SWEATSHOPS: What does the idea of social responsibility mean to business? To the Gap, one of the world's leading clothing manufacturers: "It means we want garment workers to be treated with dignity and respect".
Being an employee-friendly, socially responsible business creates a good image for any company. But the clothes and sportswear trade has been at the centre of consumer concerns about the use of sweatshop labour in developing countries.
The Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) is a European consumer pressure group aiming to improve working conditions in the clothes industry. Despite the Gap's assertion that how it operates "reflects our values, beliefs and business ethics", the company is one of the CCC's frequent targets.
According to the CCC's British affiliated body, Labour Behind the Label, workers making Gap clothes in Russia, Honduras and Indonesia are being paid less than what is needed to live on. Gap is one of six companies refusing to settle a legal case brought against 26 clothing retailers by the pressure group Global Exchange for breaching workers' rights in Saipan, a US territory in the Pacific Ocean.
Earlier this month, a report by Australian-based Oxfam Community Aid Abroad showed that Indonesian Nike and Adidas workers are paid so little that most have to send their children to distant villages to be cared for by relatives. Workers depending on long hours of overtime have been hit hard by the US economic downturn, which has pushed down demand for sportswear.
While many large clothes and sportswear retailers subcontract production to manufacturing companies in countries where workers are not guaranteed a living wage, certain companies are singled out by protesters because they are visible brands or market leaders.
"The garment industry is just one example of a global industry, but it has common brands that are well-known and can attract a lot of publicity," says Mr David Joyce, education development officer for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU). "Everyone has to buy clothes. It is an industry that everyone has a connection to because it's on the high street."
A global event like the World Cup is also an important focus for campaigners, as it attracts large amounts of sponsorship from sportswear companies and an audience of young consumers.
But even though the Gap brand has a relatively low profile in the Republic, the company has been the target for anti-globalisation protesters here. In summer 2001, a group called Globalise Resistance organised a protest outside the tiny Gap outlet located above River Island on Grafton Street in Dublin.
About 200 people showed up, according to group spokeswoman Ms Grace Lally. "There are certain brands like the Gap and Nike that are heavily marketed with a particular image but behind that image is a massive level of worker exploitation," she says.
"The clothing industry is very labour-intensive and the technology hasn't moved on all that much in over 100 years. Because there is not too much heavy equipment involved, the clothing companies have an awful lot of flexibility. They can set up anywhere they find people who are prepared to work for less and less."
Clothes and sportswear companies have responded to sweatshop allegations and legal cases by publicising codes of conduct that outline commitment to ethical practices.
The Gap devotes a section of its website to the "ethical sourcing" of its clothes, explaining how the company's expectations regarding wages, health and safety, child labour, and the right of workers to form a union are listed in its Code of Vendor Conduct.
The codes show that companies are feeling the pressure of consumer concern, Ms Lally says. "But they are a PR stunt for consumers in the West. I doubt the workers in sweatshops in China ever hear of the codes of conduct."
Subcontracting production to other firms allows the brand name company to distance itself from working conditions in factories.
Even the Gap's website hints that its Code of Vendor Conduct is often more a set of ideals or aspirations than actual working practice and that it cannot force its suppliers to comply: "People shouldn't assume that because we have a code, the garment manufacturers that get our business are in 100 per cent compliance with its provisions 100 per cent of the time; they are not."
Mr Michael O'Brien, campaigns and advocacy executive at Oxfam Ireland, describes the codes of conduct as a move in the right direction. "The problem is that the monitoring of the codes is much weaker than the codes themselves," he explains.
In 1999, Reebok was praised for publishing the results of an independent study of two factories in Indonesia, which identified a number of abuses, including the improper disposal of hazardous waste, insufficient ventilation, poor seating at work stations and a bias against female employees.
But expensive independent monitoring does not take place on a wide scale in the industry and not all codes of conduct use the International Labour Organisation's definition of workers' rights, according to Mr Joyce at ICTU.
"The codes of conduct are a voluntary exercise on the part of the company but there are much wider issues," he says. "A whole industry has grown up around independent monitoring, and trade unions see that as privatising the governments' responsibility to ensure workers' rights and respect for core labour standards."
In any case, companies often prevent workers from forming trade unions by threatening to move their vitally-needed business elsewhere. No matter how bad the working conditions are, most consumer pressure groups recognise that the factories provide a lifeline to some of the world's poorest people and closing them down would result in more hardship.
For this reason, organisations like the Clean Clothes Campaign rarely ask consumers to boycott companies, but instead ask them to demand improvements in working conditions by sending postcards or leaving messages on company websites.
"People have to wear some brand or other after all," concludes Ms Lally. "Asking for boycotts puts the emphasis on the consumer, but it's the responsibility of the companies to change things."
