External independent monitoring for the apparel industry is part of a solution to resolve a problem. The problem is the labor practices engaged by American companies, through its contractors in the US or overseas, that are not in accordance to American ethical standards and its sense of fairness. This is not a problem caused by poverty nor is it a matter of workers making a rational choice between accepting exploitation or not having a job. It also makes no difference whether every company is doing it, and whether a sweatshop job is the best prospect for a poor, third-world young woman. The goal of independent monitoring is to address the violation of worker's rights within the global apparel industry.

 We must first asked why these labor problems occurred in the apparel, toy and athletic shoe manufacturing industries and why self-monitoring does not work in these industries when it has worked in others. The main reason can be found in the industry’s business structure. The current relationship between buyers, contractors, subcontractors and inspectors often ignores the interest of workers. This might be the most profitable way to organize the industry but this structure gives no voice to workers. At each link on the manufacturing chain, there is always some other factors that are more important than the worker’s interests i.e. profit, production, quality, shipping deadline or monthly quota. It becomes too easy for a company on this chain to pay attention to the bottom line rather than to worry about some poor women. Especially in an under-developed country, it is always easy to rationalize away the fact that she might be slapped occasionally, but without a job she would be hungry.

 Given the current structure of the industry, the independent monitor is the only party in the manufacturing process that understands the interests of the worker and reconciles them with the interests of the business. Only when we give the worker’s interests a high priority would we be able to address the goal of independent monitoring.

 Therefore, the independent monitor should play an active role in improving the labor conditions of factory workers. An independent monitor should do more than gathering information, collecting data from workers, soliciting advice from experts in labor, health and safety issues and delivering the information to the company. The independent monitor should provide the company with information about labor problems from a worker’s perspective. The independent monitor also must make recommendations for improvements and determine whether progress has been made.

Much of the task of monitoring labor practices is simple. It is a matter of data collection, information gathering and investigation. The difficult part is that the best source of information is the worker herself, because before a worker can talk about troubles at her factory, she must first trusts the monitor. A trusting relationship with workers requires expertise and time to establish. It is much easier when the monitor is already in the community, knows the local issues, and understands the complex web of linkages between local officials, local labor politics and government agencies with a large factory in an under-developed country like Vietnam.

 Given that a monitor must establish a trusting relationship with workers and their community, an independent monitor should obtain its funding from various sources other than the companies themselves. Preference should be given to organizations that provides other social program in the community where the factory is located. Labor monitoring should be a part of several humanitarian services that the organization offered.

A company should be able to purchase labor-monitoring services for its factories. The relationship between the company and the labor monitoring organization should be governed by a business contract. Beyond this, a company and its independent labor monitor must also establish a trust relationship. The company’s cooperation is often crucial when investigating labor-related problems. But in order to avoid potential conflict of interests, a company should not employ organizations which already have close ties with the company. The monitor also must demonstrate that it is independent from the company. It should not have any apparent conflict of interest or that it is dependent on the company for its survival.

 Once an organization entered into a relationship with a company such as a fiduciary, a financial advisor, a legal advisor, a trustee, a financial auditor or as a management consultant, this organization cannot act as an independent labor monitor for the company’s overseas labor practices. If a law firm X handled corporate affairs for company Y, it is obviously a conflict of interest for this law firm to represent the interests of factory workers employed by company Y. Because in such a relationship, worker interests can easily be muddled with other business interests. The role of an independent labor monitor should be to provide the company’s the viewpoint of its factory workers.

 Information about a company’s manufacturing facilities can be used against the company’s interests especially when damaging information are made public or trade secrets obtained during labor monitoring are revealed to competitors. Therefore, the company’s interests must be protected. The implied understanding is that companies do want to correct problems found at factories manufacturing its products. A reasonable delay can be worked out in terms of disclosure of information obtained by the independent monitor to the Apparel Industry Association and to the public. Factory workers are not interested or know about public relation campaigns. They are interested only in improving their working conditions.

 Considering that the mutual interests of all involved parties is to identify and to solve a common problem. It is best that labor problems are identified and companies are given adequate time to solve them. For example, Vietnam Labor Watch has agreed to a three-month period before releasing a report on a corporation’s labor practices giving this company a chance to correct problems found in its manufacturing facilities in Vietnam.

 An independent monitor and its company should agree on a dispute resolution process as part of the labor monitoring contract. Vietnam labor regulations also provide a dispute resolution procedure through which the company and the monitor can use to resolve differences between workers and their employers. It is not necessary for the Apparel Industry Partnership to be the final arbiter between independent monitors and companies. It is too difficult and time consuming to resolve all labor disputes without a local context.

The essential data gathering tool for a labor monitor is the worker interview. Before a factory worker can be interviewed, the monitor must provide confidentiality and anonymity to the worker. The worker must feel that her views, complaints and issues are treated with absolute confidence. Most importantly, her identity will not be revealed, and that retaliation is not even possible. Therefore, interviews should be done outside the factory without the presence of any company’s personnel. These criteria must be established first. Otherwise, there’s no independent monitoring.

