Seeing RED?
Tuesday, 28 February 2006 22:58
On 1st March, GAP launched its first item in the new Product RED range, a fundraising brand launched by U2's Bono at the World Economic Forum earlier this year in Davos. But is this a positive step for the workers making this product? While Product RED does nothing to ensure this, steps taken by GAP may yet make it the case.
The first thing to recognise is that the RED label is not a certification label: it does not guarantee that any items produced under the RED name are produced ethically, nor does it make any claims to do this. According to its website, RED is “a global initiative whose primary objective is to engage the private sector in the fight against AIDS in Africa by channelling funds from the sale of RED products directly to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.” From this and from what RED have said to Labour Behind the Label it is clear that RED initiative does not include aims of a more political or sustainable nature.
LBL believes that before jumping on the charity bandwagon, companies should get their own houses in order. After all, whilst any initiative supporting the fight against AIDS in Africa is welcome, a more sustainable approach would be to invest further in the workers producing clothes sold by multinational companies, and ensure that countries in Africa receive genuine benefits from garment production through long term commitments to their industry.
This is why we are pleased that GAP have decided to make the RED T-shirt an all-African product, with the garment manufacture taking place in Lesotho. Lesotho’s garment industry is in crisis: since the end of the quota system in 2005 the garment industry has increasingly shifted production to larger producer countries such as China and India. This makes GAP’s commitment to stay in Lesotho and help safeguard the livelihoods of workers there a welcome step.
In terms of actual working conditions, Labour Behind the Label asks companies that genuinely want to change conditions in their supply chains to take the following steps to:
- Join a multi-stakeholder initiative, such as the Ethical Trading Initiative, where companies, labour rights activists and trade unions work together to address workers’ rights issues.
- Publicly disclose the names and locations of the factories or workshops producing their goods.
- Demonstrate credible, independent verification of working conditions in the factories, conducted in association with local trade unions and NGOs.
- Allow external parties to access the factories to verify working conditions.
GAP has already gone some way towards fulfilling these criteria. As a member of the Ethical Trading Initiative it has already made a commitment to work towards the implementation of a rigorous code of conduct, has an audit programme that is more comprehensive than most other companies and has already published a list of all its suppliers worldwide
LBL makes a series of additional demands of companies, which, like GAP, have taken significant steps on workers’ rights and/or are involved in initiatives that are designed to appeal to a more conscious consumer. Although RED is a brand based on charity rather than ethics, we would include members of the RED initiative in this and urge them to:
- Publicly disclose the names and locations of the factories or workshops where RED clothes are produced.
- Make audit results of these factories publicly available.
- Allow external parties to access the factories to verify working conditions.
- Demonstrate that workers in the factories involved are organised into a free trade union and can defend their rights through collective bargaining.
As GAP has already published details of its supply chain, the first demand has already been fulfilled and it seems likely that external parties are already auditing its factories. So far, we are unaware whether audits for factories producing specifically for the RED brand have been made public and it remains unclear whether the workers producing for RED are organised into trade unions to defend their rights.
While GAP, like all clothing companies, is a long way from resolving all workers’ rights issues in its supply chain, it has come further than many. Whilst we would like to see initiatives like RED being more comprehensive in their attitude towards combining charity and political change, so far indications suggest that the way the RED T-shirt has been put together could be a positive step for the African garment industry as well as for the fight against AIDS.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
