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Demanding Clean
Clothes
An introduction to
the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC)
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What's all this campaigning about?
A worker in the garment industry anywhere in the world today is
faced with decreasing wages, deteriorating health, and an increased
risk of losing her job. The Clean Clothes Campaign (or the "CCC"
as it is popularly called) aims to improve working conditions in
the garment and sportswear industry. The CCC started in the Netherlands
in 1990. At that time stores in the Netherlands were not taking
any responsibility for the working conditions under which the clothes
they sold were made. But we have come a long way since then. Now
there are Clean Clothes Campaigns in nine Western European countries.
And now it's more difficult to find retailers here who denounce
this responsibility. Campaigners work together with organisations
in a variety of countries, including those where garments are produced,
and in this way work together asa network to draw attention to labour
rights issues in the garment industry.
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. 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 or to set up global campaigns). 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).
Putting Pressure on Companies
Since the main demand of the Clean Clothes Campaign is that retailers
live up to their responsibility to ensure that garments are produced
in decent conditions, it's important to be clear about how we define
good working conditions. Guiding principles for the improvement
of working conditions can be found in the basic conventions issued
by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), a United Nations
body; plus the international principles regarding fundamental rights
in the workplace. These principles are: freedom of association,
the right to collective bargaining, no discrimination of any kind,
no forced or slave labour, a minimum employment age of 15, safety
and health measures, a working week of 48 hours maximum and voluntary
overtime of 12 hours maximum, a right to a living wage and establishment
of the employment relationship (a contract). Early on our partners
from all over the world raised the need for a common code to campaign
around. As a result, at the European level the CCC developed a code,
called the "Code of Labour Practices for the Apparel Industry
Including Sportswear," in which the principles listed above
are elaborately described.
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
organised 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 organising 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 and the
Olympics, 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, the CCC 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.
The Clean Clothes Communities campaign approaches the issues via
another angle. 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 campaigns 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 organised 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 carole.crabbe@mdmoxfam.be.
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
organisations 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. Also in September
2004 an international seminar is being held to set an agenda for
action for campaigning on informal labour in the garment industry.
Together with representatives from countries with a large amount
of informal garment labour, strategies are developed to improve
their working conditions.
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.
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