Tracing the Source of Apparel

As he sorts through cheery racks of Harvard t-shirts, socks and caps, David Sullivan, general manager of the Coop, often ponders the path his Crimson-colored stock took before it reached the store.

"I think about it all the time," he says of his inventory. "Where it came from, what it's made of."

For months, anti-sweatshop activists have been raising the same questions, to no avail. But in the past two weeks, Harvard's two largest apparel makers, Champion and Gear For Sports, have each made stunning announcements: the answers are near.

Shedding the garment industry's longstanding image of secrecy and silence, Gear proclaimed earlier this month that it would disclose the locations of its factories by January, in response to heightened concerns about sweatshop labor. Yesterday, Champion said it would do the same.

After Gear's announcement, members of the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) expressed cautious optimism that their battle for better international working conditions had been nudged forward, but they could not help but gush at the ball Gear had set rolling.

"The event is important because they're starting a movement and signaling to others that this is the way things are moving," said Nitzan Shoshan '00 at the time.

Almost any anti-sweatshop activist can tell you that it is essential for companies to disclose their factory locations if there is to be any success at all in improving working conditions from Honduras to Timbuktu.

Without disclosure, trying to get a handle on the manufacturing conditions of the mind-boggling array of Harvard insignia products--from hats to baby gear to chocolates--is nearly impossible.

"We're not going to have a Harvard student sitting over in every factory in the Third World seeing what's happening," says Ascherman Professor of Economics Richard B. Freeman.

At this point, that seems to be almost what it would take. An attempt to find the source of just three of the thousands of items for sale stamped with the Harvard logo demonstrates how hard it is to trace their origins when companies don't specify their factory locations.

Shirt Stuff

Piles of a Harvard t-shirt made by Champion, Harvard's largest apparel producer, sit folded near the back of the Coop clothing shop. A tag says the shirt is made in Mexico.

Shirt Stuff

But Paul W. Griffith, the Champion sales representative who works with The Coop, says he does not know where the t-shirt is from. He says he only knows about sales, and contacts the company's base in Winston-Salem, N.C. to place orders.

Still, Griffith says he is confident that Champion products are made under fair conditions. He recently saw a video of the company's new plant in Chihuahua, Mexico, and thought the facility looked "highly sterile."

"From my perspective, I feel very secure that my company is not one of the companies [that is using sweatshop labor]," he says. "Until somebody shows or proves it differently."

Champion spokesperson Peggy C. Carter last week said she could not confirm whether the T-shirt came from the plant in Chihuahua, Mexico--a Mexican state located close to the Texas border--or even whether there is a factory in Chihuahua at all.

Without help from Champion, only a few nuggets could be gleaned about Champion's factory in Chihuahua from Genaro Fernandez, an employee in the local department of industrial development in Chihuahua.

Fernandez says he is familiar with the factory. About 500 people are employed there, and it is expanding, he says.

"It's a big one here in Chihuahua," Fernandez says. "It seems to be a good place to work."

Armando N. Correa, a director of industrial development in Chihuahua, says the city is experiencing a rapid industrialization.

While he says he does not know the Champion factory well, he says all of the factories in the city have high standards, better than the conditions in other cities in Mexico such as Mexicali or Tijuana to the west.

In most Chihuahua factories, the lowest-paid worker earns about $10 per day, including benefits, he says. Doctors are on hand in some factories in case employees get hurt, and day care is available for children. For lunch, companies provide cafeterias that charge a negligible amount for food, he says.

"The conditions are extremely, extremely nice," Correa says. "Especially in this state of Chihuahua."

Gearing Up

Finding the genesis of a yellow Gear For Sports rain jacket, sold at J. August for $59.00, is even more of a challenge--even for the manufacturer itself.

According to the tag, the jacket is made in China. Bob Alison, a New England sales representative for Gear, says most company products are produced overseas.

"Harvard" items probably do not get the University name on them, he says, until arrival in company headquarters in Lenexa, KS, where garments are given lettering.

