read those article answer this question （300 words）

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Chapter 2

From Public Regulation to Private Enforcement

How CSR Became Managerial Orthodoxy Richard P. Appelbaum

The safety and well-being of workers across our supply chain is the Responsible

Sourcing group’s top priority, which is why Walmart suppliers are contractually

required to sign our Standards for Suppliers before they’re approved to produce

merchandise for sale at Walmart. These Standards for Suppliers make clear our

fundamental expectations for suppliers and factories regarding the treatment of

workers and impact on the environment. Suppliers are also required to display our

Standards for Suppliers in the local language in all factories where products are

made for us, so workers know our expectations of suppliers and factory

management.

—Walmart 2014 Global Responsibility Report, Statement

on Compliance and Sourcing

Walmart, the world’s largest corporation in 2015, invests in “comprehensive social audits across

our global supply chain.” Its factory audits—reportedly often unannounced—are conducted by

“independent accredited and internationally recognized auditing firms.” Factories are then said to

be reaudited every six to twenty-four months, based on the results. This comprehensive auditing

system is designed to verify that factories “meet or exceed” Walmart’s standards, which include

assurance that all labor is voluntary, prohibitions against child labor, requirements that hours are

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not excessive (and are consistent with local laws or regulations), and that factories provide safe

and healthy working conditions (Walmart 2014).

On November 24, 2012, a fire at the Tazreen Fashion apparel factory in Dhaka,

Bangladesh, claimed 112 lives and injured 200 others, making it the deadliest factory fire in the

history of a country long plagued by factories fires. Workers found themselves trapped by the

absence of safe and accessible fire exits, windows blocked by iron grills, a lack of adequate fire

preparedness training, and the fact that the building was at the time under construction: five

additional stories were being added to the original three-story structure, even as garment

production continued as usual.

In this unsafe environment, ten workers perished on Tazreen’s fifth floor, where they

were sewing Walmart’s Faded Glory shorts. Walmart, one of the many companies producing

garments at the factory (Maquila Solidarity Network 2012b), 1

claimed it was unaware that its

Faded Glory shorts were being sewn at Tazreen through a subcontracting arrangement. Yet the

factory’s owner reported that Walmart’s local office had audited the factory a year earlier,

finding only problems with excessive overtime. A Walmart spokesperson confirmed this,

acknowledging that the company had conducted at least two inspections in 2011, but claiming

that Walmart had stopped production “many months before the fire” (Yardley 2012).

How could such a disaster occur in a factory where one of Walmart’s “comprehensive

social audits across our global supply chain” had previously reported no fire or safety violations?

Nor was the Tazreen fire an exception. Between 1990 and 2012 (the year of the Tazreen fire),

nearly a thousand people perished in factory fires in Bangladesh. 2

Yet during this same period,

all major corporations have embraced a commitment to socially responsible business practices.

In Bangladesh and around the world, businesses have adopted codes of conduct much like

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Walmart’s, created departments dedicated to overseeing and implementing those codes, and

hired specialized firms to audit the factories throughout their supply chains to assure compliance

with the codes. As I shall argued below, as well as elsewhere in this book (see especially

chapters 1and 3), most of the Bangladesh factories in which fires occurred had been given clean

bills of health when audited by internationally recognized social compliance firms.

In order to account for the failures of private enforcement, it is important to understand

that today’s globalization differs from that of even a few decades past because of the role now

played by large retail multinationals—the “big buyers” 3

that have largely replaced the large

manufacturing firms that characterized the twentieth century. The Walmarts, Home Depots, and

Carrefours now sit atop global supply chains, along with brands such as Apple and Nike. They

make the markets, set the prices, and determine the worldwide distribution of labor for that

gigantic stream of commodities that now flows across their counters. The loss of US goods-

producing manufacturing firms to low-wage countries has entailed not just cheap labor

competition from abroad but also a historic shift in power within the structures of world

capitalism, from manufacturing to a retail sector that today controls the supply chains that

encircle the globe.

In this new world of global supply chains driven by big buyers, the brand has emerged as

a key reputational asset: from Apple to Zara, firms depend on brand image as their key asset.

Although today’s big buyers do not make any products themselves, they do engage in two

activities that are critical for success in a globally competitive world: designing ever-changing

products and convincing consumers that they cannot do without them. The firms that sit atop

global supply chains are best understood as “branded marketers” (Gereffi 1999), for whom

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image is everything. Since child labor, sweatshop conditions, and worker deaths are hardly

compatible with a positive image, the reliance on branding has proven to be an Achilles heel.

Corporate Concern with Workers’ Rights

Academics who write about corporate behavior have for more than a half century argued that

firms should be not only profit maximizers but good citizens as well. Corporations were more

than happy to concur, with the proviso that good citizenship was not contingent on government

regulation or bargaining with trade unions. Rather, corporate spokesmen argued, the best results

would come from self-regulation.

In 1951 the influential management consultant Peter Drucker published The New Society:

The Anatomy of the Industrial Order, 4

<AU: Ok to delete note 4? Not necessary to have a

footnote just to cite the name of the publisher. Do you want to include this title in the

bibliography?> <ED: I’m happy to delete it, if it is not necessary. All the footnotes will then

have to be renumbered – can you do this? I’ve added this to the bibliography.> in which he

called for “plant self-government”—a form of corporatism in which workers (or at least their

representatives) would govern some aspects of the workplace, partnering with management to

create what he argued would result in a mutually beneficial alternative to labor-capital strife.

This was a time when the United States enjoyed unrivaled global economic dominance,

vertically integrated manufacturing was the dominant mode of industrial capitalism, and

corporations were largely national rather than global entities—a time, in other words, when

workers in sectors dominated by large corporations enjoyed a significant degree of

countervailing power 5

through their unions. 6

Under these conditions—the heyday of postwar

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national capitalism—Drucker argued that corporations were not fundamentally driven by the

profit motive but were instead political bureaucracies with responsibilities for their communities.

This view was widely shared by those academics who studied corporations and corporate

power. Two years after Drucker’s New Society appeared, the economist Howard R. Bowen

published Social Responsibilities of the Businessman, in which he posed two rhetorical

questions: “Are businessmen, by virtue of their strategic position and decision-making power,

obligated to consider social consequences when making private decisions? If so, do they have

social responsibilities that transcend obligations to owners or stockholders?” Bowen’s response

was short and simple: “the answer to both these questions is clearly yes” (Bowen 2013, p. 2).

