Mitch Cahn is the founder and president of Unionwear, a leading manufacturer of apparel, headwear, bags and other products, made responsibly by union workers in the United States. Mitch is also a leader in the national anti-sweatshop movement and a tireless advocate for the idea that "happy workers are good for business."

Ethix Merch: Unionwear remains firmly planted in the United States. What about your personal background or values led you to buck the outsourcing trend? 

Mitch Cahn: I worked at Bear Stearns for a few years moving money around and found it a very unfilling career. I left there determined to add value and found manufacturing was a way I could actually create value from nothing. The reward is in the neverending challenge of continuous improvement. My personal interest is in being involved in the product development cycle, eliminating wasteful manufacturing steps and redesigning products so domestic, union labor can be used and still meet the clients' price points. I enjoy managing production so quality and service lead to reorders, then improving our production processes on those reorders, and continuing the cycle.

Ethix Merch: You have argued that "workplace satisfaction creates sustainable profits." Is this idea gaining or losing steam?

Mitch Cahn: This idea builds momentum every time the premium paid for products made by satisfied workers shrinks because businesses who reward their workers have an easier time selling their products. Worker rights as a meme continues to grow exponentially when a previously exploited worker has disposable income the additional demand creates a virtuous cycle which shifts power from employer to employee.

Unsatisfied workers now have more access to information about alternatives through social media and web access.   The growing awareness of worker rights in the third world has driven up the cost of exploitation. Rising wages in Asia have created a consumer class there which has driven up consumer demand worldwide, making raw materials and fuel more expensive. When raw materials increase differences in labor costs become less relevant. When demand for fuel grows supply chains become more localized. As production starts to return to the point of consumption, exploitation becomes less acceptable.

So employers who have prioritized workplace satisfaction have seen markets for their products grow.  Employers who have tried to squeeze labor have seen their expenses grow.

Ethix Merch: Can you share a specific example that demonstrates how Unionwear benefits from having well-paid, union workers?

Ira Arlook is Chief of Advocacy Campaigns with Fenton Communications, which does public interest work around sweatshops, global warming, human rights and other issues. In addition to his work with Fenton, Ira serves as the executive director of New Economy Communications, which he founded in 1998 with former congressman Tom Andrews to encourage broad coverage and greater public understanding of domestic and international economic issues and their relationship to human rights.

Ethix Merch: Alta Gracia Apparel features prominently on Fenton's website. What have you learned about AG's impact on workers and the local community in Villa Altagracia, Dominican Republic.

Ira Arlook: By paying a living wage and recognizing the union of its workers, Alta Gracia has transformed the lives of the workers and their community in much the way one would expect. That is, when you pay people a living wage instead of the prevailing apparel wage, it offers them a pathway out of poverty and enables them to provide good nutrition, health care, decent housing, transportation and education for their familes and themselves. And the multiplier effect of their increased income contributes to the local economy and benefits the whole community.

Ethix Merch: From your perspective, how does Alta Gracia fit into the movement to support decent pay and conditions for people around the globe, including in the United States?

Ira Arlook: Alta Gracia is the most significant breakthrough in working conditions anywhere for apparel workers, since the beginning of the modern anti-sweatshop movement in the mid-90's. It demonstrates what labor rights advocates around the world have maintained from the beginning, which is that these good conditions are economically viable as well as morally right. And we think that if it continues to succeed, which we fully expect, it can play a transformative role. All that's necessary is that the university community continue to embrace it, which we expect it will as more and more people learn about what Alta Gracia means.

Ethix Merch: You've spent decades fighting corporate malfeasance and pursuing social justice. In 2011, where do we stand? Are you generally optimistic or pessimistic about the future?

Jackie DeCarlo is the Senior Program Advisor at Catholic Relief Services Economic Justice and Fair Trade programs. She published the useful guide to fair trade, titled Fair Trade: A Beginner's Guide, helping those new to the movement to understand how fair trade creates a positive alternative. Before that, she worked with the Fair Trade Resource Network and as a teacher, promoting social justice in many realms.