One way of knowing where a garment comes from is by using an "RN" tracking number given by the Federal Trade Commission, according to Thomas J. Wheatley, a spokesperson for the National Labor Committee, a non-profit working in support of human and worker rights, primarily in Central America.

This number is supposed to reveal the place of manufacture, he says, but many companies use their RN number to indicate some address in the U.S. where the goods pass through.

The RN number for this jacket, rather than listing a spot in China, turns up a company in Lenexa, called "Winning Ways.''

Joerger says Gear has every intention of releasing information about its factories to universities, who will likely release it to the public. Gear is now compiling a database of factory locations sorted by university or college in preparation for the January release.

Constructing the database is difficult, Joerger says, because the company pays other parties to make its goods, and its sources frequently change depending on who gives the lowest price and highest quality.

Sometimes, a particular style is made in multiple factories, which could be located in different countries, he says. Moreover, he says factories do not assemble clothing from scratch, but instead get parts from other factories.

"Many times you'll source the buttons from one factory," he says. "The sewing may occur in a different factory."

He argues that contracting out manufacturing does not mean the company cannot enforce working standards. Gear, he says, keeps in touch with its factories and holds them to its standards.

"Any reputable manufacturer is going to have a close relationship with [its contractees]," he says.

Hats Off

Hats Off

Not every Harvard item is so difficult to trace. A crimson-colored hat in the Coop, made by University Square, says "Made in the USA."

According to University Square employee Beverly Pini, all of the company's manufacturing takes place at company headquarters in Bridgeville, Penn.

Pini says employees at the Bridgeville factory make $6.50 an hour at the very least. The minimum wage in Pennsylvania is $5.15.

Usually, she says, workers put in about 40 hours each week. In the "busy" season, from April through October, some work up to 15 hours overtime.

"The employees are well-maintained and well taken care of," Pini says. "It's not a case of a sweatshop under any circumstances."

The company is proud, Pini says, that it produces everything in the U.S. when it could take its business overseas and pay its workers less.

She acknowledges that this decision means that University Square can't compete in pricing. Whereas other companies can charge $3 wholesale for a hat, the wholesale price for a University Square hat runs for between $6 and $8, including an 8 percent licensing fee to the University.

At the Coop, the hat reached the consumer at a price of $18.98.

The Sweat Ahead

University attorney Allan A. Ryan, Jr. says finding where particular goods are manufactured without help from companies is no easy task.

"If [the manufacturers] are not going to tell you I don't know of any other way that you could find out," he says.

But as Harvard waits for its apparel manufacturers to spill their beans, it is already preparing for the next step--monitoring. At issue is how to effectively keep tabs on conditions, while still giving companies their privacy.

In March, Harvard announced that it was joining the Fair Labor Association (FLA), a government-initiated partnership of businesses and other concerned parties that will start monitoring next year.

And amid concerns that the FLA is too soft on industry, Harvard has also made a one-year deal with four other universities to coordinate sweatshop policies and monitoring systems. It has also hired an accounting and consulting firm, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to conduct the oversight.

Academic initiatives have also been spearheaded. Starting tomorrow, the Harvard Trade Union Program will host a two-day conference with leaders from business, academia, non-governmental organizations and the student movement against sweatshops. The conference will examine ways of working together on the sweatshop dilemma.

Students in United Students Against Sweatshops, a national umbrella group for the movement, favor involving local non-governmental organizations and establishing an independent non-profit monitor.

PSLM members have asked the University to withdraw from the FLA. Because it has ties with industry, student activists say, the association is likely to do spotty and infrequent inspections, and might not have a strong enough commitment to disclosing factory locations.

"[The FLA's purpose] is to massage American consumers," Freeman says. "They're going to be as least good as they can."

Ryan says it is important to get independent information that is neither from companies nor from anti-sweatshop activists. He says he doesn't know whether to believe the companies, who say working conditions are good, or the students, who paint a darker picture.

"My hunch is that the truth lies somewhere in between, but we don't know."

But the attention students from Harvard and other universities have lavished on the sweatshop issue is starting to pay dividends, Wheatley says.

"Universities have a moral and social obligation to use the leverage they have to begin to make a change," he says. "And that's what they've already started doing."