Then, echoing Drucker and Bowen, the economist Carl Kaysen in 1957 published an article in

the prestigious American Economic Review proclaiming the existence of the “soulful

corporation,” in which management no longer focused exclusively on maximizing return but

rather “sees itself as responsible to stockholders, employees, customers, the general public, and,

perhaps most important, the firm itself as an institution…To the employees, management owes high

wages, pensions and insurance systems, medical care programs, stable employment, agreeable working

conditions, a human personnel policy” (Kaysen 1957, p. 313).

The idea that businesses should (and could) be guided by ethical principles was given a

boost during the struggle to end apartheid in South Africa during the 1970s. Reverend Leon

Sullivan, a prominent black leader from Philadelphia, had joined the General Motors Board of

Directors in 1971, at a time when GM was the largest corporate employer of blacks in South

Africa. 7

In 1977, as part of the divestment campaign directed at the apartheid regime in South

Africa, Sullivan crafted a set of ethical principles to guide the behavior of corporations (like

General Motors) that were doing business in South Africa.

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The original Sullivan Principles called for the end of workplace segregation, equal pay

for equal work, increasing the number of nonwhites in management and supervisory positions

(and providing the training required to accomplish this), improving the quality of life for

nonwhites outside the workplace, and fair and equal employment practices for all workers. 8

Sullivan eventually came to endorse corporate civil disobedience against apartheid laws, the

freeing of Nelson Mandela, and an end to apartheid itself. Sullivan’s efforts eventually

convinced more than a hundred firms to pull out of South Africa, contributing to the end of

apartheid in 1993.

The Sullivan Principles reflected the view that corporations had an obligation to behave

ethically, ushering in a strong moral (some would say public relations) obligation that

corporations behave “soulfully,” at least when it came to racial equality. This obligation was not

purely ethical, however. It also stemmed from Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which

prohibited employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, and national

origin, 9

opening a door to the possibility of government regulation. That possibility—along with

the rise of antisweatshop activism in the following decades—lead corporations to call for a “trust

me” approach to labor abuses based on self-regulation and private enforcement.

Antisweatshop Activism, Private Enforcement, and Reputation Management

Beginning in the 1990s, well-publicized revelations of labor abuses in Asian contract factories

tarnished the images of major US brands such as Nike, Gap, and Kathie Lee (a line sold at

Walmart). Antisweatshop campaigns put additional pressure on these companies to address the

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problems that were proving to be the norm rather than the exception. The emergence of firms

that publicly express a commitment to behave in socially responsible ways is the direct result of

revelations about corporate abuses, worker strikes, and activist campaigns that began in the

1990s and continue to the present.

As early as 1992, Levi Strauss, concerned about media exposure of working conditions in

its contract factories, adopted a code of conduct and created an internal monitoring program. But

Nike, the footwear giant, proved to be the first major firm to garner worldwide media attention

for abuses throughout its supply chain. Reporters and activists knew about labor problems in

Nike’s Indonesian contract factories in the early 1990s, but Nike initially denied any

responsibility, its general manager for Indonesia admitting that although he had heard of

problems in a number of factories, “I don’t know that I need to know . . . they are our

subcontractors. It’s not within our scope to investigate” (Vogel 2006, p. 78). Tenacious coverage

of Nike’s factory problems forced the company to rethink this position.

In August 1992 Harpers Magazine featured an article by Jeffrey Ballinger entitled “The

New Free-Trade Heel: Nike’s Profits Jump on the Backs of Asian Workers.” The article featured

Sadisah, a young Indonesian woman who worked ten hours a day, six days a week, making Nike

athletic shoes. Sadisah earned 14 cents an hour, which, according to Ballinger’s calculations,

meant she would have to work an entire month to purchase the pair of shoes she labored over.

The article, which included a photograph of Sadisah’s meager paystub, also featured Michael

Jordan, the basketball superstar who was at the time (and remains) a major part of the Nike

brand. (The Nike Air Jordan XX8SE currently retails at $150.) Sadisah, Ballinger estimated,

would have to labor 44,000 years to earn as much as Jordan’s $20 million endorsement deal.

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Ballinger, who headed a small NGO called Press4Change, proved to be a tireless

antagonist for Nike, whose identity as a brand did not include employing young women as

virtual slaves in Indonesian sweatshops. Ballinger’s article was not the first revelation to

embarrass Nike, however. Ballinger himself had been writing about Nike’s labor problems for at

least a year, and for several years Indonesian trade union publications and local newspapers had

been running accounts of abuses in Nike factories. As early as 1989 a US Agency for

International Development (USAID) study had already documented pervasive minimum wage

violations. That year Human Rights Watch and the International Labor Rights Research and

Education Fund filed a complaint with the US Trade Representative calling for a review of

Indonesia’s benefits under the Generalized Systems of Preferences. A series of strikes—some

dealt with harshly by Indonesian authorities—generated additional bad press for Nike. By the

time Ballinger’s article had appeared, a US State Department report to Congress had documented

minimum wage violations and Nike’s Sung Hwa factory was in the midst of a protracted strike

(Ballinger 2015).

In response to these events and revelations, in 1992 Nike implemented its first code of

conduct, a Memorandum of Understanding and Code of Conduct for Indonesian Business

Partners. The code prohibited the use of forced labor, set minimum-age standards (either

fourteen years, local legal limits, or age of compulsory schooling—whichever was highest),

required compliance with local legal wage and overtime standards, set a sixty-hour weekly

maximum for work, and required compliance with local health and safety standards (Heuer and

Ronkainen n.d.). The code did not end reported abuses in Nike factories, however.

Long before “going viral” entered the vocabulary with the arrival of social media,

throughout the 1990s criticism of Nike’s labor practices grew exponentially—in the popular

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press, television documentaries, NGO reports, films, and government studies. Anti-Nike protests,

organized by the Campaign for Labor Rights and other NGOs, began in 1996 in the United

States and Europe; the following year US students began protesting Nike’s links with

universities at Penn State, Florida State, the University of Illinois, North Carolina, Colorado, and

Michigan. 10 


In response, in 1996 Nike established a department charged with addressing workplace

issues in its contract factories, and two years later—faced with bad press and flagging demand—

Nike CEO Phil Knight gave a well-publicized speech at the National Press Club, admitting that

“the Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary

abuse. I truly believe the American consumer doesn’t want to buy products made under abusive

conditions.” Knight pledged to increase monitoring and adopt US clean air standards for Nike’s

contract factories, as well as increase the minimum age to eighteen for workers in its contract

shoe factories. Knight also agreed to permit monitors from independent NGOs to join its own

factory auditors, and even predicted “that these are practices which the conscientious, good

companies will follow in the 21st century” (Cushman 1998). The following year Nike played a

key role in the creation of the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a corporate-funded NGO charged

with overseeing labor practices in the garment and footwear industries.