Ethix Merch: Jackie, you have been a tireless advocate for the global poor for many years, and through many contexts, both secular and faith-based. What first brought you to this work, and what keeps you going?

Jackie DeCarlo: Let me start with what keeps me going: the people I meet--both producers and consumers--and the folks I live and work with in the Baltimore/Washington, DC area. When I first encountered poverty—as a 20 year old on an Agnes Scott College study abroad trip to India—I had no idea how to respond. I was overwhelmed by the immensity and the obscenity, really, of the human suffering that I saw in crowded cities and remote villages.  I recoiled from what I saw and kind of retreated into my own privileged world and own concerns.

But as my career took shape--first as an elementary school teacher with at-risk kids, then getting into non-profit work serving refugees and immigrants, I was exposed to a different aspect of my privilege (and you could insert the word “blessing” or “luck” or “karma” here) and that was the opportunity to mobilize people and to implement community based projects that made a positive difference in people’s lives.  Of course, it is all of-a-piece: the career steps I take and the support I receive grows out of my communities and networks.  Being a member of the Religious Society of Friends (what most folks call “Quakers”) has been central to my understanding of my place in this world.  Fair Trade reflects many of the Quaker testimonies, such as “equality of all people” and “walking gently on the earth.”

(photo credit: Catholic Relief Services)

Ethix Merch: In your book, Fair Trade: A Beginner’s Guide, you wrote that the book was “an invitation to take a role in shaping what the future of Fair Trade can be.” How has Fair Trade changed since the book was published in 2007?

Kristen Beifus is the Director of the Washington Fair Trade Coalition, a vibrant community organization in Seattle, WA. Her involvement in the SweatFree Washington Campaign was vital for Seattle to join other local governments in passing a sweatshop-free uniform purchasing policy. Kristen also balances international campaigns to support workers internationally in gaining empowering trading relationships.

Ethix Merch: You've traveled extensively outside the United States. How have these adventures shaped your political activism?

Kristen Beifus: While living along the Thailand-Burma border with refugee communities from Burma, I experienced first hand the exploitation of workers who fled fighting at the hand of a military dictatorship in Burma to land in the arms of factory owners in Thailand ready to make them indentured laborers paying poverty wages (when they paid wages at all), keeping workers in constant fear of deportation.

I knew many migrant workers from Burma risking their lives to advocate for fairer wages and better working conditions. There are also courageous Thai solidarity organizations demanding better conditions for all migrant workers and representing workers claims in Thai courts. Once I learned that many of the brands contracting these factories were US-based, I committed to return to the US to contribute to efforts of corporate accountability and consumer education towards ending sweatshop labor. 

Ethix Merch: As apparel products begin to be labeled "fair trade," what are some of your thoughts about the growing intersection between the fair trade and sweatfree movements?

Andrew is the National Associate for the Presbyterian Hunger Program, PCUSA. He runs the domestic grant-making program and helped develop the Sweat-Free T program to educate Presbyterians about sweatshops and worker rights, and to create a demand for SweatFree products. Andrew has researched and worked on human rights, race relations, community organizing and social and economic justice in San Francisco, Central America, Japan, Korea and Louisville.

Ethix Merch: What led you to connect your faith with social justice activism? Was justice work always part of your experience with the Presbyterian Church, or did something else trigger your passion?

Andrew Kang Bartlett: My faith is not in a religious doctrine but in the power of light, goodness, beauty, truth and freedom to overcome the forces of death. I’ve spent much of my half-century in this body doing social justice activism. I came to the PCUSA for a 6-month interim in 2001 and found that I had the freedom to work on the root causes of hunger, so I stayed. Since then I've been working with folks to get at those systemic causes of suffering and injustice, like those we find in our global supply chains of clothes.

Ethix Merch: Your style of activism could be described as more tolerant of the "other side" than is common among progressives. Is that fair to say? If so, why is that the case? 

