The structure of the CCC
The Clean Clothes Campaigns in each country are coalitions of consumer organisations, trade unions, human rights and women rights organisations, researchers, solidarity groups and activists. The India Committee is one of the member organisations in the Netherlands. Every national campaign operates autonomously. However, we do work together towards international action. Twice a year representatives from the national secretariats of each CCC gather to exchange information and co-ordinate activities as they are needed on the international level (for example, in negotiations with multinational companies). The campaigns co-operate with organisations all over the world, especially organisations of garment workers (in factories of all sizes), homeworkers and migrant workers (including those without valid working papers).
We believe that direct reference to ILO standards is a crucial element of our code. Because these standards are the result of an international consultation process, and therefore internationally-accepted standards with agreed upon wording, the possibilities for misinterpretation are limited. In terms of developing our code, this too was the result of a process of international consultation. Informal meetings were organized among the Clean Clothes Campaigns in Europe, the International Trade Union Secretariats (ICTFU, WCL, ITGLWF, ETUC/TCL, FIET, Euro-FIET, WCL-Clothing & Textiles), and other NGOs (such as the UK Fair Trade Foundation and International Restructuring Education Network Europe (IRENE)). Partners in the South gave input on drafts of the codes (for example, Asia Monitor Resource Center (AMRC), Committee for Asian Women (CAW), members of the OXFAM network, and trade union federations).
In our campaigning, we demand that retailers adopt the standards outlined in the Code of Labour Practices, implement those standards and create a system to continuously monitor that those standards are being upheld. We also ask that companies agree to a system of independent verification. We believe that retailers should ensure that the clothes they sell are made under good labour conditions. Retailers and the major garment companies do more than just sell clothes to consumers -- they are also the buyers of these clothes in Asia or Eastern Europe, and therefore they can and should use their power to improve labour conditions.
Consumers:
Raising Awareness and Pressing for Change
Above all the Clean Clothes Campaign is a consumer campaign -- its strength comes from consumer power. The purchasing power of consumers is being mobilized on the issue of working conditions in the garment industry.
Information on working conditions in the garment industry is distributed via newsletters, the Internet, and in the form of research publications. Consumers are not only interested in the quality of the products they purchase, but also the work behind the brand names; the social and environmental conditions under which these items were produced. We've found this to be the case in our own contact with people, and there are consumer studies that have been carried out in Europe and the U.S. that also support this claim. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that garment manufacturers are more and more concerned about how consumers perceive their company.
The Clean Clothes Campaign tries to involve all sorts of consumer groups (ranging from young consumer groups to rural womens' associations) by organising different forms of education and actions. One form of action is organizing consumers to send postcards to companies with questions about their working conditions. In most of the European countries these cards have been sent out, in some countries these initiatives have involved more than 100,000 consumers. In any correspondence with companies, consumers demand improvements in working conditions; they don't call for boycotts. Companies should be pressured to use their influence to improve working conditions, and should not be allowed to cut their orders and run away from the attention that factories with labour problems are receiving. This message -- of labour rights and responsibilities -- is what we try to spread among consumers.
Raising awareness among young consumers is one of the specific goals of many of the CCC consumer campaigns. We look at new ways to reach young people on items that concern them. Actions for youth connected to major sporting events, such as the World Cup, are regularly formulated. Rallies and demonstrations by young people are also organised in many of the Clean Clothes countries. Educational campaigns, such as a slide presentation are done through the school system. In the Netherlands, together with one of the trade union federations, we targeted 1300 schools to use this slide presentation to inform young people about working conditions in sports shoe factories. By using school lessons we not only reach a new segment of the public throughout the country, we are raising awareness amongst new generations.
A new concept which we have just started to work on is the concept of Clean Clothes Communities. Using the concept of creating a sustainable agenda for the 21st century (the UN Local Agenda 21 initiative, which is linked to environmental concerns) the Dutch campaign will pursue community level initiatives that seek to provide opportunities for action on issues of international trade relations, using the global garment and sportswear industry as the entry point. Organising on a more local basis will give consumers more opportunities to get involved in the campaign -- because consumers increasingly want not only to be informed about the campaign but also to actively participate. There will be many possibilities for involvement: local organisations will be involved in targeting local authorities, and groups such as local sports clubs can target local branches of national or even multinational department stores.
Legal Possibilities?
The Clean Clothes Campaign also pursues legal possibilities for challenging the bad working conditions in the garment industry. In 1998 the CCC organized the International Forum on Clean Clothes, held in Brussels. At that time cases against seven major garment companies -- Adidas, C&A, Disney, H&M, Levi Strauss, Nike and Otto Versand -- were presented before the Permanent Peoples Tribunal. These cases included testimony from workers and researchers regarding working conditions in factories that produce for each of these brands. For those interested in seeing how this evidence was organised, each of the case files compiled by the CCC on these companies can be found on our website.
One of the goals of this initiative was to work out a legal approach at two levels: the consumers' right to be informed of the working conditions under which the clothes they buy are produced; and the liability of the distributors and the clothing companies at every stage of production. To get a sense of what we mean by legal challenges from the perspective of consumer law we can take the example of the case filed against Nike in the State of California in the United States, where consumer protection laws exist that are intended to protect consumers from false advertising. These laws are being used to raise the issue of bad working conditions as evidence of false advertising, on the part of a multinational company that claims to take steps to ensure that good working conditions are the norm in the factories that produce their products. Following this international forum, a Legal Working Group was formed within the Clean Clothes Campaign, which is made up of members from each of the national campaigns. This group now focuses on following up on these legal initiatives. For more information on this area of activity within the CCC, please contact: CCC Legal Working Group, Vetements Propres, c/o Magasins du Monde-Oxfam, Bruxelles, Belgium.