Nike was not the only company whose labor practices created public concern during the

1990s. In 1996 the popular TV co-host Kathie Lee Gifford licensed her name to Walmart to

produce the Kathie Lee line of clothing, which boasted that some of the profits went to support

children’s charities. Charles Kernaghan, head of the National Labor Committee (a small but

highly vocal NGO focused on Central America) testified before Congress that her clothing line

was being made by thirteen- and fourteen-year-old girls working twenty-hour shifts in Honduran

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factories. When Kathie Lee denied the charges on the Today Show, Kernaghan confronted her

with Wendy Diaz, one of the Honduran child factory workers. Kathie Lee broke down and cried;

her lack of knowledge about where her Walmart line of clothing was produced spoke volumes

about the nature of global supply chains (Strom 1996). When a US Labor Department

investigation found that Walmart’s Kathie Lee line was also being made under sweatshop

conditions in New York City, the publicity made clear that domestic production suffered from

the same problems as foreign production (Bobrowsky 1999). In 1994 Kernaghan also launched a

well-publicized campaign against Liz Claiborne, which led the company to adopt a code of

conduct. The following year Kernaghan took on The Gap, at the time one of the world’s largest

apparel retailers; one of Gap’s contract factories in El Salvador, Mandarin International, had

fired workers who were trying to organize a labor union. Gap ultimately agreed to allow

independent monitoring of its factory (Bair and Palpacuer 2013).

The most significant scandal, however, hit even closer to home when 72 mostly female

workers from Thailand were found to be working as indentured servants in a working-class Los

Angeles suburb. In what came to be known as the El Monte slave-shop case, the workers had

been kept in a small factory complex, behind razor wire, some for as long as seven years. Their

starvation wages did not cover the cost of their indenture—the fees they had to pay to be illegally

trafficked to the United States and the provisions they were forced to buy in the company store.

The workers slept in crowed, unsanitary quarters—some in the same workspace as their sewing

machines. Their plight became known only when one of the workers escaped. They avoided

deportation only when the Asian Pacific American Legal Center’s attorney, Julie Su, 11

took up

their case. The workers eventually received citizenship, as well as a $2 million settlement from

the firms whose garments were found hanging in the sweatshop: Montgomery Wards, Mervyns,

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BUM International, and LF Sportswear. 12

The settlement included no admission of wrongdoing

by the firms, whose contracts were with licensed factories that were secretly funneling work to

the El Monte factory—licensed factories that were part of a self-monitoring scheme called the

Compliance Alliance. At the time Los Angeles was home to some 150,000 garment workers,

many undocumented, and most working under sweatshop conditions. 13

The Road to Global Workers Rights: Detours Along the Way

The International Labour Organization (ILO), today a UN agency, was created in the aftermath

of the First World War. It was part of a larger movement, involving governments and labor

unions, to regulate labor conditions in industrial nations during the first third of the twentieth

century. Organized labor was more than merely present at the ILO’s founding: Samuel Gompers,

head of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), chaired the 1919 Labor Commission—

comprised of representatives from nine countries—that was responsible for drafting the ILO’s

constitution (ILO 2015a). The ILO proudly claims that it “is the only tripartite U.N. agency with

government, employer, and worker representatives . . . a unique forum in which the governments

and the social partners of the economy of its Member States can freely and openly debate and

elaborate labor standards and policies” (ILO 2015b). This tripartite structure goes back to its

origins, which envisioned a world in which labor and capital might work together in a mutually

beneficial fashion, under the watchful eye of the state. Tripartism was seen as key because this

arrangement seemed to best reflect the existing power relations in democratic industrial societies,

thereby legitimating the resulting labor standards and collective bargaining standards. During the

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course of the twentieth century, both prior to and after becoming part of the newly created

United Nations in 1946, the ILO enacted some 190 conventions governing workers’ rights.

The UN Gets Involved

In 1977, following a decade of debate and discussion about the emerging strength of

multinational corporations, the ILO drew on its workers’ rights conventions when it adopted the

Tripartite Declaration of Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy (the

so-called MNE Declaration, 14

<ED: This footnote should be deleted – not necessary – and

subsequent footnotes renumbered> “the first normative text concerned with this category of

enterprises that was completed within the framework of the United Nations’ system” (Günter

1981, p 1). The MNE Declaration, revised in 2006, notes that while multinationals “play an

important part in the economies of most countries and in international economic relations… the advances

made by multinational enterprises in organizing their operations beyond the national framework may lead

to abuse of concentrations of economic power and to conflicts with national policy objectives and with

the interest of the workers” (ILO 2006, pp. 1-2). To remedy this situation it calls on all parties to respect

human rights, obey local laws and regulations, promote secure and safe employment, eliminate

discrimination, and in general follow ILO conventions on workers’ rights. Consistent with the ILO’s

overall approach, however, the MNE Declaration is entirely voluntary—a set of aspirations and

guidelines, laudable suggestions but lacking in any enforcement power. 15

<ED: delete this footnote (15) and renumber subsequent footnotes. The source for the

original quotes, which was on an English portion of a German website, is no longer

available,>

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By the mid-1990s it had become clear to the ILO that free trade was bringing hardship to

many workers. The creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1994 had also spurred a

debate over whether “social clauses,” including labor standards, should be included in trade

agreements (ILO 2015c). 16

Although free-trade proponents prevailed in terms of the rules

governing the WTO, the ILO nonetheless in June 1998 adopted a Declaration on Fundamental

Principles and Rights at Work, according to which “all Members, even if they have not ratified

the Conventions in question, have an obligation arising from the very fact of membership in the

Organization to respect, to promote and to realize, in good faith and in accordance with the

Constitution, the principles concerning the fundamental rights which are the subject of those

Conventions, namely: (1) freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to

collective bargaining, (2) the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labor, (3) the

effective abolition of child labor, and (4) the elimination of discrimination in respect of

employment and occupation” (ILO 2015d). <quote run in to prev. paragraph>These four

fundamental rights are contained in eight core ILO Conventions. 17

Of the eight, the United

States has ratified only two: the Conventions on the abolition of forced labor (no. 105) and the

worst forms of child labor (no. 182). 18

ILO Conventions do not, however, have the force of law: although they can provide

aspirational standards, they lack enforcement mechanisms. Insofar as they derive from the ILO’s

tripartite organization, they also suffer from a twenty-first-century challenge: the ILO’s

underlying labor-capital-state model, grounded in the twentieth-century heyday of nationally

based industrial capitalism, provides a weak framework for dealing with labor abuses. Today,

global supply chains touch down in countries where independent unions are weak, nonexistent,

and sometimes illegal. Governments in those countries are unlikely to enforce labor standards,

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either because they are corrupt or genuinely fear that strong enforcement of labor standards will

result in capital flight. In short, two of the three key actors in the tripartite model—organized

labor and the state—are missing in action.

