From Unity, 5 May 2007

How clean are your clothes?

by Marion Baur

Among the many stalls in St George’s Market after the May Day rally in Belfast there will be a completely new one this year. For the first time the Clean Clothes Campaign is going to be present in an Irish city.
     Just another campaign? Far from it. The CCC is now the world’s largest campaigning group against sweatshop and child labour and for workers’ rights in the textile industry. It is made up of more than 250 trade unions, coalitions of consumer organisations, researchers, solidarity groups and other NGOs, world shops and, in some countries, church groups.
     “We aim to improve working conditions in the garment industry worldwide. We inform consumers about the conditions in which their garments and sports shoes are being produced, we pressurise brands and retailers to take responsibility for these conditions and demand that companies accept and implement a good code of labour standards that includes monitoring and independent verification of code compliance. We co-operate with organisations all over the world, especially self-organised groups of garment workers, including workers in factories of all sizes, home-workers and migrant workers without valid working papers.” (Quoted from the mission statement of the CCC.)
     Is this a new appearance of the old dream of making life better without changing the system? Some of the activists would probably look at the problems of child labour and the horrific conditions for workers from a purely moral point of view; but as a whole the CCC is increasingly pointing the finger at the real cause of the situation: the rat race for profit by the capitalist firms.
     “Same old story of exploitation” is the title of an article in their excellent booklet Workers’ Voices, a brutally true publication about the situation of women in the eastern European and Turkish textile industries. If one reads it they can’t but come to ask questions about the “coming of the free world” to the east of Europe.
     The regular publication of the CCC is the newsletter Clean Clothes. With branches in Germany, Austria, Turkey, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Britain (where it is called “Labour behind the Label”), to name just the European ones, the CCC is now able to publish in various languages, and as the number of supporting groups and individuals increases, the ability to act against injustices is growing. In Germany, for example, all the member-unions of the DGB (German association of trade unions) are now affiliated to the CCC, a total of 7 million members.
     The campaign has been involved in dozens of projects during the last few years: the spectacular protests against leading sportswear brands during the Olympic Games, the boycott of the German retail giant Tschibo’s selling clothes from the “death mills” in Bangladesh, and the struggle with and for the families of the victims of the factory collapses in Bangladesh, to name but few.
     One of the frequently asked questions is the one about a list of “good” and “clean” garment brands, manufacturers, and retailers. What sort of clothes should one buy? I spoke about this to Christiane Schnura, a member of the German Communist Party who is a key figure in the CCC and works at the campaign’s German headquarters in Wuppertal (which, by the way, is run and financed by the Protestant church, an indication of how broad CCC has become). Christiane says: “Unfortunately we don’t have a list of clean retailers. We don’t feel able to endorse or recommend any particular companies: they all have a long way to go. Recently there has been an increase in small companies that come from a fair trade or activist background and are trying to provide an ethical alternative for consumers. We have compiled a critical overview of ethical brands which can be seen on our web site (www.cleanclothes.org) We are urging consumers to keep asking questions about the origins and conditions which clothes are made under, and we know that if there are answers at all, they will be frustrating in most cases. But if we keep asking, shop managers at some point seek answers from their suppliers. After all, to them it’s the market that counts.”
     Many people have been wondering why there have been no activities of the CCC in Ireland, a country with a strong textile industry until very recently. Part of the answer lies in the weakness of the trade union movement and its “not looking across the borders” attitude. Wherever the unions are strong and active, the CCC, like other campaigns for workers’ rights, get support.
     Another reason I would see in the introverted and week political left, communists included. Had we directed more energy towards solidarity with people like the textile workers—here and in other countries—and less to senseless arguments among ourselves, we could not only have grown in strength but stopped some of the capitalists from destroying our own textile base by shifting production to countries like South Africa or Bangladesh.
     The crying shame of the clothes manufacturers Desmonds wrecking modern factories and axing hundreds of jobs in Derry, Swatragh and Dungiven is but one recent example. Did they go out of business? Of course not, they ran to Bangladesh and Turkey, and were able do so almost unnoticed by the political left and against practically no principled opposition of the unions. Had we stopped them, wouldn’t it have been the most shining victory for the left in a long time?
     It can be done! There have been many cases in various countries recently where capitalist greed was curtailed. In Greece, India, Germany, Indonesia and many others the closure of mills has been prevented. The CCC played a good role in all of them. It is time to create awareness here, and no better day to go public on the terrible conditions in the worldwide garment industries and on the struggle of workers for their rights.
     Visit the stall of the Clean Clothes Campaign on May Day at St George’s Market. Readers who can’t make the May Day rally can get all the detailed information about the Clean Clothes Campaign from Marion Baur at flkaxmill@gmx.net.

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