Sweat Surrender

[September 5th, 2007]

Portland taxpayers soon could be funding propaganda and pickets in places like Madison, Wis., and fueling the national campaign that brought anti-sweatshop demonstrators to Portland City Hall in February. A “SweatFree” ordinance proposed by local pro-labor activists was approved by city commissioners last Wednesday, Aug. 29.

That measure is intended to prevent the city government from buying uniforms made in factories that pay substandard wages, use forced labor or expose workers to dangerous conditions.

But the language is weaker than what activists first proposed last year. The final ordinance calls for the creation of a committee that will propose a “SweatFree Procurement Policy” by September 2008. Let them eat draft guidelines!

Supporters defended the ordinance against criticism that it is a “feel-good” measure. But it’s hard to see it as anything else, given that the actual policy won’t be written for a year, that the only funding it provides will be used for publicity and that the language leaves garment suppliers with a gaping escape route.

To wit: The ordinance defines sweatshop labor as “serious and repeated violations of [labor] laws of the jurisdiction within which the work is performed.” In other words, as long as a supplier meets the relatively low labor standards in, say, China, that’s OK with the city.

“We view this as a stepping stone,” says Deborah Schwartz, who led Portland’s campaign.

As part of the agreement, the city will contribute $20,000 to SweatFree Communities, a small Maine-based nonprofit. The money won’t go toward audits or inspections. “It’s premature right now to do actual factory monitoring,” says the SweatFree Communities director, Bjorn Claeson.

Rather, Claeson says, the funds will be used for “education and organizing” elsewhere in the country. Claeson says the Midwest is a likely target. San Francisco and Los Angeles have already passed ordinances similar to Portland’s, but implementation has been slow.

Claeson hopes that once his SweatFree consortium represents $100 million in garment-buying power, the members can hire an inspector.

Already, Claeson claims to represent more than $60 million in public buying power, more than half of which comes from New York. Portland spends nearly $2 million a year on uniforms for cops, firefighters and other city employees.

To reach its goal, the consortium will need to recruit about two dozen more cities the size of Portland—and, presumably, nearly as liberal. That’s a tall order.

Even if the consortium reaches its target, $100 million represents a tiny share of a massive apparel market. This June alone, the U.S. imported $6.3 billion in apparel, nearly a third of it from China.

Portland’s influence is negligible in the face of international trade agreements.

“There’s a theme in Portland of folks at a local level trying hard to do something that ought to be done at the federal level,” says Commissioner Erik Sten. Nevertheless, he says, “It’s good for the city to reinforce the work that local activists are doing.