The Global Sullivan Principles

Although the original Sullivan Principles were aimed at ending apartheid in South Africa, they

resurfaced more than two decades later, in 1999, when Leon Sullivan and UN Secretary-General

Kofi Annan announced the Global Sullivan Principles. These were intended to “support

economic, social and political justice by companies where they do business; to support human

rights and to encourage equal opportunity at all levels of employment, including racial and

gender diversity on decision making committees and boards; to train and advance disadvantaged

workers for technical, supervisory and management opportunities; and to assist with greater

tolerance and understanding among peoples; thereby, helping to improve the quality of life for

communities, workers and children with dignity and equality” (Leon H. Sullivan Foundation

2013).

The Global Sullivan Principles greatly extended the list of workers’ rights, calling for the

end of child labor, involuntary servitude, physical punishment, and other forms of abuse; the

right to freedom of association; compensation sufficient to meet basic needs (what is today called

a “living wage”); and full transparency with respect to implementation (University of Minnesota

Human Rights Library 2015). The United Nations was now fully on board in support of workers’

rights, having called for a set of principles long advocated by workers’ rights activists.

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The UN Global Compact and Guiding Principles on Human Rights

The United Nations took yet another step to affirm the importance of labor rights when it

officially launched its Global Compact in 2000, today billed as the “largest corporate

sustainability initiative in the world—with 10,000 signatories based in more than 140 countries.”

The Global Compact’s approximately 8,000 member companies pledge to “voluntarily align

their operations and strategies with ten universally accepted principles in the areas of human

rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption.” The four labor-related principles are the ILO’s

four Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (UN Global Compact 2015a).

The Global Compact reflects in large part the efforts of the Harvard political scientist

John Ruggie, whose scholarship focused on the mismatch between economic globalization and

nation-based regulations and enforcement. Ruggie served as the UN Assistant Secretary-General

for Strategic Planning from 1997 to 2001, a post created for him by UN Secretary-General Kofi

Annan. Among his responsibilities, in addition to playing a key role in developing the UN

Millennium Development Goals, was creating and then overseeing the Global Compact. 19

<AU:

Note 19 is blank; did you intend to delete this note?><ED: Delete.>

The Global Compact emphasizes that it “is not a code of conduct” but instead offers “a

policy framework for organizing and developing corporate sustainability strategies.” It is not

legally binding, nor is it “a substitute for existing regulatory approaches,” rather, it is “a purely

voluntary initiative designed to promote innovation in relation to good corporate citizenship”

(UN Global Compact 2015b). It costs little for a business to join the UN Global Compact:

membership fees range from $250 (“suggested minimum”) for companies with annual revenues

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below $50 million, to $15,000+ for companies whose annual revenues exceed $5 billion. Active

firms are promised the benefits of information sharing across a global network of organizations,

all of which profess a commitment to making the world a better place (UN Global Compact

2015c).

The UN Global Compact states explicitly that “the initiative is not designed, nor does it

have the mandate or resources, to monitor or measure participants’ performance . . . it is not now

and does not aspire to become a compliance based initiative.” If a member firm is accused by

some party of “systematic or egregious abuses” that “is found not to be prima facie frivolous,”

the Global Compact Office may require the firm to provide a written account and work, in

various ways, to remediate the problem; only in extreme cases might a firm be rendered inactive

as a member. The only way a firm is likely to be rendered inactive is if it fails for two

consecutive years to submit an annual “Communication on Progress,” a public statement of steps

taken to meet the Compact’s goals (UN Global Compact 2015d).

Based on a 2012 survey of member corporations, in terms of overall sustainability efforts

(which include, besides the four labor-related principles mentioned above, six other principles

concerned with human rights, the environment, and corruption), the UN Global Compact Global

Corporate Sustainability Report 2013 reports that “companies are moving from good intentions

to significant actions,” although “supply chains are a roadblock to improved performance.”

Among findings related specifically to labor, 77 percent of companies report having taken some

action to define their workers’ right to freely form and join trade unions, and 59 percent claim

they have taken steps to actually implement collective bargaining. 20

These results suffer from the same believability problem that plagues corporate

monitoring: they are self-reported by firms that have a strong interest in burnishing their image

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without being subject to independent verification. As we shall see later in this chapter, there is a

significant gap between what businesses profess to do in terms of implementing CSR policies

and the results on the ground of those efforts.

The UN Global Compact may enable firms to share their best ideas for achieving

sustainable practices, but firms are under no obligation to implement those ideas, much less

provide full transparency when they claim to do so. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that

however well intentioned, the UN Global Compact’s main effect is to provide its members with

the public-relations benefit of being a part of “the largest corporate sustainability initiative in the

world.”

Ruggie was later recalled by Annan in 2005 to serve as his Special Representative,

charged with “identifying what international human rights standards currently regulate corporate

conduct, as opposed to the conduct of states and individuals; and clarifying the respective roles

of states and businesses in safeguarding these rights” (Ruggie 2013, <AU: page number?>). In

this position he developed set of Guiding Principles on Human Rights, unanimously endorsed by

the UN Human Rights Council in 2011. The Guiding Principles set forth a series of guidelines

for states and corporations to protect human rights. Like the Global Compact, they are not legally

binding: “Nothing in these Guiding Principles should be read as creating new international law

obligations” (OHCHR 2011<AU: The “Guiding Principles” document was listed 2x in the

bibliography, so I deleted one listing and kept OHCHR; ok?><ED: OK>). Like the Global

Compact, the Guiding Principles are aspirational guidelines, something for businesses to affirm

without concern about verification or enforcement.

