Milwaukee Pressured to Adopt Sweatshop Free Ordinance

July 1, 2008 Wisconsin Public Radio (click to listen)

By Gil Halsted 

A new national report charges Wisconsin state government and the City of Milwaukee with buying uniforms from companies that use overseas sweatshop labor.

The first-of-its-kind report released by Sweat Free Communities includes information on working conditions at 12 factories in Central America, China and Southeast Asia. The report includes information about a factory in China that makes Milwaukee Police uniforms sold by Blauer Manufacturing.

Steve Watrous of the Milwaukee Clean Clothes Campaign says Milwaukee’s contract with Blauer violates the city’s ethical purchasing ordinance. Watrous says his group wants the city to pressure Blauer to change conditions at the Chinese factory. He says they found all kinds of problems, some against Chinese law and some against International Labor Organization standards. He says the point is to work with the workers there to ensure non-poverty wages, better working conditions and to not use child labor, which he says is a problem in that factory.

The report also found four companies that state government buys uniforms from that also source their products from overseas sweatshops. Watrous says the overall goal is to get state and local governments to adopt sweat-free ordinances and enforce them by working with overseas garment factories to improve working conditions. He says they’d like to see the Sate of Wisconsin and the City of Milwaukee join the Sweat-free Purchasing Consortium, which has been proposed and has been agreed to by some places including the City of Madison, to do joint purchasing and have the power to insist that these factories not be sweatshops.

The Wisconsin Department of Administration has not agreed to join the consortium yet, but DOA Secretary Michael Morgan has sent letters to the four companies it contracts with and asked them to use their influence improve working conditions.