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Better Than Sweatshops
EDITORIAL
April 16, 1997, Wednesday, Final EditionPRESIDENT CLINTON'S increasing use of the White House to issue policy prescriptions has been in part a matter of necessity, since the Republican Congress in many areas has given him little choice. But sometimes using the presidential office to push the private sector toward voluntary change represents a good outcome, not a second-best alternative to legislation. The agreement announced to discourage sweatshop labor conditions around the world may prove to be one such case.
Last August Mr. Clinton and his then-secretary of labor, Robert Reich, assembled representatives of the apparel and footwear industries, trade unions, a consumer federation and religious and human rights organizations and asked these previously warring parties to come up with a single plan to promote humane working conditions here and overseas. The problem was fairly clear. More than 200 million of the world's children work full-time, many of them producing goods for export to this country. Many more adults work in appalling conditions -- earning less than a living wage, in dangerous and unhealthy facilities, subject to physical and sexual abuse and held virtually in bondage. Some of these sweatshops are inside the United States, but more are overseas. They are beyond the reach of U.S. law but not beyond the influence of U.S. companies -- should those companies choose to pay attention.
On Monday some of those companies, including Nike and Liz Claiborne, agreed to promulgate a set of minimum standards for their overseas plants and subcontractors. The White House commission will evolve into a nonprofit association that will help monitor compliance. It will seek to enlist companies that are not part of this initial effort and industries beyond apparel and footwear.
Some human rights groups were immediately critical. They wanted industry to guarantee a living wage, not just a locally acceptable minimum wage. They said it was "outrageous" that the commission would tolerate a 60-hour workweek with only one day off. They want more guaranteed independence for monitors of workplace conditions. One critic ridiculed the commission for coming up with a "kinder, gentler sweatshop."
Surely, though, many workers would be grateful for a kinder, gentler workplace, at least as a first step. And the pledges of the commission, if honored, are not trivial: to bar child labor and forced labor, to provide a safe and healthy working environment, to guarantee workers the right to organize and bargain collectively.
Certainly only continued public pressure on this issue can make the commission's efforts succeed. Many companies may well have been forced into this exercise not by conscience but by bad publicity, such as reports of factories in Vietnam, where young women making Nike sneakers earn less per day than the cost of a barely adequate diet. But motives in this case seem less important than results. Globalization of the economy has put these issues beyond the reach of any single government. The promise to create a voluntary, institutional framework as an alternate solution is a constructive first step.
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