Doesn't independent also mean independent of the workers. Some `neutral' third
party. This is a classless good government group idea that is often used against us.
Unions as some outside group instead of unions as the real voice of workers. It
invalidates the union, painting us as a special interest that is not to be trusted. The
workers can't speak for themselves but need some `independent' validation ... . It is
one thing to have societal standards and government inspectors. It is another to let
capital pose as independent.''(7)
Despite reservations, UNITE participated for two years in the AIP's attempt to
develop global industrial standards for apparel companies and to establish a monitoring system of those companies. Such standards have the potential to create real
improvements in workers' lives. If enforced, these could create a spaceöparticularly
in the developing worldöfor true worker organizing. The Campaign could use labor
standards and an effective, and public, monitoring system to embarrass manufacturers
and retailers into living up to the code of conduct. Public pressure might then inhibit
capital's mobility by making it better for companies to stay in a factory and work to
abide by decent standards than to run to another highly exploitative and morally
repugnant situation. As former UNITE Vice President Katie Quan wrote:
``The usefulness of independent monitoring is to make it easier for unions to
organize. Enforcing the code which allows freedom of association, for example,
may have direct bearing on workers' ability to organize. Enforcing other codes,
such as no child labor, etc. may indirectly help workers to organize by eliminating
a source that companies may run away to in order to avoid unionization. Moreover, the agreement to independent monitoring by manufacturers can be seen as a
political coup for labor and human rights activitists. It is an initial admission of
responsibility. Labor and human rights groups should push that to the max, by
fighting for manufacturer/retailers joint corporate liability in the execution of
independent monitoring.''(8)
The tension within the President's Task Force that ultimately led UNITE to withdraw
from that groupöthat is, acceptable standards and how they are to be enforcedöspilled
over into UNITE's formal relationship with its Campaign partners. Linda Golodner of
the NCL, for instance, led the effort that resulted in the AIP's monitoring system.
The tension between a focus on monitoring (coming primarily from the consumer
groups of the Coalition) and the desire to create conditions under which workers are able
to organize to protect themselves came to a climax in late 1998. In early November, the
union withdrew from the AIP. While UNITE President Jay Mazur, along with AFL ^
CIO leader John Sweeney, praised the intent and work of the partnership over its twoyear lifetime, the union declined to sign on to the agreement produced by the partnership.
``No voluntary corporate code of conduct can assure the enforcement of workers
rights and the elimination of sweatshops. For such a code to be helpful in reaching
these objectives, it must have standards that permit workers to live and work with
dignity and effective enforcement mechanisms for those standards. This agreement
fails to meet this threshold on several counts. It takes no meaningful step toward a
living wage; it does not effectively address the problem of protecting the right to
organize in countries where that right is systematically denied; it allows companies to pick the factories that will be inspected by monitors chosen and paid by
the company and excludes up to 95% of a company's production facilities from
inspection'' (UNITE, 1998).
(7) Message
(8) Message
to UNITE staff via internal `chat room', 30 July 1997.
to UNITE staff via internal `chat room', 30 July 1997.
1208
R Johns, L Vural
Avoiding spatial competition
The Campaign deviated from other union strategies to confront capital mobility in that
it consciously did not privilege local or national groups of garment workers above
garment workers in other locales or countries. Although architects of the Campaign
had some hope that decent garment jobs would return to the USA from other regions,
this was not the focus of the struggle. The Campaign ``transcends [the spatial competition for jobs] ... it isn't about us vs. them. It's about setting a decent standard for
all''.(9) As such, the Campaign intended to speak for the `community of garment workers', wherever they might be, rather than for a geographically specific set of workers.
Elimination of horrific working conditions across space öincluding sweatshops in the
USAöwas the goal of the Campaign.
Social theorists generally accept that class formation occurs `in place', that is, it is
conditioned by the specific context in which workers organize (Hudson and Sadler,
1986; Wills, 1998). However, it is also true that class interests extend beyond the
boundaries of communities, and even beyond national borders. Capital's ability to
manipulate space in its favor by `seesawing' between locales of development and
underdevelopment (Smith, 1990; Soja, 1989) often reduces union struggles to a contest
over the location of job-producing investment.
``Thus, in its international aspect, capital prevents any unity of the international
working class by dividing up different working classes, taking advantage of areas
of uneven development and amplifying existing schisms. The internationalization of
capital is antagonistic to the international struggle of the proletariat which
attempts to re-establish the unity of the working class'' (Palloix, 1997, page 23).
The Campaign attempts to draw parallels between the concerns of US workers and the
needs and problems faced by workers in other countries where multinational corporations are operating. This concern is often mitigated by the very real need to compete
over the location of a limited number of jobs; thus, the Campaign blends both
solidarity for embattled and oppressed workers at home and abroad, and the need to
halt the long slide to poor working conditions in the USA:
``millions of apparel workers in cities and towns across America are forced to
compete directly with workers in the developing world who work in oppressive
conditions. This results in lower wages and deteriorating working conditions in
the U.S. and exploitative conditions abroad ... .We can end sweatshops. The alternative is a continued downward spiral of wages and working conditions ... bringing
oppression to America'' (SSC1).
