Buyer Be Aware As the holiday shopping season approaches, many people of faith and good will are faced with a dilemma: How to purchase presents for loved ones without buying goods made in sweatshops or under other unjust conditions. One organization has the answer. The key is to let the buyer "be aware," said Kim Bobo, executive director of the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice. Last Christmas she spent many days traveling to a variety of toy and clothing stores looking for gifts for her then-five year-old twin boys. When an item caught her attention, the first thing this conscious shopper did was look for the union label.
"Many people buy American, and it supports the national economy, but 'buy union' is a safer bet ifyou are concerned about humane working conditions," said Ms. Bobo. Her organization provides support to a network of 45 local organizations, nationwide, that encourages religious support of issues and campaigns centered around worker rights. "The buyer should be aware that many products made in America are produced under conditions that are oppressive to workers. But if you see the union label on a tag, you can be reasonably assured that regardless to where it was produced, it was not under sweatshop conditions," added Bobo. Unions agree. "Consumers want to know that their purchases reflect their basic values, such as the right of children to play and learn instead of working in sweatshops," said Lane Windham, AFL-CIO media outreach specialist. Dismal information continues to emerge about the circumstances of workers who produce many of the products and services we use and enjoy. These products include the clothes, food, the toys, and other products for our homes. These services also include restaurant service, in-home cleaning, elderly care and child care. Workers suffer from wages too low to meet the basic necessities of food, clothing and shelter, little or no health benefits for them and their families and even fatal working conditions in the extreme. To help heighten consumer awareness, the Committee produced a four- page "Conscious Giving: Steps toward sweat-free holiday shopping," resource. The guide includes many union-made products and seven "alternative trading organizations," which allow low-income producers (such as craftspeople from developing countries) to be connected to international markets for their goods. The Committee stresses that there is, "no magic bullet or sure assurances" concerning any product. What the "Conscious Giving" guide offers is a list of a variety of product items that have one or more unionized production facilities in the United States, according to the Union Label and service Website (www.unionlabel.org). "It is nearly impossible to give a blanket endorsement to a company," said Bobo. "A large company might have a unionized factory in one state, but a completely non-unionized factory in another. Also, most large companies have factories in multiple countries, and it becomes very difficult to be absolutely certain that the product was made in humane conditions." The Committee is part of a growing network of activists standing together to combat sweatshops at home and abroad. "We are unwilling to accept the existence of sweatshops as the inevitable and intractable result of the globalization of manufacturing," said Ms. Evely Laser Shlensky, co-chair of the Los Angeles Jewish Commission on Sweatshops. Ms. Shlensky helped produce "Challenging Sweatshops: A Guide for the Religious Community." "Challenging Sweatshops" educates people on what a sweatshop is, and along with the religious community, it informs college students on how they can adopt codes of conduct for companies that produce licensed goods for the college. "It seems that most of our common purchases support systems relying on sweatshop working conditions. A gift of love does not have to be expensive, nor does not have come at the expense of low-wage workers, children, or immigrants," said Shlensky. "People of faith and good will must be able to give gifts without taking on that burden." For a complete list of "union made gift ideas" from the "Conscious Giving: Steps toward sweat-free holiday shopping," guide visit the National Interfaith Committee for Worker Justice at www.nationalinterfaith.org. |
