Date of publication: August 16, 2005
Source: The San Francisco Bay Guardian
Author: Camille T. Taiara
As activists and bureaucrats chiseled out the final details of a historically rigorous, sweat-free purchasing standard for San Francisco, state agents raided dozens of garment manufacturing plants throughout California.
The actions shed light on the stubborn ills of substandard wages and working conditions in the clothing industry. But labor advocates say raids have only a limited impact on the problem – and San Francisco's pending law may offer a more systemic remedy.
"These sweeps promote fear and intimidation, create more unemployment, and don't genuinely address the root causes of these labor violations and sweatshop conditions," said Alex Tom, an organizer at the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA).
The Economic and Employment Enforcement Coalition, a new, interagency task force, raided 135 garment factories in the Bay Area and southern California Aug. 3 through 5. Thirty of those shops are in San Francisco and Oakland, and most of the violations investigators found locally consisted of shops operating without a license or violating worker compensation laws, according to details released to the Bay Guardian by the California Department of Industrial Relations.
DIR spokesperson Renee Bacchini couldn't tell us how many of these had been shut down, but the department expects civil penalties for Bay Area shops to total more than $100,000.
In the past, many manufacturers simply filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying any fines, then reopened, said Tom, who works directly with San Francisco's mostly middle-aged, monolingual, female, and Chinese garment workers.
Tom argues that free-trade policies are the real culprits: Local manufacturers can't hope to compete with companies that take advantage of dirt-cheap labor and meager workplace standards abroad.
In the early 1990s, San Francisco's garment industry employed about 20,000 people, he said. Now that number has shrunk to 2,000 – a 90 percent decrease.
"Since April we've had about 900 workers come to us who've been laid off as a result of globalization," he told us.
Thanks to the CPA, Global Exchange, the Asian Law Caucus, and dozens of other organizations that joined the Sweatfree Bay Area Coalition, though, San Francisco's pending sweat-free legislation could breathe new life into the dying industry – while ensuring that local manufacturers pay a decent wage and follow the rule of law.
The proposed law would establish a Sweat-Free Advisory Group charged with devising a workable plan for granting preference to local clothing manufacturers. The ordinance also requires that the city contract a private, nonprofit agency – not funded by any corporations – to monitor the contractors and subcontractors selling goods to San Francisco, and post detailed findings on the Internet, including the wages paid to their employees.
Following intense, last-minute negotiations between labor advocates and local officials, the city agreed to include language in the proposed ordinance that will both grant preference to locally produced goods and support freedom of association for workers abroad – making it the first of its kind.
"For us to be involved in the sweat-free campaign, it had to include the local preference," said Tom, who was among the strongest advocates for including such language in the ordinance.
At first, the city had left the local preference regulation out of the legislation. Many clothing suppliers, explained Wade Crowfoot, Mayor Gavin Newsom's liaison to the Board of Supervisors, are large companies. "We didn't want to eviscerate the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise ordinance," which grants preference to smaller, underprivileged firms, he told us.
But the two sides were able to work out a deal that met both their needs. And practical details were also hammered out to prioritize workers' rights to organize independently, while stopping short of boycotting goods from countries like China and Vietnam, where laborers are only allowed to belong to state-sponsored unions.
"San Francisco will be able to use this legislation as leverage to improve working conditions in those factories" and support workers' struggles rather than penalizing them as a result of their countries' unfair laws, Valerie Orth, Global Exchange's sweat-free campaign organizer, told us.
The Board of Supervisors' Budget and Finance Committee passed the amended proposal Aug. 4. With Newsom and Sup. Tom Ammiano as its principal sponsors, the bill is expected to sail through the full board Aug. 16.
Newsom already included $100,000 in this year's budget to enforce the new laws. "We intend to continue such funding in subsequent years to ensure effective enforcement of the ordinance," he vowed in a June 27 letter – in which he also lent his support to resolutions encouraging the purchase of fair-trade and organic products.
"San Francisco will be setting the highest standard in the country," Orth said. Upward of 70 anti-sweatshop ordinances exist across the nation, but they fail to set such strict standards and generally lack the means of enforcement, she explained.
San Francisco buys $600 million worth of goods every year, which gives it some purchasing muscle in the market.
But sweat-free advocates have set their sights even higher.
"Part of our goal is to create an infrastructure that could be replicated anywhere in the country," Crowfoot told us. Former state senator Tom Hayden, now an adjunct professor at New College of California, has committed to marketing the model nationwide in the hope of creating a broad consortium of municipalities that would act as one, he said.
"Nationally, the sweat-free movement has been looking to San Francisco," Orth said. She's looking forward to the day when "we have 15 or 20 really strong sweat-free ordinances [and can operate] together as a block."
Aug. 28, join the Sweatfree Bay Area Coalition in a victory party featuring an anticapitalist revival sermon by Reverend Billy, all-star Afrobeat by Albino!, trip-hop by Zonk, song by the Labor Chorus, Latin-infused rock by Valerie Orth, slam poetry and dance by Team!, and a sweat-free fashion show. 4-8 p.m., Project Artaud Theater, 450 Florida, SF. $10-$20 donation. (415) 575-5541.
Research assistance provided by Sadaf Siddique.