New Orleans              

            On unions Silverstein writes:  “Labor unions are abundant, but most are funded and controlled by employers or the government, and independent activists have been fired, suspended, sued, and otherwise targeted for repression.” 

            On pay Silverstein writes two things:  first, that based on a 2008 survey pay has “stagnated…at 33 cents an hour, lower than anywhere but Bangladesh,” and, secondly, that the monthly minimum wage was $45 USD in 2000 and is now $56 while buying power has been cut by 37% due to inflation.

            On monitoring and the sham that corporate social irresponsibility is foisting off on the consumer:  “Since then, an entire monitoring industry has emerged:  a profusion of auditing firms, consulting companies, NGOs…that apparel makers pay handsomely to develop monitoring tools, offer advice, and write up countless glossy reports.  For workers at apparel plants, though, the benefits have proved elusive.  A recent study…reviewed Nike’s own data and found that conditions had ‘stagnated or deteriorated’ at 78% of company’s supplier factories between 1998 and 2005.”  He adds, “…since the apparel companies’ dues pay for the monitoring firms that inspect their plants, they tend to get the lax policing that they want.”

            The article is scathing in its criticism of the International Labor Organization and its so-called “Better Factories” program labeling it a “whitewash.”

            By the end of the article I was willing to take a vow never to read Nicholas Kristof and his neo-liberal proselytizing again, which I have largely done already, since his paternalistic, hectoring tone tends to obscure his concerns anyway.  I was also encouraged to find a lengthy quote from Jeff Ballinger as well saying that today unfortunately there is “no fundamental difference in the way factories are run, because you still have the same predatory model of outsourcing.”

            A proposal that apparel workers receive nothing less than $5 USD per day and then go up by $1 USD per day is interesting, but given that the results of a huge, powerful, and seemingly effective social movement to end sweatshops and their goods in the US market has been so compromised, diluted, and now rendered impotent, by the end of the article, that seemed only a curiosity insisted on by some Harper’s editor hoping to have something in this long piece that was marginally upbeat, rather than debilitating and depressing.

New Orleans

I have a lot of respect for Ballinger that dates to the time the Organizers’ Forum delegation visited Indonesia several years ago and heard the stories of his expulsion for too aggressively doing his job with the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center and insisting on US and other companies paying fair wages in just conditions.  Nothing in subsequent visits every did anything but add to his reputation.

After his expulsion he fought a long campaign to bring accountability particularly to Nike, the giant shoe and sportswear company.  For a 5+ year period in the 90’s the anti-sweatshop movement on campuses and broadly had the company on the ropes with 40% declines in sales and stock pricing.  Clearly, as organizers we know that is the time when leverage for victory would have been the highest, but alas….

The opening of a piece Jeff sent me from Summer 09 Dissent summarizes the situation now painfully:

“That nearly twenty years of anti-sweatshop activism has come to naught is suggested by the cost breakdown of a $37.99 University of Connecticut hoodie that appeared in the Hartford Courant a couple of years ago:  the workers received a mere 18 cents, while the university received $2.28 in licensing fees. (Mexican factor:  profit, 70 cents; overhead, $2.12, material, $5.50 – importer [Champion]: overhead, $5.10; profit, $1.75 – retailer [UCONN Co-op]: overhead, $14.49; profit, $4.50).  Use of the log was 80 cents, and the royalty to the National Collegiate Athletic Association was 57 cents.  The workers’ share could hardly have been lower when the movement began.”

It’s hard to even imagine an excuse for 18 cents for the workers, because there’s no reason for this.  Ballinger gives the credit to slick public relations work done by Nike and similar companies pretending to embrace “corporate social responsibility” or CSR.  More painfully has I talked to him and read his emails, was the feeling that too many non-profits here and around the globe had effectively sold out the workers as they “partnered” with corporations in these CSR schemes.

Elsewhere Ballinger does a back of the envelope calculations that makes it clearer since Nike might have spent $220 million on raising wage standards for its subcontractors in Indonesia and elsewhere, but the CSR program hardly cost 10% of that with a price tag of $25 million.  Ouch!

These have been unsettling conversations because a 3^rd stage of the campaign, especially when so many of us have been lured into hoping and believing progress had been made, will no doubt be a harder sell and a steeper climb.  Not that there is a choice.  18 cents for workers is immoral and unacceptable!