UNITE's leaders recognize the common exploitation that workers in the USA share
with workers abroad, and the common sourceöretailers and major manufacturersöof
that exploitation. Deteriorating conditions serve to break down spatial barriers among
workers. ``Our organization urges you to take steps to guarantee decent jobs for... workers
in the U.S. and Guatemala'' (SSC2) claims a letter written to the Present of Alfred Angelo
Co., a bridal gown and prom dress retailer using sweatshop contractors in Guatemala.
Furthermore, as noted in a U.S. News and World Report cover story, ``Sweatshop Christmas'': ``Even the most zealous advocacy groups urge major U.S. manufacturers abroad not
to shut down their factories, just to improve them'' (MacMillan, 1996).
Yet plant closings and job loss for impoverished workers in the underdeveloped
countries may be an unintended result of campaigns such as the Stop Sweatshop
Campaign. For example, the Walt Disney Company has come under attack for the
dismal labor conditions of its fourteen subcontractors in Haiti. In July 1997, Disney's
largest subcontractor, H H Cutler, a Michigan-based firm, announced it was pulling
(9) Personal
interview with unnamed UNITE staff person, 28 July 1997.
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
1209
out of Haiti, because of ``a slump in demand'' resulting from criticism by human rights
and labor groups. The closing of the Cutler operations was predicted to leave 2300
workers jobless, adding to the misery of an already impoverished nation. Despite
allegations to the contrary,(10) activists explicitly advocated that Disney and its subcontractors remain in Haiti. According to the Campaign for Labor Rights Newsletter,
``Nobody wants Disney to pull out of Haiti, but Disney must set a standard. They
could double wages without any impact on profit and immeasurably improve the lives
of Haitian people'' (CLR, 1997). After Cutler announced its intentions to pull out,
The Disney/Haiti Justice Campaign sent out an informational flyer on the internet
quoting Batay Ouvriye (an independent workers' organization in Haiti) as calling for
immediate protests to urge H H Cutler to stay in Haiti and meet the workers' demands
for a living wage, improved working conditions, and respect for the right to organize.
The Disney/Haiti Justice Campaign noted: ``Companies like H.H. Cutler and Disney
cannot be allowed to pull out and run just because they are faced with international
criticism and attempts by workers to organize for their rights''.(11)
Questions remain concerning the possible long-term effects of a campaign designed,
in the words of one union staff person, to ``level the playing field'' for workers. Because
the roots of the contemporary sweatshop lie in the mobility and power of capital, a
period of intense restructuring and repositioning of capital, and working-class weakness, there remains a tension between the twin goals of improving working conditions at
the global scale and preserving jobs in the United States. Mobile capital takes advantage
of undeveloped regions with their relatively low wages, lack of regulation, and nonexistent or weak unions.(12) It also works to keep some regions under these conditions.
When such conditions are eliminated through development and unionization, capital
may move again to places where the need for jobs is even greater, wages even lower,
regulations far fewer. This is the fundamental process through which the uneven
topography of human society is created and perpetuated. While allowing workers
everywhere to organize into unions (thereby raising wages and bettering their working
conditions) is clearly a prerequisite for the elimination of that uneven geographic
development, it is not sufficient to stop the spatial competition workers in different
places engage inöknowingly, as Clark has shown, or unwittinglyöover capital investment and job creation and retention.(13)
(10) ``I
hope they [well-intentioned but terribly misguided and no doubt well-fed individuals
protesting Disney's Haitian operations] realize that as many as ten thousand people will have
practically nothing to eat now because of the gross naivete of the Disney boycott. Sleep well,
knee-jerks. At least we know you'll be doing so on a full stomach'' (Mike Moye, Internet
correspondence, 16th July, 1997).
(11) ``Disney subcontractor to pull out of Haiti'', received via Internet, from James O'Hanlon, 16 July
1997.
(12) See, for example, the Campaign's rendition of this argument: ``Today's apparel sweatshop is a
product of the global economy. Large retailers and manufacturers, seeking greater profits in a
highly competitive industry, contract production to thousands of contractors and subcontractors
located wherever labor costs are low, whether in Malaysia or Honduras, Los Angeles or New
York. An increasingly concentrated retail market has changed the structure of the industry... . Today, these giant retailers often bypass the traditional apparel manufacturer, ordering ... goods
directly from contracting shops at home and abroad ... . Changes in immigration laws in the
mid-1980s made it illegal to employ undocumented workers. This did not stop [their] employment ... it just drove it underground. Once these contractors were breaking the immigration law,
it was a simple step to breaking wage-hour, tax and labor laws ... . It is the low prices set by the
retailers and manufacturers at the top of the apparel industry chain that creates the conditions
for sweatshops to flourish'' (SSC3).
(13) The recognition that spatial competition will continue even after sweatshop conditions
are eliminated is implied in the literature of the campaign: ``Domestic production still has a
significant advantage in its ability to respond quickly to a changing market'' (SSC3).