Corporate Self-Regulation: A Growth Industry

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By the second decade of the twenty-first century the adoption of corporate codes of corporate

conduct has become frenetic. In 1970 almost no large corporations had codes of conduct. The

number grew slowly until the 1990s, and then exploded. During the past decade the number of

codes has doubled, such that 86 percent of Fortune Global 200 corporations now have codes of

conduct and two-thirds report having updated their codes within the past three years. According

to KPMG, a Swiss-based firm that assists companies in the “development, implementation and

monitoring of their codes and compliance programs,” codes are typically adopted for one of

three reasons: to comply with legal requirements, create a shared company culture, and to protect

or improve the corporate reputation (KPMG 2008, pp. 3-4). Firms that fall into one of two

categories typically implement CSR: oversight organizations and factory inspection companies

that do the actual work.

How CSR Works

Oversight organizations are typically nonprofit NGOs whose responsibility is to provide model

codes of conduct, hold training sessions, and accredit factory inspection companies to perform

audits and certify compliance. There are more than a dozen such companies, introducing a vast

and bewildering new lexicon of acronyms into the business vocabulary. These include (to

mention some of the better-known firms) BSCI (Business Social Compliance Initiative), ETI

(Ethical Trading Initiative), FLA (Fair Labor Association), GSCP (Global Social Compliance

Program), ILO Better Work (a program of the UN International Labour Organization), SMETA

(Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit), SAI (Social Accountability International), SAAS (Social

Accountability Accreditation Services), WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Accredited

Production), and WRC (Worker Rights Consortium). Some of these firms (for example, FLA and

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the WRC) sometimes conduct their own monitoring as well. Oversight organizations generally

share a common (and converging) set of principles regarding such issues as prohibiting child

labor, forced labor, discrimination, harassment, and sexual abuse; specifying standards for

maximum hours (typically forty-eight, or else as mandated by local law), as well as requiring

that overtime be voluntary; and even calling for freedom of association and collective

bargaining. There are some major differences as well: only WRC, for example, requires the

payment of a living wage or the full public disclosure of the results of factory audits. 21

Factory inspection companies, which are typically for-profit businesses, visit factories

and assess their compliance with the codes of conduct of the oversight organization. Depending

on the type of certification system, either factories or brands initiate the process by contacting an

oversight organization or one of the factory inspection companies. Because supply chains of

large retailers or brands often consist of thousands of factories, only a small percentage of their

factories are typically inspected; those that are chosen for inspection are often visited only once

every few years. Visits from inspectors can be brief or cursory, or can last several days. There

are dozens of factory inspection companies around the world, varying in size from large,

multinational corporations to very small, local firms. 22

It is estimated that some fifty thousand

factories employing millions of workers are audited each year, with Walmart alone accounting

for some 11,500 inspections (Clifford and Greenhouse 2013). The results of audit reports are

usually kept confidential, since they are proprietary information for firms that hire the auditors.

Monitoring far-flung supply chains for compliance has proven to be challenging, to say

the least—and, for reasons discussed elsewhere in this book, it has not succeeded in its

objectives (see especially chapters 1–3). In recent years there have been major efforts to quantify

compliance in hopes of developing industry-wide standards that would result in better outcomes.

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These efforts initially focused on the environmental side, but with the creation of the Sustainable

Apparel Coalition (SAC) in 2010, incorporated social standards as well. The SAC is headed by

Jason Kibbey, who discusses its origins and methods in chapter 4. Another effort at developing a

single index, the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) Initiative, has been developed by Harvard

Law School’s Pension and Capital Stewardship Project. This index intended to provide a guide

for socially responsible investors (IRRC Institute 2012). Indices such as the SAC and the KPI

Initiative face at least two major challenges: they rely on self-reporting rather then truly

independent verification and, to the extent that they involve combining different measures and

scales into a single number, they may obscure significant problems by masking their underlying

assumptions.

Business Schools Get on Board

Business schools have increasingly mainstreamed social and environmental concerns into their

curricula as well. Every two years the Aspen Institute issues its Beyond Grey Pinstripes report,

based on a survey of fully accredited full-time MBA programs around the world. The 2011–2012

report, which documents “how business schools are introducing and developing the concepts of

social, ethical and environmental stewardship with business students,” is based on surveys of 149

schools in twenty-two countries on six continents (Antarctica being the exception). Schools are

given numerical ratings based on their response to the survey. 23

Eight of the top ten schools are in the United States, with Stanford receiving top billing.

York University (Canada) ranks second, and IE University (Spain) third. Among the one

hundred top-ranked schools, the United States, with sixty-eight schools, is the clear front-runner

in the burgeoning business of educating future business leaders in responsible stewardship. The

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United Kingdom is a distant second with five schools, followed by Canada and Australia (four

each), Spain (three each), and Germany, France, and Mexico (two each). China, 24

Colombia,

Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Philippines, South Africa, and South Korea each

have one school among the top hundred. Not all of these schools focus on the social aspects of

“stewardship” and few provide an emphasis on workers’ rights. Among the more than 6,000

courses surveyed, a search on the term “workers’ rights” turned up only 320 courses (5 percent).

Most programs appear to emphasize environmental concerns.

The Fair Labor Association: A “Multistakeholder NGO” Funded by Business

The Fair Labor Association (FLA) grew primarily out of government concern over revelations

about sweatshop abuses. Robert Reich, Labor Secretary during the first term of the Clinton

administration, began a government crusade against US firms’ use of domestic and foreign

sweatshops as soon as he took office. In 1993 Reich launched a “no sweat” campaign on the

Labor Department website, and the following year authorized the Labor Department to enforce

the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act’s “hot goods” provision, under which goods made in

violation of wage and hour standards would be seized when they crossed state lines and therefore

subject to federal jurisdiction (Los Angeles Times 1994). When the El Monte “slave-shop”

scandal occurred, Reich publicized the names of the companies involved, much to the dismay of

the companies, who claimed they had no knowledge that their contracts with licensed factories

had been subcontracted to the El Monte factory. His investigations also found that Walmart’s

Kathie Lee line was being produced under sweatshop conditions in New York City. Reich’s

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strategy of “naming, blaming, shaming” was one of the major reasons that major firms came to a

series of meetings organized by Reich. 25

The initial meeting, in July 1996, was co-organized with a now humbled Kathie Lee

Gifford. Dubbed the Fashion Industry Forum, it brought together some three hundred

participants, including major brands and retailers (including Kathie Lee, Levis, Kmart, Liz

Claiborne, and Walmart), representatives for labor and NGOs, and fashion celebrities. The

general consensus resulting from this effort—at least on the part of industry—was to reaffirm the

belief that market mechanisms, not government enforcement, was the way to go. One month

later President Clinton hosted a meeting at the White House that led to the creation of the

Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP). Although the AIP had a broad representation of businesses,

NGOs, and two domestic unions, it necessarily lacked (given the political climate at the time)

worker or NGO representatives from the global South, and hence those most affected by supply-

chain abuses. 26

After eight months of contentious and largely unsuccessful negotiations (and

perhaps prompted by yet another embarrassing revelation of abuses in Nike factories by Vietnam

Labor Watch), in April 2007 the AIP reached agreement on a common code of conduct, clearly

stated as something that companies should “voluntarily adopt,” and a monitoring scheme for

assuring compliance (Bobrowsky 1999). 27

The code prohibited child labor (defined as under

age fifteen, unless local laws defined it as fourteen) and worker discrimination, abuse, and

harassment. It required the paying of the local minimum or prevailing worker wage (whichever

was higher), a “safe and healthy working environment,” a workweek not to exceed forty-eight

hours (with a limit of twelve hours of overtime, payable at no less than the normal wage, and one

day off each week). Significantly, it also called for “recognition and respect for workers’ rights

of freedom of association and collective bargaining.” Compliance was to be achieved by

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“independent external monitors who will conduct independent reviews” (US Department of

Labor 1997).

Finally, the AIP agreement called for the creation of a new nonprofit organization to

oversee the implementation of the agreed-on code and certify auditors. This step—which

eventually resulted in the FLA—proved to be more difficult: the devil of implementation was

truly in the details. Disagreements—between labor and NGOS on the one side, and the firms on

the other—had previously troubled AIP negotiations; they resurfaced when the time came for

implementation. Principle among these were the question of requiring a minimum wage versus a

living wage, the right to freedom of association, how independently should “independent

monitoring” be conducted (for example, should companies hire the monitors?), and whether

monitoring reports should be made public. When negotiations stalled, the National Labor

Committee, labor unions, and other organizations launched antisweatshop campaigns to keep

public attention focused on the issue. Nike in particular was the subject of several campaigns,

including the second annual Nike Day of Protest in October 1997.

The emergence of a student antisweatshop movement provided further impetus for the

AIP to reach an agreement. The student movement began at Duke University in 1998 and rapidly

spread to campuses across the country. United Students against Sweatshops (USAS), a union-

funded student organization with chapters on a growing number of campuses, was raising

demands far stronger than those that were likely to be adopted by the industry-dominated AIP.

USAS’s model university code of conduct would have applied to all brands making logoed

sweatshirts, T-shirts, and other apparel under university trademark licensing agreements. The $3

billion collegiate licensing sector included major brands such as Nike and Reebok, companies

that not only produced logoed apparel to sell in college bookstores but also enjoyed lucrative

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contracts with athletic departments. The USAS code required full disclosure of the names and

addresses of all contract factories engaged in production, the payment of a living wage,

comprehensive, independent, and transparent factory monitoring, and full freedom of association

for workers. 28

Eventually a subgroup of the firms (Liz Claiborne, Nike, Philips-Van Heusen, and

Reebok) began to move forward, working with several NGOs to come up with a final agreement,

and the FLA was formally created in October 1999. Four other companies signed on (Kathie

Lee, Nicole Miller, Patagonia, and L.L. Bean), but the two unions withdrew. UNITE (the Union

of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees) and the AFL-CIO’s Retail, Wholesale, and

Department Store Union balked on the eventual resolution of the key issues that had plagued the

AIP discussions throughout, which they felt had been railroaded into the final agreement by the

subgroup of firms and NGOs that had produced it. The FLA charter, though calling for a living-

wage study, did not commit to the eventual adoption of a living wage. Although the charter

called for encouraging countries (such as China) to take steps toward respecting the right of

freedom of association, it stopped short of requiring such a right in its members’ codes. And, in

terms of monitoring, the FLA requirement (that 10 percent of a brand’s factories be monitored

each year) was felt to be too minimal: an entire brand could claim to be compliant even though a

small fraction of its factories had been monitored. Ultimately, only the International Labor

Rights Fund remained in the FLA, on the grounds that at least one pro-labor voice should be

present.

The FLA charter currently has a board of directors comprised of six business

representatives chosen by the FLA’s Business Caucus, six “labor/NGO” (civil society)

representatives chosen by a majority of the then-serving civil society board members, and six

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university affiliate representatives chosen by a University Advisory Council. 29

Some two

hundred colleges and universities currently belong to the FLA. The FLA’s chair is selected by a

supermajority vote of the board (FLA 2014).

The FLA’s funding comes almost entirely from business members, which has led its

critics to charge that it is captive to the firms it is supposed to be overseeing. Although its charter

calls for six “labor/NGO” board members (FLA 2014), 30

as of fall 2014 there were no

representatives of labor on the board. Lynda Yantz, the head of Maquila Solidarity Network, a

pro-labor/women’s rights Canadian NGO, had served on the board between 2009 and 2013, but

resigned in early 2013. Yantz had pressed the FLA to strength its code of conduct (in particular

its complaints procedures) as well as include more labor representation on the board. In this

effort she was unsuccessful. “When it turned out that FLA did not wish to implement structural

changes on the latter two points, MSN stepped out. We felt like a voice crying in the wilderness

. . . FLA operates more as an industry organization than as a multi-stakeholder initiative” (Good

Electronics 2013). 31

The Failures of Self-Regulation

Since virtually all major firms today profess socially responsible business practices, have

adopted codes of conduct, and employ auditing firms to monitor compliance, it should be

possible to see some beneficial results of CSR in terms of working conditions. Yet this has not

been the case, as the example of Bangladesh clearly shows (see especially chapters 1 and 3,

although the challenges faced by CSR are discussed throughout this book). How could factory

disasters claiming thousands of lives, and injuring thousands of others, have occurred in recently

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audited factories producing apparel for some of the world’s largest brands and retailers, all of

whom profess socially responsible practices and claim to routinely monitor their contract

factories to assure compliance? Although there is a strong public-relations aspect to CSR

programs, it is important to recognize that CSR has in fact created an increasingly elaborate set

of mechanisms involving the definition of acceptable labor standards, outside inspections, and

various penalties and rewards that the brands and retailers at the apex of the supply chain have

imposed on the vendors and manufactures at the bottom. Why have these failed to be effective,

and with such a significant cost in human lives?

