Index

NEWSLETTER 24, Oct 2007 News from the CCCs

Rene Klaer, the Norwegian CCC, held it's first leafleting action in Oslo directly after the launch of the campaign

Norway: New CCC Launched

Norway is the latest country to set up a CCC. Rene klær, as it is known, was launched on June 14, 2007, in the capital city Oslo. It will be coordinated by the environmental and consumer organisation Framtiden i våre hender (The future in our hands), and partners include the youth organisation Changemaker and the retail and office workers' trade union Handel og Kontor.

At the launch ceremony, Athit Kong, vice president of the Cambodian garment workers' union CCAWDU (see pages 13-14) gave a graphic account of workplace conditions and the struggle by garment workers to unionise in his country. Marieke Eyskoot of the CCC International Secretariat spoke about how CCCs work together internationally. The goals for the campaign and how Rene klær will work to achieve them were outlined by the new Norwegian CCC Coordinator Carin Leffler.

Demonstrating how the campaign intends to proceed, directly after the launch representatives of Rene klær took part in the campaign's first street action. They handed out leaflets to customers outside several shops. They asked them to answer questions such as: "Do the workers producing clothes for this shop get a minimum wage - or a wage that they can live from?" and then to pass the leaflets on to the shop staff, in the hope of eventually receiving a reply from the management. They succeeded in getting good national press coverage of the launch.

In the few months since then, Rene klær campaigners have been very active and have achieved their first major success. The Norwegian Olympic Committee has promised to take active steps to draw up a code of conduct for its work that will meet the requirements of the ILO core conventions on labour rights. In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Rene klær will be prioritising PlayFair campaign activities (see page 12).

They have also been working on the case of rights violations at the Metraco factory in Turkey (see www.cleanclothes.org/urgent/ 07_07_03.htm ), since the Norwegian brand Helly Hansen is directly involved in this case. Meanwhile, throughout the autumn they are giving presentations and holding workshops for activists and other interested groups with the aim of generating greater awareness and engagement in their country on these issues of workers' rights in the global garment and sportswear industry. Towards the end of the year, they will be publishing a report about public procurement in Norway.

To contact the Norwegian CCC, call or e-mail campaign coordinator Carin Leffler at carin@framtiden.no / tel. +47-22-03-31-50. For more information (in Norwegian) see www.reneklaer.no.

"Friends" of the Dutch retailer Hema are pushing for the chain to take concrete stepsto improve the conditions for the workers who produce their clothes

Netherlands:
Let's buy up HEMA!

In March 2007, the extremely popular Dutch retailer HEMA came up for sale. The CCC (Schone Kleren Kampagne) called upon the Dutch people to collectively buy the store and then help improve the conditions of the workers that make HEMA's clothes.

The campaign generated enormous publicity, with the public pledging to buy over € 340,000 worth of shares in the company. Though quite a success, this was nowhere near the € 1.2 billion that Lion Capital, a British private equity investor, eventually paid for the company.

The CCC has now transformed the "Let's buy up HEMA" campaign into "Friends of HEMA". This made HEMA the first retailer with a critical fan club. The Friends continue to push their favourite retailer to sell clean clothes, though private equity investors are notoriously difficult to pin down on ethical questions. Nevertheless, retailers and brands usually respond well to pressure from their customers.
As the number of fans grew, HEMA invited the Friends of HEMA for a meeting at their headquarters. Although not very willing to discuss issues such as payment of a living wage or supply chain transparency, they did agree that the way HEMA monitors working conditions needs to be improved. Especially when it comes to multi-stakeholder involvement, the Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI) system they work with lacks credibility. To make sure that workers are a serious part of the monitoring and that their voices are heard when solutions are developed to improve their situation, HEMA has agreed to do a pilot project with the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF). This multi-stakeholder initiative works closely with workers' organisations in garment-producing countries when it comes to monitoring and verifying their conditions.

Opening up this dialogue and agreeing to participate in a project with FWF is a good first step. However, the Friends will continue to keep a close watch on their favourite store to see that significant progress in important areas, such as transparency and worker pay, are really made.

For more information on the campaign (in Dutch), see
www.schonekleren.nl/nieuws/07-08-25-hema.htm
and www.helpdehema.nl

Advertisement for the Traso brand, launched by the CCC in Belgium South in June, to highlight the terrible conditions garment workers face to make inexpensive clothes for the Belgium market.

Belgium South Launches (Fake) Clothing Brand

TRASO is the newest fashion brand to hit the Belgian consumer market. But it is a fake one, made up by the CCC in Belgium South (Vêtements Propres) to raise awareness of the price paid by garment workers for clothing sold at discount prices.

