| Two Calgarians have joined together with a group of women in El Salvador to form a new collective that produces sweatshop-free clothing.
Dean Neu, a professor at the Centre for Public Interest Accounting at the University of Calgary, masters student Daniel Martinez and Claudia Quintanillo, professor at the University of Western Ontario, have teamed up with the Single Mother’s Co-operative in El Salvador, a group of four women who formerly worked in maquiladoras (sweatshop-type factories).
Neu says they were inspired to start the collective to try and address some new challenges facing the sweatshop-free clothing movement. In 2005, the international textile and garment industry was completely opened up to free trade under World Trade Organization negotiations. Prior to that, there were set quotas on how much clothing and textiles developing countries could export to industrialized countries. Neu says the change has caused maquiladoras (factories) in Central America to relocate to cheaper labour markets such as China, where workers are unable to form collectives or unionize. Meanwhile, workers in Central America that have tried to unionize or form collectives are finding themselves out of work.
"The conditions for people trying to find work in countries like El Salvador and Guatemala is horrible at this time – high levels of unemployment, lots of (factories) going out of business," says Neu, who has visited sweatshops in Central America.
Those factories that stick around are able to exert "a huge amount of leverage" over employees, he adds.
"If the workers even mention the idea of organizing or forming a union, the work is gone immediately," he says. "That’s really sad but true."
One of the goals of the collective is to provide alternatives for employees who have been "decimated" by the changes in the international clothing market, says Neu.
Another goal is to make Canadians "more aware of the faces behind their clothes," and then to offer them a socially responsible option.
"In North America, when we go to buy our clothes, we don’t often look behind the label to actually see who is making them and how they’re made and what the working conditions are," says Neu.
Just Shirts is a "profit-free" collective, so all money from the sale of shirts goes towards a fair wage for the producers. Prices for shirts also include a "social reinvestment tithe." Members of the collective vote on how to spend it in order to support its objectives. The collective currently produces long sleeve T-shirts and hoodies.
Neu says he’s "very optimistic" about the future of the sweatshop-free movement despite the new challenges. He points to the organic food movement as inspiration.
"Fifteen years ago we could go buy our organic food products at Community Natural Foods or those sorts of places, but today it’s available at all of the Safeway and Co-op stores, so I think bit by bit with consumer awareness and voting with our dollars and asking the tough questions of the people who are selling us the things, it can change. Maybe the consequence of this is at the end of the day, maybe we will have these little co-operatives producing things, but maybe we’ll also have the big maquilas that also employ large numbers of people actually adopting more humane practices and working conditions," he says.
Daniel Martinez says it’s about consumers realizing "a product has a history."
"Globalization decontextualizes a product so we do not know where it comes from. We’re just presented with it…. Fair trade tries to uncover what globalization is really good at hiding… exploitation and marginalization of workers," says Martinez. "Fair trade is not only about pointing the finger – look what’s happening, look what they’re hiding – but encouraging alternatives."
Martinez says after the alternatives are created, it’s up to the consumer to care and support the alternative – and if enough people decide they want to support the sweat-shop free movement, it will make a difference. He says it’s OK to start small, but the important thing is to make a commitment to supporting positive change.
For more information on the collective go to www.justshirts.ca.
Sweatshop
How do you know if a company is committed to being sweat-shop free?
Even if you’ve decided that you want to buy more sweat-shop free clothing it can still be tricky figuring out where to go to purchase your newly ethical wardrobe.
One excellent resource is a report card put out by Canada’s Ethical Trading Action Group (ETAG), which rates companies that sell clothes in Canada on their labour practices. ETAG bases its report card on publicly available information about how companies address worker rights issues in their global supply chains. Higher marks go to companies that have codes of conduct, disclose their overseas factory locations, carry out factory audits and release the results publicly, and have labour rights training for workers and management.
Interestingly, the report card shows that some of the worst offenders from the past have started to clean up their act, including Nike and the Gap, which just goes to show you what negative publicity and public pressure can accomplish.
The Calgary No Sweat Coalition’s website also has a list of local stores where you can buy sweat-shop free clothes, including Lululemon, Grassroots Hemp Store, American Apparel, Mountain Equipment Co-op and Purr. For a full list, go to www.members.shaw.ca/cdlc. You can also order sweat-shop free clothes online at www.sagecreeknaturals.com, www.nosweatapparel.com and www.mwgapparel.com. |
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