One reason is the failure of inspections and audits. Given the global dispersion of

factories, it is difficult for brands and retailers to audit all the factories in their supply chains with

any regularity. When audits are conducted, they are often conducted superficially—brief visits

that fail to detect significant health, safety, and wage violations. Auditors may lack adequate

training to detect hazardous chemicals or electrical violations. Audits are typically announced

well in advance, giving factories ample time to unlock their fire exits and remove any obstacles

to safe exits, doctor their books, and warn workers that reporting violations could result in

cancellation of orders and loss of jobs. Interviews with workers are often conducted on site,

leading to fear of reprisals if complaints are made. Prior to the Rana Plaza collapse, auditors in

Bangladesh had little or no training in assessing structural issues, and so ignored them

completely. 32

Firms often blame second- and third-tier subcontractors for the problem, claiming to be

unaware that their contract factories have outsourced orders to other, less-regulated factories.

This, in fact, was the conclusion of a major study that focused on the fires and building collapses

in Bangladesh (Labowitz and Baumann-Pauly 2014). Yet the major disasters that have occurred

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in Bangladesh’s garment factories in recent years occurred at facilities that were known by major

brands to have produced their goods and had been repeatedly subjected to labor rights audits

conducted for these same buyers. The problem lies not with indirect manufacturing but with the

structure of an industry in which contract factories must be price-takers if they wish to compete.

The brands and retailers ultimately determine the terms under which their supply chains operate.

If they squeeze their contract factories, the factories will respond by cutting costs in various

ways: cutting wages, engaging in forced or unpaid overtime, avoiding safety measures that add

to cost, outsourcing production to lower-wage factories. “Seasonal” orders add to the problem,

resulting in an around-the-clock production surge when the latest “fast fashion” (or iPhone) is

announced.

Significantly, factory audits almost always lack transparency: they are internal reports to

the brand or retailer, not public documents. Workers have no knowledge of the results of audits,

even when the findings have clear implications for their health and safety. Nor do consumers

have access to potentially embarrassing information that might spur the firms to action.

Ultimately, whatever ameliorative impulse the firm might have is systematically subverted by

the economic imperatives embedded within the structure of the global supply chains. When

business interests trump social concerns, CSR takes a back seat.

CSR represents a key shift in economic governance: from public to private regulation and

enforcement. As is argued throughout this book, such a shift has proven highly profitable for

business. Although it has provided millions of workers around the globe with paid work, it has

done so at the cost of decent wages, safe workplaces, and—most important—any meaningful

system of governance in which the workers themselves have an active and effective voice in

determining the conditions of their employment.

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To the extent that the “soulful corporation” of the mid-twentieth century was concerned

with industrial stability—adopting labor-friendly policies at least in part to avoid strikes and

labor turnover—CSR of the twenty-first century arose in large part to preserve brand value in the

face of embarrassing revelations while avoiding government regulation. The result of this shift

has been a parallel shift in the nature of economic governance. The tripartite model, enshrined in

the ILO approach, involved three key players: labor, business, and the state. Workers acted

collectively through labor unions; the state created and enforced regulations designed to protect

workers’ rights. Unionization and worker’s rights were the result of decades of labor struggles.

This arrangement, frequently referred to as the American social contract, has given way in the

twenty-first century to a new arrangement in which two of the three key players, workers and the

state, are replaced by other actors: independently owned contract factories and monitoring firms.

The result is a new tripartite model: brands and retailers produce their goods through

contract factories, then hire firms to monitor their factories and privately report back their

findings. This new arrangement, sometimes termed a “social accountability contract,” 33

effectively makes corporations responsible for governing themselves. This outcome had long

been preferred by business, but was reluctantly conceded during the course of the twentieth

century in response to growing labor power. But as the power of labor weakened, businesses—

long opposed to state regulation—returned to a nineteenth-century approach to economic

governance, this time on a global scale. The current prevailing belief in unfettered markets, the

power of firms over states, the WTO prohibition of including social clauses in trade agreements,

the intentional weakness of the ILO and its nonbinding conventions—all of these have created a

space in which companies could effectively argue that a “trust me” approach was the only

workable solution to the problem of sweatshops.

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2. From Public Regulation to Private Enforcement 1

Maquila Solidarity Network 2012b. <ED: Is it necessary to repeat the citation to MSN in

this footnote, since it appears in the text?> Other firms using Tazreen at the time of the

fire included Sears, Kik, Dickies, Disney, C&A, and Li & Fung; all had CSR codes of

conduct governing their production.

2 See chapter 4, where notes that this (his estimate) most likely understates the actual number of

deaths, since it is based on an English-language LexisNexis search of news

databases.<AU: Can find no mention of Nussbaum in any of the citations. Chap. 4 (p.

117): for the estimate of over 1,000 deaths, Ross cites Claeson 2012 and then in note

7 says the study was headed by the International Labor Rights Forum using data

Ross generated. Again, Nussbaum is not mentioned anywhere in chap. 4: Table 4.1

(deaths from factory fires 1990–2012) cites data from NGO and LexisNexis sources

as compiled by Ross and reported in Claeson 2012.> <ED: Nussbaum should be

deleted, since he was initially to be listed as a co-author (I believe he was a student

helping Bob), but Bob eventually decided not to include him.> In one comparison

period (2006–2009), their search found 128 factory fire deaths, while Bangladesh’s Fire

Service and Civil Defense Department found 414—more than three times as many.

3 For a series of essays that examine the role of big buyers, see Hamilton, Senauer, and Petrovic

2012.

<AU: Ok to delete this note?> 4

<ED: Yes, but you will have to renumber notes. I put this in

the bib.>

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5

The notion of “countervailing power” as characterizing labor-capital relations in the United

States was first advanced in 1952 by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith (2012). <ED:

I put the reference in the bib.>

6 By the mid 1950s, 35 percent of all wage and salaried workers were unionized (Meyers, 2004).

<ED: I put the reference in the bib.>

7 Sullivan was one of a group of prominent African American leaders who saw “black

capitalism” as an important avenue out of poverty for the African American community.

He was the founder of Philadelphia’s Opportunities Industrialization Centers (OIC),

which provided skills training and job placement for those with few prospects; OIC

eventually grew into a national effort. He also started a number of programs that provided

investment funds for black-owned businesses.

8 A sixth principle, “Working to eliminate laws and customs that impede social, economic, and

political justice,” was added in 1984. See

http://www.marshall.edu/revleonsullivan/principled/principles.htm.