Liana Foxvog has been National Organizer for SweatFree Communities since 2004. Leading workshops and strategy sessions, she has played a critical role in launching new grassroots campaigns for sweatshop-free purchasing. Her presentations have included venues such as the U.S. Social Forum, the International Fair Trade Action Network convening meeting, and dozens of colleges and universities. She is a part-time lecturer at University of Massachusetts on Labor and the Global Economy and volunteers as a Spanish interpreter for immigrant rights and social justice organizations.

Ethix Merch: What initially led you to devote so much time and energy to ending sweatshops?

Liana Foxvog: During college, I happened upon a workshop by two alumni of United Students Against Sweatshops who had just returned from interviewing Nike workers in Indonesia. Their presentation was inspiring, and, as good organizers, they circulated a sign-in list at the end. A few months later I received an email about an all-expenses-paid student delegation led by UNITE to El Salvador and Guatemala. I jumped at the opportunity and applied.

In El Salvador, I was especially inspired by the perseverance of the blacklisted Tainan workers who lost their jobs when a Gap contractor factory closed in response to a union organizing campaign. Following the trip, UNITE sponsored me to attend and speak at my first USAS conference about what I had learned in Central America, and later in the year the union flew me out to New York to participate in a press conference, where I met former Gap workers from Asia and Africa. I'm so grateful to UNITE for investing in me as a young person, and for providing me with the opportunities to travel and meet courageous organizers from around the world -- this all prompted me to become connected to and committed to the anti-sweatshop movement.

SweatFree Communities was attractive to me because I had spent time in circles of activists who were asking big, critical questions, spending lots of time complaining about the state of the world, and then doing ineffective, unfocused actions. With SweatFree Communities, I could ask the big, critical questions while working on a visionary, concrete, and winnable campaign.

Ethix Merch: You have been working to engender a sense of cohesion and unity among sweatfree activists.  What do you think are the next steps for making our movement more cohesive?

Theresa Haas is Director of Communications for the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labor rights organization, conducting investigations of working conditions in factories around the globe.

Ethix Merch: The opening of the Alta Gracia project and the introduction of sweatfree apparel into college bookstores is clearly a big victory for our movement. How does Alta Gracia stand out from other clothing lines that are on the racks in these bookstores?

Theresa Haas: The Alta Gracia apparel line is the first ever collegiate apparel brand to pay workers a living wage and demonstrate true respect for their right to form a union. This was made possible because of a commitment by Knights Apparel, the company that produces the brand, to pay the factory a fair price for the goods that were being produced there and to work closely with worker representatives in the Dominican Republic to ensure that the factory took all necessary steps to ensure genuine respect for the right to organize. As a result, workers at Alta Gracia earn more than three times the legal minimum wage in the country’s garment sector and have already formed an independent union, called SITRALPRO, which is affiliated with Dominican union federation, FEDOTRAZONAS.

Alta Gracia is also the first such instance in which the WRC has agreed to allow a hang tag with our name and logo to be placed on the product, indicating that we have verified compliance with the labor standards, including living wage and respect for freedom of association. As the organization responsible for verifying the factory’s compliance with the standards, the WRC monitors the factory very closely through a variety of methods, including off-site interviews with workers, weekly or bi-weekly visits to the factory, regular meetings with factory management, regular meetings with the leadership of the factory union, and ongoing review of payroll records and other factory documents. We are aware of no other factory that has ever been subjected to this level of ongoing scrutiny by independent labor rights monitors. We feel this is appropriate, given the fact that the garments bear a tag with our name and logo indicating that we have verified compliance with the labor standards.

