It’s not hard to understand why the sweatshop issue gets a lot of attention in the United States. The tragic stories of abused, chronically-poor factory workers make headlines because the garments they produce are bought by name brand corporations and then sold to almost all of us. It makes people uncomfortable and frustrated to be implicated in a system that enriches corporate executives yet keeps factory workers around the world in a state of perpetual, abject poverty.

It’s also not hard to understand why, despite all the attention, solutions to sweatshops have been so difficult to develop and enforce. Simply put, the garment industry has been fully globalized, but international labor laws are effectively non-existent. And as we have learned from the current economic meltdown, the absence of regulation is a recipe for disaster for those on the bottom of the economic ladder.

It is crucially important for consumers to understand that creative solutions are out there, but that they need people to believe in them and support them.

For that reason, Ethix Ventures, Unionwear, Sweatfree Communities and a delegation of garment workers from Hondurus and Purerto Rico attended the National Association of State Procurement Officers this week.

We were there to promote the Sweatfree Consortium, one of the most innovative and comprehensive solutions to ever come out of the anti-sweatshop movement. And the effort is gaining steam. Basically, the consortium makes an end-run around the absence of international labor laws by pooling together the buying power of consumers who care enough to demand basic rights for the men, women, and children in the factories. These consumers can direct their purchasing to specific factories that voluntarily agree to legitimate enforcement mechanisms to protect against child labor, forced labor, sexual harassment, intimidation, verbal abuse and all of the harsh realities of sweatshops.

So who are these benevolent consumers? They are cities and states around the country, and more are joining the effort all the time. These government entities – backed and encouraged by active citizens – are standing up to guarantee that government uniforms for contracted and subcontracted employees will be made ethically, according to the standards of decency that we would demand in our own workplaces.

Ethix Ventures was so proud to be involved in the direct appeal by workers and organizers to state procurement officers from around the nation. We believe that 2009 will see massive growth in this program, and we plan to be there to support the process with our bodies and our dollars, learn about government procurement, and offer our skills and services to help clean up the public sector.

It is all the more exciting to know that if this effort is successful, it can spread to other large groups of purchasers (USAS and WRC are heavily engaged in this process at the university and college level), gradually reducing the proliferation of sweatshops until that wonderful day when the international community gets its act together and enforces human rights in the workplace.