 Monitoring implies an on-going, data collection and investigative process. It assumes that enough samples must be take to satisfy the statistical significance test (t-score). Samplings must also be taken in a regular frequency to determine progress or the lack of it. Measuring progress implies that a baseline must be established first. The best way to establish a base line is to combine worker interviews with the use of survey especially when a company employs more than 5,000 workers. Once a set of problems are identified, the company and the independent monitor can work out a schedule for surveying, workers interviews and how to determine useful indicators to measure progress.

 Random samplings alone are often too general to discover any problem with labor law violations such as sub-minimum wage violations, wage cheating, or excessive forced overtime. Interviews with workers must be conducted first to identify these specific problems. Based on the results obtained from worker interviews, the independent monitor should then conduct different statistical samplings on financial payroll information to verify whether problems actually exist.

 Another important tool is to provide workers an anonymous suggestion box to where they can send in their complaints and suggestions anonymously. If workers feel that their complaints are being heard, they will be more encouraged to use this tool helping the independent monitor identifying problem areas that need special attention or scrutiny.

A major concern in the apparel industry is the health and safety of its workers. These young women are subjected to pro-longed exposure to many hazardous chemicals such as toluene and acetone. A crucial part of labor monitoring is to establish a baseline and to monitor the level of these chemicals to determine whether the factory is in compliant with the Vietnam health and safety regulation. The independent monitor and the company should agree to a list of indicators used in monitoring health and safety issues. The independent monitor should also consult with health and safety experts in the developed world for assessment and how best to handle these potential health problems. Independent monitor must make sure that company has a plan to address potential heath hazards in its factories.

 Workers often suffer from fainting spells during a long day of work. Factories in the apparel industry in Vietnam are usually hot and not air-conditioned. The hours are long. Combined with the pro-longed exposures to hazardous chemicals, it is surprising that only a few workers fainted per day in a factory of several thousands. Besides fainting, working under these conditions on a repetitive task often leads to mistakes that can cause dangerous personal injuries.

 Health and safety practices are often ignored in factories of the apparel industry. For example, factory managers often locked workers inside a factory to keep them from leaving the assembly lines since it is difficult for these managers to keep track of all workers all the time. A small industrial fire could occur resulting in the lost of many lives. Such practices are violation of any country’s fire code as well as common sense.

 Regular factory inspections are important in monitoring indicators of workplace health and safety practices. Independent monitors also must have the ability to conduct surprise inspections especially for health and safety purposes. Surprise inspection is the most important tool in making sure that factory managers are complying to health and safety standards.

Having investigated three US corporations’ manufacturing facilities in Vietnam, Vietnam Labor Watch has found that the major areas of complaints are sub-minimum wage, excessive overtime and wage cheating.

 In Vietnam, the official basic entry level wage of factories in the athletic shoe manufacturing industry is usually the minimum wage which is below a living wage or a wage on which a person can live and raise a family. But many contractors in this industry try to squeeze more profit from workers by engaging in underhanded and often-illegal tactics to reduce further the already low take home pay of these workers.

 For example, factories categorize new workers as students or trainees who are at the company to obtain a technical education for a defined period. During this period, the workers receive sub minimum wage. In reality, the "students-trainees" work on the assembly line just like other workers because apparel factory jobs require minimal training. Nike factories in Vietnam employed this technique. We identified this problem through interviews of workers. We confirm this practice by obtaining the actual contract that the worker signed with the factory management. We then collect pay-stubs during this period to ascertain that these workers did receive sub-minimum wage.

 Another wage cheating technique is to deduct a certain amount for "mistakes" supposedly committed by workers. The definition of a mistake is defined by the factory management and is rather arbitrary. A worker’s salary can be deducted because she broke a needle, spilled a bowl of glue, left the factory grounds for lunch, talked during work hours, was sick for one day or was late to work. Often workers believed that they have made a mistake and were embarrassed by the incident and therefore do not mention the topic.

 Forced overtime is often a major issue for workers in the apparel industry. Most factory management referred to their overtime policy as "mandatory" overtime without explaining potential punishment a worker must faced if overtime work is refused. Only through workers interview can we verify whether overtime is forced. Overtime is a complex issue. Even though no workers like to work 12 hour day for 7 days per week, the entry-level salary is so low that overtime pay becomes a necessity that they cannot afford to do without. Excessive overtime is easy to determine by examining pay-stubs.

 Overtime sometimes are not paid. It is difficult for workers to determine the exact number of hours they have worked for an entire month because the factory management frequently changes their shifts. Workers also do not understand pay-stubs given to them because foreign employers in Vietnam use pay-stubs written in English. Therefore, they cannot determine whether the paycheck was correct.

 Issues involving wages and overtime can only be resolved through the collection of pay-stubs from workers. Pay-stubs obtained from workers must be verified with pay-stubs provided by the company. Often separate books of accounts are kept for different purposes and an independent monitor needs to learn a few financial auditing techniques to cross check payroll information.

In Vietnam, the government is becoming more serious in having the rule of laws in its factories. We found that most companies in the athletic shoe manufacturing industry do understand the labor code of Vietnam. But instead of observing the law there, these companies often try to circumvent them. Therefore, an independent monitor must be able to verify whether a company’s labor practices are in according to Vietnam labor regulations. Having a working relationship with Vietnam Confederation of Labor and the Ministry of Labor will be important in understanding how Vietnamese labor laws are implemented.