Eric Dirnbach is currently a Research Director at the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA), working on their Green Jobs campaign.  Previously he has worked as a researcher and campaigner at Change to Win, and UNITE (which became UNITE HERE and then Workers United), working on organizing and bargaining campaigns in the manufacturing, distribution, and retail sectors.  He has also been involved in labor rights and anti-sweatshop campaigns over the years, starting with the United Students Against Sweatshops at the University of Michigan in the late 1990’s.  He has previously served on the Board of the Citizens Trade Campaign, and on the Advisory Council of the Worker Rights Consortium, and currently serves on the Boards of the International Labor Rights Forum, SweatFree Communities, and the SweatFree Purchasing Consortium.

Ethix Merch: What are your thoughts on the movement toward Fair Trade certified apparel, both retail and wholesale? Is this a positive development for workers?

 Eric Dirnbach:

I think it can be positive for workers, as long as it’s done the right way with high labor standards.  I support the system for fair trade coffee and other foods, and it would be great if this could be extended to apparel.  However, I and many others who have roots in the labor rights and anti-sweatshop movement, have serious concerns about the standards that would be incorporated into any fair trade apparel system.  Our position has been that workers must make a living wage and have genuine worker organizations to strengthen their bargaining power within the supply chain. 

I would say that any multi-stakeholder fair trade or sweat-free certification system can be a good development for workers if it strengthens their ability to participate in the governance of the industry that has such a great impact on their lives.  If the system is designed by others to deliver some small benefits to workers, but leaves them essentially disempowered, then the system will not adequately challenge the sweatshop model and will be unlikely to improve conditions that much.  This is the essential problem with most of the corporate-dominated anti-sweatshop initiatives that have started over the past decade.

Until recently, Sarah Leiber Church has been the Program Director for the Progressive Jewish Alliance's (PJA) Bay Area Office. In her six years with PJA, Sarah was deeply engaged in interfaith and coalition work on core social and economic justice campaigns such as "Hotel Workers Rising," and "No on 8." She also sits on the advisory board of Sweatfree Communities. In the fall, she begins studies at NYU's Wagner School of Public Service.

Ethix Merch: From where you sit, how is the anti-sweatshop movement faring? Does anti-sweatshop work still have a prominent place on the national progressive agenda?

Sarah Leiber Church:

Even as we all reel from economic woes, the US media skewers unions, and the negative impacts of corporate globalization are more and more apparent, anti-sweatshop work has become a bright spot of constructive, cross-sector solutions with a few main initiatives that build tangible alternatives, and have sparked grassroots support across the country.

A few examples: Sweatfree government procurement, championed by the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium, has brought together cities & states to leverage tax dollars to support fair workplaces. The Designated Suppliers Program is the latest innovation being built by United Students Against Sweatshops to support labor-rights-compliant factories. And the economic moment has galvanized conscious consumerism that has picked up the speed of fair trade and union-made products.

A recent Cornell University graduate, Jordan Wells is the Sweatfree Coordinator with the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition, an organization that was instrumental in one of the biggest news events of 2009 for the sweatfree movement- New York State's decision to join the national Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium.

Ethix Merch: The anti-sweatshop movement is at an exciting juncture. The Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium-- a joint effort among cities and states to support the emergence of truly sweatfree factories--is moving forward. Can you briefly describe the process of how you and your colleagues persuaded the State of New York to become the eighth official member of the consortium?

Jordan Wells:

It helps to be on the right side of a given policy issue. As long as Nicholas Kristof (who continually presents the false sweatshops-or-nothing dichotomy) doesn't hold elective office in New York State, I think we'll be in good shape there.

But being right is only the start. We  also needed the impetus for the state to take action (i.e. Why now?). The impetus sprang from SweatFree Communities' "Subsidizing Sweatshops" reports and the accompanying media coverage, which clearly linked New York apparel purchases (and therefore tax dollars) with sweatshops around the world.

To ensure that the state would follow through, we employed alliances with the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), UNITE HERE (later Workers United), and other labor and faith organizations. Also, we patiently and exhaustively explained and re-explained what a sweatfree code of conduct and membership in the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium would mean for New York. Lastly, we mostly cooperated with the procedure and timeline offered by the state, while still avoiding compromising sweatfree principles.