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Consumer Guide | Sports | School Campaigns | Government Campaigns | What's New
WHAT'S NEW
Renew apparel laws, state urged
Groups fight sweatshops
By Sara Foss
Sunday, August 31, 2008, Daily Gazette, Schenectady, NY
With the state's sweatshop-free purchasing laws set to expire on Monday, the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition is pushing New York to join a national movement that seeks to end the public purchasing of clothing made in sweatshops.
The proposed state and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium would enable states, cities and counties to pool their resources and coordinate monitoring and enforcement activities that would be tough to handle on their own. Click here for full article.
Subsidizing Sweatshops report
New York state tax dollars fund sweatshops according to a new study released July 1, 2008. New York's existing sweatshop-free purchasing laws expire September 1, and have failed to achieve their intended efect, as evidenced by the report.
New York and other U.S. states, cities, and counties are inadvertently using millions of taxpayer dollars to purchase goods from companies engaged in serious human rights and labor violations, according to a first-of-its-kind report released today by SweatFree Communities. The study, Subsidizing Sweatshops: How Our Tax Dollars Fund the Race to the Bottom, and What Cities and States Can Do, includes in-depth case studies of 12 factories in nine countries that produce public employee apparel for nine major brands.
The Sweatfree Consortium will help New York and other states and cities to accomplish the goal of ending public purchasing from sweatshops by investigating factory working conditions and creating a market for “sweatfree” suppliers. Absent requirements that New York apparel be produced sweatshop-free and without a system for monitoring compliance with sweatfree specifications, vendors and their suppliers have operated below the radar, resulting in abuse and exploitation.
While no individual state has adequate resources to monitor working conditions, nor enough leverage to hold its suppliers accountable, according to Labor-Religion Executive Director Brian O’Shaughnessy, “We must not tacitly subsidize sweatshops. Basic morality dictates that taxpayer dollars should support sweatfree alternatives.” O’Shaughnessy continued, “ New York can lead other states and cities on the path to sweatfree public purchasing—by enacting a Sweatfree Code of Conduct that enumerates worker rights principles for inclusion in state apparel contracts and by formally affiliating with the State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium.”
Subsidizing Sweatshops reveals widespread human rights and labor violations throughout the uniform industry, including: child labor; illegally low poverty wages; forced and unpaid overtime; verbal, physical, and sexual abuse; pregnancy testing, excessively long work hours causing physical ailments; disregard for freedom of speech or association; and elaborate schemes to deceive factory auditors. The report documents sweatshop abuses in factories producing for several New York vendors: Rocky Brands, Lion Apparel, and Eagle Industries.
Rocky Brands
The New York Office of General Services contracts with Lehigh Safety Shoe Company—one of the several brand names under which Rocky Brands markets its products—for a wide variety of shoes and work boots. Rocky supplied a vendor for the City of LA, until it was eventually dropped after a period of defiant unresponsiveness to requests to address the situation.
Lion Apparel
NYS OGS contracts with Lion Apparel for such products as EMS pants and shorts, suspenders, gloves, hoods, and more.
Eagle Industries
NYS OGS contracts with three vendors (Mar-Vel, Safety Systems, and ADS) who have Eagle listed as one of their suppliers for the NYS Hazardous Incident Response Equipment Contract. Eagle supplies belts, harnesses, suspenders, straps, slings, holsters, ammunition pouches, bags, and tactical vests.
Last Updated:09/03/2008
© Labor-Religion Coalition of New York State