9 See http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/titlevii.cfm.

10 For a complete chronology of Nike’s labor issues, see Ballinger 2015.

11 In 2010 Su was appointed as California’s labor commissioner.

12 Separate settlements were made with Millers Outpost and Tomato Inc. The workers had

previously received $1.3 million—roughly $1 million confiscated from the El Monte

sweatshop and $300,000 from other brands and retailers whose garments were made

there. White and McDonnell 1997.

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13

See Appelbaum 1999; Bonacich and Appelbaum 2000.

<AU: In the bibliography, this URL matches Gunther 1981, not ILO 2006a or b.><ED:

delete this footnote, renumber subsequent footnotes>

15 ILO Tripartite Declaration of Principles (http://www.csr-in-deutschland.de/en/about-

csr/guidelines-and-instruments/ilo-tripartite-declaration.html). The Organization for

Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1976 and the ILO in 1977 issued

Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, which were explicitly stated to be

nonenforceable.

16 Although the United States has not seriously considered enforceable labor standards for trade

agreements, some small steps have been taken at the state level. The California

Transparency in Supply Chains Act (SB 657), which was signed into law by former

(Republican) governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and took effect on January 1, 2012,

“requires companies to report on specific actions taken to eradicate slavery and human

trafficking in their supply chain” by reporting on the extent to which they engaged in

third-party verification, independent (and unannounced) auditing, supplier certification,

internal accountability, and training (see

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/164934.pdf). Although the act involves

self-reporting and lacks an effective enforcement mechanism, it does reflect a strong

concern with human trafficking, and provisions provide a possible window for assessing

supply-chain compliance with labor standards (Mattos 2012). A similar bill, HR 2759,

was introduced in the US House of Representatives with bipartisan support in 2011, but

has not been voted on.

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17

The eight core Conventions are: freedom of association and protection of the right to organize

(no. 87), right to organize and collective bargaining (no. 98), forced labor (no. 29),

abolition of forced labor (no. 105), minimum age (no. 138), worst forms of child labor

(no. 182), equal remuneration (no. 100), and discrimination (no. 111).

18 As of September 2015, one hundred thirty-eight countries had ratified all eight core

Conventions; Brunei joins the United States and the Cook Islands in ratifying only two.

Nineteen countries have ratified seven; nine countries have ratified six; eight countries

have ratified five; five countries have ratified four; and one country has ratified three. For

a complete interactive list of ratifications, see ILO, 2015e. <ED: I put the ref in the bib.

Since this is updated continuously (I assume), by the time the book comes out it

should perhaps be ILO 2016? But then we will have to update the numbers….>

<AU: delete note 19?> 19

<ED: Delete.>

20 The survey, which was conducted and administered by the Wharton School, was based on

1,712 respondents from 113 countries, a representing a 25 percent response rate, which

the report claims was “generally representative of the Global Compact participant base.”

https://www.unglobalcompact.org/docs/about_the_gc/Global_Corporate_Sustainability_

Report2013.pdf.

21 An interactive comparison of the codes of conduct of thirteen leading oversight companies as

of June 2014 can be found at

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiyymkoG0zs0dHBwYUIzelAwZDBRQ

Xc0MXhZV05kTEE&usp=sharing#gid=0, or can be downloaded at

8/29/16 f_ch02.docx: 77

https://secure.lsit.ucsb.edu/hist/d7_labor/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.hist.d7_labor/files/sitef

iles/CSR_Research_Files/Code%20of%20Conduct%20Comparison%207–8–14.pdf.

22 The largest publicly trade monitoring companies include SGS, Intertek, and Bureau Veritas.

23 The criteria that determine schools’ ratings include “the number of courses offered that

contain social, environmental or ethical content,” the number of courses that “specifically

address the intersection of social and environmental issues in mainstream, for-profit

business,” “the extent to which students are actually exposed to such content,” and “the

number of scholarly articles written by business school faculty, published in peer-

reviewed, business journals in calendar years 2009 and 2010 that contain social,

environmental or ethical content.” The full report, as well as an interactive website that

permits a detailed analysis of results, is available at

http://www.beyondgreypinstripes.org/.

24 China, which ranks seventieth, offers the MBA at China Europe International Business

School, a cooperative arrangement between the European Foundation for Management

and Development (an international network, based in Brussels, that “aims at influencing

the European Agenda putting forward management education and development issues;”

EFMD, 2015) <AU: source of quote?><ED: ref in bib>, and Shanghai Jiao Tong

University.

25 See Reich’s (1997) autobiographical account of his years as labor secretary., Locked in the

Cabinet (NY: Knopf, 1997)<AU: Include in bibliography and author/year

here?><ED: done>. Reich also tried a positive strategy, initiating a “Trendsetter List”

8/29/16 f_ch02.docx: 78

and working with the National Consumer League and National Retail Federation to

identify sweat-free firms. Of course, all such lists relied on self-reporting and are thus of

doubtful reliability. For a detailed account of Reich’s efforts and the emergence of the

FLA, see Bobrowsky 1999.

26 Participants included “Nike, Liz Claiborne, Warnaco, Philips-Van Heusen, L.L. Bean,

Tweeds, Patagonia, Nicole Miller, Karen Kane, Kathie Lee Gifford; unions included the

Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE) and the Retail,

Wholesale, and Department Store Union of the AFL-CIO; and NGOs were represented

by the National Consumers League (NCL), Lawyers Committee for Human Rights

(LCHR), and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). Reebok, the

business association Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), and two NGOs, the

International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF) and Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for

Human Rights (RFK Center), joined shortly afterwards and participated in the

negotiations drafting the code and monitoring principles.” Bobrowsky 1999, note 18.

27 This account of the emergence of the FLA draws heavily on Bobrowsky’s detailed report.

28 See Bobrowsky 1999, 40–41, for a more detailed discussion of the pressure put on AIP by

USAS and other organizations. We discuss the antisweatshop movement in chapter 5.

29 The original charter had only a single university representative, but the university role was

expanded when it was clear that overseeing university trademark licensing codes would

be a major part of its remit. See FLA 1999.

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30

The FLA charter defines “labor/NGO” as “consumer, human rights, labor rights, labor union,

religious and other public interest organizations (including student groups), related to fair

labor standards,” http://www.fairlabor.org/sites/default/files/fla_charter_2–12–14.pdf, p.

6.

31 As of fall 2014 the vacancy created by MSN’s departure had not yet been filled.

32 As we shall see in chapter 6, structural engineers are now involved in apparel factory

inspections in Bangladesh.

33 The term “social accountability contract” was first used, although with a slightly different

emphasis, in Esbenshade 2004a. See chapter 3.