State responds to report alleging sweatshop contracts

July 1, 2008 10:07 am  The Capitol Times (Wisconsin)

By Steven Elbow 

A new report has prompted the Doyle administration to ask four state contractors to look into whether their suppliers produce sweatshop goods.

The letter from Michael Morgan, secretary of administration for Gov. Jim Doyle, went out on June 27 to Bob Barker Co., Williamson-Dickie Manufacturing Co., Blauer Manufacturing Co. and Fechheimer Brothers Co., all of which supply police and fire uniforms and prison clothing to the state.

"We expect that your company will carefully review the information contained in the report," Morgan wrote in letters to all four companies. "We also expect you will take all appropriate steps to work with your suppliers to ensure that any labor rights and human rights violations are corrected, and conditions for workers are improved. We encourage you to remain fully engaged with the factories and use whatever influence you have to improve conditions for affected workers."

The letter was a response to a SweatFree Communities report released Tuesday documenting factory abuses in South America, Central America and Asia.

Among the allegations is that Bob Barker's factory suppliers use Bangladeshi child labor for wages as low as $6 per month.

One of Barker's suppliers, Arena Group, also owns the KTS textile factory in Chittagong, Bangladesh, where 300 workers died in 2006 when a fire ripped through the facility and workers trying to escape found the exit locked.

The report found that while fire safety at the facility had improved, workers were forced to put in up to 100 hours of overtime a month in sweltering conditions where drinking water was in such short supply that employees reported resorting to drinking toilet water.

SweatFree Communities documented working conditions at 12 factories in nine countries that produce goods for eight major uniform suppliers. Four of those suppliers do business with Wisconsin, mostly with the Department of Corrections, but also with the State Patrol.

Victoria Kaplan, Midwest director for the organization, said SweatFree Communities has asked about a dozen states to notify vendors that use sweatshop suppliers that they are on notice.

So far, only officials from Wisconsin and Maine have sent out letters, but Kaplan said several other states' officials have said they will do the same.

Linda Barth, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Administration, said the Doyle administration is working with SweatFree Communities to monitor the working conditions of factories that produce goods purchased by the state.

"We decided to ascertain from these companies what is going on out there and try to work with them to make sure there are no labor rights or human rights violations," she said.

She said she didn't have any comment on what the administration's next move would be if the companies didn't provide an adequate response.

"This will be a case-by-case basis, depending on the kind of response we get," she said.

Multiple violations alleged

The SweatFree Communities report documented employee treatment that included:

Health problems from sitting in work positions for excessively long working hours.

Verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

Forced pregnancy testing, and forcing employees to resign before giving birth.

Disciplinary measures for speaking out about working conditions or attempting to organize.

Forcing employees to lie to auditors about working conditions and wages.

None of the four companies returned calls or e-mails seeking comment about the allegations.

Kaplan said SweatFree Communities' findings are only a partial representation of the extent to which taxpayers unwittingly subsidize sweatshop factories.

"We have not gone contract by contract in all 50 states," she said, "but these nine companies that are named in the report are nine of the major uniform brands supplying local governments. So we have every reason to believe that most -- if not all -- states and many cities are doing business with at least one of these companies."

Kaplan said there are now seven states -- Illinois, California, Maine, Vermont, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania -- that have sweatshop-free procurement policies. Wisconsin is not one of them.

"The Doyle administration is on the record in support of, I think, moving in the direction of having a sweatshop-free policy," she said.

But Barth said there is no movement afoot to adopt a comprehensive sweatshop-free policy for the state government.

"We've just been working with SweatFree Communities, and we're sure that they will continue to keep us informed as we move forward with trying to work with these companies," she said.

In 2005 the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in response to student activists, adopted a policy to monitor factories that produce clothing with the university's name or logos. Its code of conduct now requires companies to cooperate with investigations into working conditions and wages to ensure that the apparel is not produced in sweatshops.

Earlier this year, the university canceled a licensing contract with New Era Cap Co. because of complaints of discrimination and anti-union activity at a Mobile, Ala., factory, which also refused to cooperate with a monitoring group investigating the allegations.

But the university has so far rejected the Student Labor Action Coalition's call to end its exclusive contract with Adidas to supply athletic apparel after an El Salvador textile plant closed, leaving 260 employees without $825,000 in back pay and severance money.