SLA Anti-Sweatshop Work

In 1999, the Brown SLA conducted a campaign to establish a Code of Conduct regarding the manufacturing of Brown apparel in sweatshops. 

Sweatshops are an important and preventable human rights issue. It is crucial not to lose sight of the abuses going on to this day in the countries that are the primary producers of clothing for the United States: 85-hour work weeks, sexual harassment, union busting, and perhaps worst of all, wages so low that workers are unable to provide basic food and clothing for their families. These conditions are consistently reported by workers, human rights groups, and even the governments of these countries.

The goal of our work is not to shut down these sweatshops - we recognize that these jobs and investments are vitally important to the developing economies in these countries. The workers and their families depend on this income, as inadequate as it is, to survive. We work to leverage our power as consumers to improve conditions - we would never support any course of action that would cause these workers to lose their jobs.

These sweatshop conditions, which constitute a large scale human rights crisis, are preventable. The conditions in factories and the lives of workers would improve drastically if apparel companies enforced workplace Codes of Conduct with these five types of provisions:


1. Companies must publicly disclose the street addresses of all sites where apparel is manufactured. This seemingly basic information is kept secret by almost all apparel manufactures to prevent human rights groups from reporting the conditions in these factories.

2. The factories must be inspected by independent monitors that can respond to worker reports of Code of Conduct violations. An independent monitor can be a local religious or human rights organization-essentially any group that workers can feel comfortable talking to without fear of retribution by the factory management.

3. Codes of Conduct must include basic human rights and workplace safety language. Since the vast majority of apparel workers in developing countries are women, Codes of Conduct also require specific women's rights language in order to be effective. This includes language forbidding sexual harassment, mandatory pregnancy tests, and forced birth control.

4. Workers must be given the right to freely organize unions and bargain collectively.

5. Companies must pay their workers a living wage. A 'living wage' is simply enough money for a family of four to afford sufficient food, housing, clothing, and medicine. In many cases a living wage is only cents more than the current wage. Paying a living wage would represent a minute increase in cost to companies, which would still be getting labor much cheaper than the minimum wage in the United States, but it makes a huge difference in the lives of malnourished workers living in debt. A living wage is a human right, present in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights--anything less is unacceptable.


One problem is that until these provisions are adopted and enforced, the abuses of sweatshops will remain inherent in the apparel industry. The answer to the question, "Are there any 'good' companies that it's OK to buy clothes from?" is, unfortunately, a frustrating one: as long as the problems are industry-wide, anti-sweatshop groups don't endorse certain brands over others.

The nature of the apparel industry, with thousands of miles separating the Brown bookstore and a factory compound in El Salvador and with layers of sub-contractors between the raw fabric and the assembled product, makes it difficult to enforce Brown's Code.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison conducted a large Living Wage Symposium in late November of 1999. Experts, students, and workers gathered to explore different formulas and methods for calculating a living wage, and examine the effects of a living wage on a developing economy. Living wage research is being planned.