The following is reprinted with permission from The Associated Press. © Copyright 1996 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.
Behind Celebrity Labels, a Problem Retailers Say They Can't Control
By BETH J. HARPAZ Associated Press Writer
June 10, 1996NEW YORK (AP) - It doesn't matter whether the purchase is a $9.96 Kathie Lee Gifford blouse at Wal-Mart or a $99 pair of Air Jordans: It comes with no guarantee that the celebrity-endorsed product wasn't made in a sweatshop.
And if eliminating unhealthy, underpaying factories is considered tough in this country, imagine the task in underdeveloped countries like Honduras, where workers sew both Gifford's line for Wal-Mart and Jaclyn Smith clothes for Kmart.
In Indonesia, labor activists complain that employees work 65-hour weeks to meet production quotas for Nike shoes and clothing, endorsed by dozens of celebrities including Michael Jordan.
''There's a lot of forced overtime, there's a lot of mistreatment and physical punishment,'' said Jeff Ballinger, who has documented conditions at the Nike plants. When workers protest, they are fired or questioned by the military, he said.
Nike, Kmart and the celebrities deny the charges. But many activists wonder how celebrities can earn so many millions from the products with their name on it without knowing about the abuses.
Gifford, for example, says she receives a percentage of the sales and gives 10 percent of that to charity - more than $1 million last year. That would imply more than $10 million as her share of Wal-Mart sales.
''When you're making that sort of money,'' said labor activist Charles Kernaghan, ''you better ask some serious questions about the conditions under which this clothing is produced.''
Revelations this year that New York City employees worked 60-hour weeks to make blouses for Gifford, and Hondurans worked for 31 cents an hour to make pants for her clothing line, focused national attention on sweatshop abuses.
''The problem of sweatshops is a national disgrace,'' U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich said.
More than half of the country's 22,000 cutting and sewing shops in the garment industry pay below minimum wage, he said, and more than a third threaten employee health and safety. Many pay weeks and months late.
Gifford has since become a poster child for the anti-sweatshop crusade, but labor activists say the problem doesn't end with her.
Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, says workers at the Seolim factory in Baracoa, Honduras, work up to 75 hours a week to meet production quotas for Smith's Kmart line.
The employees are searched as they enter the plant and routinely denied overtime and vacation pay, he said. Workers as young as 13 are screamed at and threatened, Kernaghan said, and some 15-year-olds pack garments ''16 hours a day on their feet during the busy season.''
Smith, who starred in the 1970s TV show ''Charlie's Angels,'' called Kernaghan's allegations ''totally untrue.
''I know without a doubt that the factories are inspected regularly,'' Smith said.
All Kmart factories are inspected, vendors comply with labor laws, and contracts are canceled if violations exist, Kmart spokeswoman Michelle Jasukaitis said. Kernaghan never contacted Kmart about his findings, she said.
And in response to the complaints about Nike, the company says it pays its Indonesian workers $117 per month, or 53 cents an hour. The minimum wage in Indonesia is about 25 cents an hour.
''I don't know the complete situation,'' Jordan said last week. ''Why should I? I'm trying to do my job. Hopefully, Nike will do the right thing, whatever that might be.''
Gifford said most celebrities that endorse goods don't know how they are produced.
''When someone like myself or Jackie (Smith) or Michael Jordan is approached to do something like this, it's a trust that you put into a company that you go into business with,'' she said.
The government is doing what it can to curb the problem. The Labor Department says it has helped collect $7 million in back wages for 25,000 sweatshop workers in the past three years. Reich has started a campaign called ''No Sweat'' to get retailers to aggressively monitor factory conditions. So far, about three dozen companies - including The Gap, Land's End, and Guess Jeans - have signed on.
But some big retailers say it is impossible to protect against labor abuses. Sears, for instance, has 10,000 vendors supplying them clothes, and an untold number of subcontractors.
''It would be absolutely infeasible for us to say that we could actively monitor conditions at these places,'' spokeswoman Jan Drummond said.
The Labor Department offers tips for consumers on how to avoid buying clothes made in sweatshops. They are accessible via Internet - Labor Department Web Site - or by writing to the Labor Department, 200 Constitution Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20210.
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