Don’t mention the Poor

If there is one childhood memory that stands out from all the others, it is this from my teenage years: I had just got a new (very dishy) boyfriend who’s father was Indian, mother Caucasian Brit. I myself was white middle-class, living in a very white middle class UK Home County (just to set the scene, you may have guessed what’s coming..). People who had been friends for years and never expressed an opinion on the subject before, began to call me abusive names and came up with all sorts of opinions about why ‘these people’ were OK but each should stick to his/her ‘own’. That didn’t hurt me per se, but racism is something I have never been able to stomach in any form (to put it extremely mildly), and now I saw a whole new side of people that I had previously been completely oblivious to, which devastated & shocked me to the core.

Why mention this now? Well I feel like I have this week had a very similar experience, but this time the ‘boyfriend’ was my introducing into conversation the idea that one might want to think twice before spending money with a company who were known to support oppressive labour regimes in their supply chains. At first it was laughed off and I was told I was ‘funny’ & ‘unique’, but when, with one eyebrow raised, I questioned why it was funny, those in the group started to shift uncomfortably, I was told I was entitled to my own opinion, and when I offered to show documentation to support what I had suggested, I was told very forthrightly – “No thanks!“

Well! Why do these concepts evoke such a powerful response? I am particularly interested in this group of people because they do not live selfish lives and very often go out of their way to help those around them both financially and with their time. They are intelligent, have religious backgrounds and profess to care about welfare and the poor. They are also not short of money themselves. I still live in a white, middle class UK (albeit different) Home County.

Firstly, there is the “No thanks!”, fingers in ears, ‘la-la-la’, I don’t want to know what is going on, because if I don’t know, I’m not doing anything wrong. There is a fundamental underlying thought pattern that says: ‘What I do doesn’t hurt anybody else. What I do in my own life is my business.‘ This is a concept known as ‘privatisation’, and is utterly flawed. We live in society, and society is more interconnected now than it ever has been. Every action has a consequence. In this instance, the decision to ignore the facts laid down in front of you and continue to do business with companies who deliberately turn a blind eye to

• the Worst Forms of Child Labour,
• to health and safety hazzards which are life threatening and maiming,
• to labour conditions and pay which force whole communities to live in abject squalor, without adequate housing and well, well below the bread line,
• and even to ‘bonded labour’ (in other words slavery),

supports these companies and ensures that these appalling living (and sometimes dying) conditions perpetuate. In our society there is a malaise which is the complete failure to think things through. As a society in general, we must start to recognise the responsibility we have for our actions.

Then there is the complete lack of comprehension of the power of consumption. ‘I am only spending 75p on this Tshirt. What possible difference can that make to anybody?’ That Tshirt would not be up for sale if it did not make a difference. That retailer is making a profit out of it, hard as it may seem to believe. And that profit is at the expense of a good many people involved in the supply chain. You too, are profiting from their labours, and in so doing condeming them to the conditions outlined above, if you think it through. Your consumer power is the most powerful weapon you have to combat these evils, and you can use it on a daily basis. Your money is the loudest voice these retailers hear, and at the moment all they hear is ‘the public want their Tshirts cheap, and lots of them. And they dont care how they get them.’ They are not hearing – we are holding you accountable for what happens in your supply chains. In short – People Matter!

I would also like to see an examination of the view that: ‘I have a right to cheap clothing* {*insert here any other product of dubious origins which is freely available on the market}. Do we? Yes, I have four children to clothe; and yes they trash and grow out of their clothing at a rate of knots; and yes I resent spending my hard-earned cash on these things that don’t last and are not appreciated; and yes, I do not have a lot of disposable income after the mortgage and bills are paid. But I have a mortgage, I have access to all the utilities, I have a disposable income for goodness sake! I’m rich! What right do I have to demand that someone else should lay down their life to supply me with items which, when compared, are luxuries. They are items that will never be afforded in these communities in Bangladesh, or Western Africa, or vast vast swaithes of communities across the globe. Why do I have the right, at the expense of others basic rights, and in some cases Human Rights?

Phew! I am aware that what I have written this evening is very emotive, but I hope it is also provoking. I have heard it said that we are a generation who are very well schooled but completley uneducated. Socrates said: the unexamined life is not worth living. Let us continue to examine, adjust, learn, and avoid at all costs getting our ears full of sand!

Pentland revisited

Some of you may remember that after my favourable write up of the Pentland Group’s comprehensive corporate social responsibility policies, I came across a negative comment about them in one of the issues that the Clean Clothes Campaign is dealing with, and so we wrote to them in order to understand their involvement and actions better.

Shortly afterwards we did get a brief reply back at ResponsAble, which I felt it was only fair to report back on here.

The issue, similar unfortunately to countless others in the clothing industry, was regarding a factory in Hermosa, El Salvador, which had been shut down in May 2005 because the workers had (quite legally) begun to organise themselves into a union in order to try to deal with some of the appalling pay and working conditions they were experiencing. Some of the workers have subsequently been campaigning for their owed severance payments and outstanding wages, and to be removed from local blacklists which prevent them from finding other work.

CCC asked the brands sourcing from this factory (Adidas, Nike, Walmart, Puma, Russel Athletic and Pentland) to contribute to a fund to cover this legally owed money (amounting to $825 000USD in total), to require their other suppliers in the area to hire these workers, and to pressure the Salvadorian government to fulfil the law regarding moneys owed, the right to organise, and access to medical care. The brands did then contribute to this situation by providing a fund of $36 000USD in aid to these workers. CCC’s response is that whilst this is considerably better than nothing at all, it does not go far enough and is continuing to pressure the brands to recitify the situation.

In this light of this and the clear CSR policy laid down by Pentland, I wrote to clarify their particular involvement and this is the reply I received:

This was a factory used by a licencee factory and therefore not a direct supplier and not part of our programme. However we did recognise responsibility and our licencee was one of the first companies to contribute to the fund. We were a minor customer.

The difficulty with this particular case is that the non-payment of the social contributions to the government would not easily come out of the normal social auditing process. I would surmise that this is probably not an exception factory in El Salvador and we have not been able to influence the local debate to further a sustainable solution to this problem. The responsibility ultimately lies with the Government and the employers.

Unfortunately we have no other suppliers in El Salavador and therefore our methodology cannot be applied. We have no on-going capactiy building programmes nor links to local organisations.

In short they claim that they did respond quickly to the appeal, despite the factory in question not being a direct supplier of theirs, and that further, their normal CSR processes mean that they are usually involved in communities at many different levels including local government and other groups, and several places of work within a community, but that this was not the case in El Salvador as they had no links there other than with this indirect supplier. I also understand from this response that there was a problem regarding the payment of social contributions to the government, thereby presumably making it difficult for the government to respond to the problem. I would surmise here as in many other cases, the root of the problem lies with the factory owners and that both government and brands should be diligent in cracking down on them. Pentland on the other hand have hopefully learnt to try and keep their sourcing in communities where they can influence the work ethic for the better.

Personally though I do think their response is fair and not in contradiction with what they have laid down and claimed, and remain impressed by their commitment to trade well in what is currently a very difficult climate to do so.