1210
R Johns, L Vural
Garment union leaders have understood that under a global capitalist system, even
when the playing field has been `leveled', workers in different locales will continue to
compete, they will simply compete on more humane terms.
``The high road involves refocusing markets on products where quality, service, and
delivery determine competitive outcomes. It means combining motivated and highly
skilled workers with flexible production technologies. Perhaps most importantly,
it means tapping the knowledge which only workers possess about producing quality
products efficiently'' (Sheinkman, 1990).
It is difficult to envision, however, how the inevitable pressure to decrease wages
and worsen working conditions can be eliminated permanently as long as workers
remain in competition with each other over a limited number of jobs. Surely, locales
that are on the short end of jobs where workers have failed to compete well in terms
of their ability to produce quality products quickly and react speedily to changing
markets, will seek other (less palatable) ways to compete with workers in other
places. In our opinion only the more radical goal of worker control of the investment
process itself would pose a serious threat to the maintenance of the uneven development that plagues our planet, for workers acting in solidarity across space might
choose to ration jobs in an equitable fashion, shutting the door on the vagaries of
spatial competition. This idea, radical though it may be, is not alien to the garment
unions:
``The situation might arise, for example, the day might come when we would look
at the regional economy and say, Guatemalan workers need textile jobs, and they
are the best suited to those jobs at this time, and we would let those jobs go, thereby
sacrificing our members' jobs'' (John Hudson, personal interview, 29 April 1992).
Whether workers would make this choice depends, of course, on the interaction of
different and possibly differing sets of interests, and the impact of that interaction
on class consciousness ö and on other options open to workers who lose garment
jobs.
Conclusion
The Stop Sweatshops Campaign represents a thoughtful and measured shift, spatially
and tactically, in union strategy. This shift was a deliberate response to UNITE's
reading of the locus of capital's power in the global garment industry of the late 20th
century as being located in the space of consumption, that is, in retail, rather than at
the site of production. The primary feature of this strategy was a focus on consumers
as agents of change, the downplaying of traditional union tactics, the shift in location
of activity from the site of production to the site of consumption, and the use of a
moral agenda intended to appeal to a broadly defined consumer public. In many ways,
the Campaign was the fulfillment of the consumerist turn begun in the ranks of US
labor prior to the turn of the century. However, the contemporary campaign, while
consumerist in nature, masked fundamental goals pertaining to the lives of working
people as producers. The Campaign did not confront the thorny issue of who consumers
and producers are, but rather elided the geographic and social disjunctures between
much of garment production and its market in order to use the purchasing power of the
middle class as a lever to open the space for organizing. Whatever its failings, certainly
the Campaign is the most concerted and sophisticated effort to eliminate worker abuses
in the apparel industry that we have seen in recent years.
Clearly, the Campaign cannot survive in its original form. The original cochairs,
UNITE and the NCL, took opposing positions in the AIP. The NCL led the effort to
establish a contractor-monitoring system that UNITE ultimately rejected. For now,
however, there is little doubt that UNITE's antisweatshop work will remain connected
Class, geography, and the consumerist turn
1211
to the work of others. In November 1998 the union hosted a summit meeting of some
of the most active antisweatshop groups in the USA. These groups do not always
agree on strategy, and they are careful not to be directed by the decisions made at
UNITE. It might well be that a loose structure among groups with the common
commitment to abolishing sweatshops can feed the greatest innovation in this daunting work.
For now, UNITE's antisweatshop work is turning toward the role that all levels of
government and schools play in purchasing uniforms produced in sweatshops. Presently, UNITE is lobbying legislators in a number of states and municipalities across the
country to pass procurement bills that would require government agencies to purchase
uniforms only from suppliers who abide by a strict code of conduct. UNITE's active
support of United Students Against Sweatshops and its efforts to pressure universities
to grant their licenses only to companies that abide by a comparable code has yielded
the most success of this approach to date. Students have convinced several major
universities to adopt a strict code of conduct and they have been approached by
Nike Management to discuss their activism and conditions in the industry. (This
antisweatshop work, modeled after the same theory we have discussed in this paper,
does not address conditions in the traditional garment industry.)
UNITE was born of two great garment unions, but its future in the industry
remains an open question. Will the union be able to affect power relations in the
industry enough both to help in the destruction of the sweatshop and to organize
once again in the garment industry? Will the union conclude that conditions are so
overwhelming that large-scale organizing in the garment industry is no longer possible?
If UNITE chooses to withdraw from the fight to organize garment workers in the
United States, what basis will it have to continue fighting sweatshops on a global scale?
UNITE is, perhaps, poised at the brink of victory, for as Katie Quan noted some
retailers and manufacturers have at least tacitly admitted that they bear responsibility
for conditions in the contracting shops that they use. Faced with collapse of the
original Stop Sweatshops Campaign, yet armed with the weapon of retailer responsibility, now seems the time for UNITE to deepen its commitment to the fight against
sweatshops and for justice for garment workers.
References
AIP1, ``Apparel Industry Partnership Report''; copy available from Stop Sweatshops, c/o UNITE,
815 16th Street NW, Washington, DC 20006
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ß 2000 a Pion publication printed in Great Britain