If you’ve ever driven eighty on the highway, fudged a bit on your tax returns, or created a mixed CD for a friend, then you’ve learned a valuable lesson about democracy in the United States of America: sometimes the law doesn’t amount to a hill of beans. Without enforcement, laws are just a paper tiger. And as it happens, our country has neither the will nor the resources to enforce every law.
We won’t stand for having Big Brother watching our every move, so we tolerate lawbreaking quite frequently. Sometimes, of course, this tolerated lawbreaking means we are just using common sense. For example, it might make sense for a highway patrol officer to look the other way when you’re driving eighty, if she knows full well that two minutes later she’s bound to run into some maniac going ninety, who poses a much greater risk to the public safety. This, however, doesn’t negate the fact that your butt is breaking the law.
But sometimes lawbreaking is tolerated for less justifiable reasons, the most common of which is probably “Enforcing this law is hard!”
This is what’s happening with sweatshop-free procurement ordinances around the country. Certain municipalities (including Los Angeles and San Francisco) have taken it upon themselves to ban sweatshop-made goods in government purchasing. Since those ordinances were passed, however, enforcement has been sparse to non-existent. City uniforms are as sweaty as ever.
And, to be quite fair, enforcing this law is hard. Very hard…especially when you consider the intense pressure put on city officials and administrators to protect the public purse by awarding contracts – for things like uniforms for police officers -- to the lowest bidder. Even when vendors are shown by independent monitoring groups to be in non-compliance, it is difficult to take corrective action because of the relatively small leverage any one city has with the large corporations that supply their uniforms.
Cities that have passed sweatfree ordinances should be applauded for taking a step in the right direction. It is a step that’s always preceded by months or years of dedicated community activism, and it represent a crucial first step by at least declaring the “will” to begin to right the terrible wrongs being done to workers around the world.
But unless eventually followed up with enforcement, the original action starts to lose its meaning. Fortunately, there are superheroes out there who have been following this game all along, and who have come up with a plan to allow cities to enforce sweatshop prevention laws. The Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) and Sweatfree Communities think that by pooling the buying power of cities, states and universities, they can create a network of certified “sweatshop-free” producers who are provided with the carrots and sticks needed to ensure that corporations, subcontractors, the consumer, AND the workers can ALL benefit from a contract.
The WRC is partnering with local sweatshop activists from coast to coast to convince their states and cities to join this network, which they are calling the Sweatfree Consortium. As odd as it may seem, governments are the underdogs here in working to get their own laws enforced. But banding together - like all good underdogs do - may give them the leverage to demand enforcement from the contractors.
It’s also important to note that there are Union factories right here in the United States that are fully capable of producing uniforms for use in our cities, and these factories need to be a part of the solution as well. As the current economic crisis has demonstrated, we need to keep our own house in order (which means protecting and strengthening middle class jobs) in order to avoid catastrophe.
If you are affiliated with a state, county, or municipality interested in having uniforms or other printed merchandise made right here by middle class workers, please contact us.
