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Garment Workers Close The GAP

The US clothing retailer 'The GAP' has responded to pressure from campaigners and adopted a code of conduct. It is also the first company in the world to agree to independent monitoring of its code. However, the code only governs The GAP's operations in one country, El Salvador, and as Maggie Poe of the National Labor Committee in New York (USA) explains, it has been a very difficult process. There have been losses as well as gains for the workers whom the code is supposed to benefit.

In El Salvador, a Taiwanese sub-contractor called Mandarin produces clothes for The GAP. Pressure began to grow after six union organisers were fired, one beaten up and children threatened. Under pressure from campaigners, GAP's first response was to pull out of Mandarin. But this threatened the workers' jobs. Also in the US, consumers responded by boycotting GAP clothes. But the campaign had not called for a boycott. Reduced orders would only give Mandarin justification for lay-offs. The campaign's aim, developed by workers' and community groups in El Salvador alongside activists in the USA, was to retain the jobs at Mandarin and to force the companies to uphold the workers' rights.

As campaigning grew in the US, GAP agreed to place orders back at Mandarin, to bring pressure on Mandarin to respect a code of practice and to independent monitoring. Significantly this monitoring would be done by a coalition of local NGOs, workers' groups, trade unions and church bodies on the ground.

However, the date when the union organisers would be reinstated came and went, and independent monitoring collapsed. According to Maggie, the campaign underestimated the power of the sub-contractor Mandarin.

GAP's latest move has been to promise Mandarin a flood of new orders, and a new date for the reinstatement of the union organisers has been set. "So we are going to keep going. You have to take the victories where you can." says Maggie. She summed up the victories as:

• building a coalition of groups in El Salvador, which involves trade unions, women's rights groups, children's rights groups, churches, academics and others
• the clothing workers now have clean water and no longer suffer sexual harrassment or forced contraception
• Mandarin is de-militarised: the thugs are gone.

  The problems include:
  

• six union organisers are still not rehired
• the campaign absorbs a huge amount of resources and peopl
• it only affects one of the GAP's many sub-contractors.

"At present Mandarin has come out the winners. There is no union in the plant now, and they will get extra orders for rehiring workers they should not have fired in the first place. It is not a proper victory until the right to organise is achieved", says Maggie.
From: News from IRENE, 1997

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