Solidarity Work
The CCC works to develop links with organisations in countries where garments are produced. This is done through exchange programs. For example, in 1997 we began a research project and exchange program with NGOs and trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe. This focused on Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania (a report on the field research on garment factories in those countries is available in English from the CCC). At the moment a new exchange program with Latin American organizations is being developed. CCC solidarity activities also take the form of international seminars. For example, the International Workshop of Independent Monitoring of Codes of Conduct, held in Belgium in May 1998, where participants, mostly from countries where garments are produced, explored the possibilities and limitations for NGOs, worker's support center, and trade unions at the local level to get involved in the implementation and verification of the monitoring process in the garment industry.
The urgent appeals system is yet another way in which international solidarity links are forged. The CCC frequently receives appeals from workers producing garments for multinationals. We take these requests, verify them and add to the initial information regarding the case in question using our local contacts in that country. A wide appeal for action is then posted to the network. Using this system, members of the Clean Clothes Campaigns are effectively mobilised to react to requests for action when worker's rights are violated. For more information on how this system works, contact the Urgent Appeals Working group via any of the CCC offices.
| Why does the CCC focus on clothes and sportswear? | |
| ? | By focusing our activities we feel we can be more effective. Clothes and sportswear are products that all European consumers can relate to. With this sort of a clear connection to consumers it is easier to draw attention to labour rights issues. |
| Why are certain companies the target of your activities? | |
| ? | We choose major retailers and the major brands as the focus of our campaigns because they are strategic players in the garment and sportswear industry. They're big and they set the standards for that industry. We focus on sportswear companies because the consumer link is even stronger -- for example, they sponsor events. |
| Why do you have a code? | |
| ? | We see our code as a strategic tool in getting companies to comply with the international labour standards that are listed within in. As a tool the code is a clear way to communicate the standards the campaign seeks to have implemented. We use this tool to raise awareness, pressure companies and to provide guidance for laws that can be adopted at the national level. |
| Why is it only a European campaign? | |
| ? | It's actually not. The network in Europe works closely with organizations in countries where garments and sportswear are produced. We share information (for example, on working conditions in specific factories, or profiles of specific multinational clothing corporations) and provide each other with input leading to a more informed level of strategising. |
| Won't these "clean clothes" be expensive? | |
| ? | No. But that doesn't mean that the retail companies won't say that they will, as a tactic to avoid implementing the labour standards that are included in the CCC code. Actually, this claim is ridiculous. If we calculate what the total wages come out to be, as a part of the total costs of an article of clothing, it is always less than 5%. Most of the time it's even less. That means in an extreme scenario, if wages were to double and the cost of this were passed along to consumers, a pair of jeans that now costs US$50 would then cost US$52.50. At some point there may have to be improvements beyond increasing wage levels to the living wage standard, such as better lighting, ventilation, meeting safety regulations, etc. |
| Shouldn't it be the government's job to make sure there are decent working conditions? | |
| ? |
Yes. It is the task of governments to provide good working conditions and to enforce them. Legislation often does exist, and many garment-producing nations have good legislation in this regard. The problem is that it isn't enforced properly. A major reason is that many countries where garments and sportswear are produced have incurred high debts and to meet the demands of structural adjustment programs developed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank they are being forced to implement policies that will create an environment that is attractive to foreign investment. Clothing and other light industries (shoes, toys, electronics) are often the first step toward the industrialization of a country and often figure into these restructuring policies. Incentives for foreign investors include not only low wages, but also the suspension of certain workplace and environmental regulations. If a government does attempt to strictly enforce these regulations, you can bet that many investors will quickly pack their bags for another country that is even less strict and is more accommodating. As a result, all these countries compete against one another based on the lure of their bad working conditions. But it's also wrong to assume that governments have absolutely no control over foreign investments. And not all companies pack up and leave at the first signs of government regulations. So it is valuable to encourage governments to pressure companies to take responsibility for their labour policies and ensure their compliance. But it's also true that a government's power against (large) companies is limited. Bad working conditions are an international problem that will not be solved on a national level alone. |
| Why aren't there any environmental demands in the codes of conduct? | |
| ? |
The codes of conduct only cover clothing production, that is to say the portion of the production process that begins with the cutting of material and ends with retail sales in a store. That's not to say that there aren't problems in the working conditions involved in other, earlier phases (for example: cotton farming, the making of thread, and textile weaving). But one can make demands on retail firms on the portions of the production process that they have actual control over. The phase of the production process that deals with the actual manufacturing of clothing presents fewer environmental concerns than other phases of the production process, such as textile production and agriculture. We find that these issues are more important in the earlier phases, for instance, in the dying of textiles, the shrink-proofing and crease-resistance processes, and the use of pesticides in cotton farming. It would seem more logical for codes that deal with these phases of production to contain more environmental demands than for the codes that deal mostly with the cutting and sewing of fabric. Anyway, there are already a number of campaigns which combine social and environmental issues. They work together with environmental groups and put pressure on companies to do such things as produce a certain percentage of their clothing using biological cotton. The certification systems that some environmental groups have also deal with some social issues. In any event, it is important for all of these organisations to work together in a coordinated way. |
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