TRASO is short for "TRAvail SOldé", or "discount labour" or perhaps "work for sale". Launched in the city of Liège on June 23, 2007, the campaign brings together people from the Christian youth movement, retail workers' unions CNE and SETCA, women's organisations and other NGOs.

"TRASO guarantees the cheapest prices through the worst exploitation of the workers", announce the campaign materials. By this, the campaign means workers in both the production chains and in the shops. The idea, developed out of discussions between all the Vêtements Propres partners, is to show that workers are facing the same powerful companies, and are confronting the same employment trends such as "flexibili-sation" (short-term, temporary contracts, for example), low wages, pressure on union rights, and gender discrimination.

"In this way", says Carole Crabbe, coordinator of Vêtements Propres, "we think it is easier for members of the public to understand the link between their own behaviour as consumers and their own situation as workers."

At the launch action in Liège, the job of the activists was a cynical one - to persuade shoppers to go and look for the cheap TRASO trousers, T-shirts, jeans, and other products in order to benefit from the exploitation of workers. Some were keen to know where they could find a TRASO shop, to which the activists replied "All the shops in the street sell TRASO products!" Others, though, were very concerned about the precarious situation of the workers.

There were also activities inside several fashion shops, those where there are trade union members. Union activists led discussions, and in one of the shops they decided to put a TRASO campaign leaflet in each of the customers' bags.

The leaflet advertises clothing at discount prices and goes on to explain what lies beneath those cheap prices, so attractive to consumers. It shows, for example, Nur and Jahangir Alam, two workers from the Spectrum factory that collapsed in Bangladesh in April 2005, visiting a Belgian store. Nur lost an arm in the accident and thus far has received only a pittance in compen-sation; several Spectrum clients (such as retail giant Carrefour) continue to refuse to contribute to a fund to compensate Nur and others. Sweaters produced at his factory sell in Belgium for just € 2 each. (For more information on the Spectrum case, see
http://www.cleanclothes.org/news/spectrum_disaster.htm).

As if to illustrate the impact on Belgian workers too, just a few days before the TRASO launch Carrefour announced the closure of 16 supermarkets in Belgium and the firing of about 900 workers. It also announced that the shops might be
re-opened, under franchise. Workers in a franchised shop, compared to those in a wholly-owned shop, almost always earn less, get fewer benefits, and their union rights are less respected. This led one union activist in the TRASO campaign to say, "Franchising in the retail sector is just like relocation in the production sector".

"All in all", Crabbe adds, "it was a very interesting and funny way to take action, and we are thinking about how to develop it. In the future we might link such an action with follow-up activities like an exhibition or even a "real false TRASO shop".

The TRASO campaign's promotional leaflet (in French) can be found at: www.vetementspropres.be/doc/tractTRASOscreen.pdf
For more information on the campaign, contact Carole Crabbe at
carole@vetementspropres.be /tel. +32 10 45 75 27.

Germany: Shareholder Actions

Among its recent activities, the CCC in Germany (Kampagne für Saubere Kleidung) has been working with "critical shareholders" and speaking up at the shareholder meetings of German sportswear companies Puma and adidas.

At the entrance to Puma's Annual General Meeting in Nuremburg on April 11, 2007, activists stood under a "Made in Hell" banner and handed out information to shareholders. Inside, some spoke from the platform about the impact of Puma's purchasing practices on working conditions in its supply chains. They particularly criticised the company, which made a profit of €400 million in 2005, for then refusing to provide continuation funding for a "pilot project" in El Salvador and Mexico that it was running with the CCC and Latin American partners.

A month later, at the adidas meeting at Fuerth on May 10, 2007, five CCC representatives made interventions about cases at adidas suppliers where the company's response has been utterly inadequate: the Hermosa factory closure in El Salvador, the BJ&B factory closure in the Dominican Republic; and the lack of freedom of association at PT Panarub in Indonesia. They used the cases to highlight what is wrong generally about the company's sourcing strategies. Overall, their interventions lasted over an hour, to the obvious frustration of the adidas Executive Board.

Despite security guards' attempts to stop her, CCC's Evelyn Bahn managed to mount the platform to hand a document over to the Board. The CCC representatives came away frustrated at the Board's bland responses, saying there was "nothing new". But they were happy with the support from shareholders present, and it led to good coverage in the newspapers and on radio. A TV team now wants to make a documentary film about the INKOTA network in Germany (part of the German CCC), with a special focus on the CCC and the BJ&B case.

For more information (in German) see www.saubere-kleidung.de