This article (linked to by Nate) reminded me of a train of thought I’d intended to blog, but forgot about while Kari visited.
Salon recently ran an article about American Apparel, a clothing manufacturer in Los Angeles who have made waves by ensuring all their employees are paid a living wage and looking for ethically sound suppliers. Paragraphs such as:
At American Apparel’s corporate and manufacturing headquarters, Charney appears to have done the unthinkable: He’s made working in a garment factory hip, not just for his young creative and corporate staff, but for the Latino shop workers as well. Fingers fly as teams of sewers are paid by the piece (a modern-day version of the old sweatshop payment system), but shop workers also partake of such trendy on-site services as yoga and massage and wear the T-shirts they make to work. The company offers counseling for co-workers who get involved romantically and then break up again, nobody cares if you smoke a joint, and seven or eight times a year working class joins management in one big beer and pizza party. It’s like one of those multicultural Benetton ads, except, well – it’s an American Apparel ad and it’s real.
make great reading, offering hope to those of us for whom clothes shopping has always seemed like an ethical minefield. We can only hope that increased revenue for firms like American Apparel lead other firms to follow their example.
The article contains some interesting commentary on the diversification of the fashion industry, and whether firms should focus on one style or try to be all things to all people. But it was the commentary on the relationship between garment unions and factory owners that really piqued my interest. It’s no surprise that it’s hard to motivate workers in such a factory to be passionate about their representation, but the owner’s apparent reluctance to encourage unionisation surprised me.
Certainly the history of trade unions is not all good, but it would seem that the checks and balances which unions allow would not provide any problems for this factory owner and would instead allow him yet another way of certifying the sound practices of his business.
A similar issue seemed to be raised by Kevin Knox on The Splendid Table when he commented on the requirements that workers be involved in a co-operative in order for a coffee supply to be certified ‘fair trade’.
Technically, a co-operative is not a necessary prerequisite with the document laying out requirements actually stating that small farmers can join Fairtrade if they have formed organisations “in co-operatives, associations or other organisational forms” which are “democratically controlled by their members.” While it is clear that this adds a level of bureaucracy to the process, the history of international trade arrangements have demonstrated that local level participation needs to be firmly established rather than left to distributors’ good graces.
As such issues continue to arise in a diverse range of contexts there is clearly a need for those who are committed to workers’ representation at all levels of the global economy to more clearly articulate our arguments and to demonstrate the advantages of the checks and balances which such organisation and representation introduce.