The formation of this Coalition is meant to address a systemic structural problem that plagues the industry – the supply chain for any particular product is spread out over many contractor factories, often in different countries, and under no direct control of the brand manufacturer that sells the product.  Therefore it is a challenge for companies to know the details about the environmental conditions under which the entire product is made, and also impossible for consumers to know much about the sustainability of these products.  The industry freely admits this problem, one they created through structuring their supply chains in this manner.  After all, if they wanted to know everything about the production of their own product, they could build and run their own factories, which they would control entirely. 

But that brings up a further problem, one that the industry does not like to discuss.  A major root cause of bad environmental practices in factories, which is the same cause of sweatshop working conditions, is the relentless drive toward the lowest product costs.  Global apparel corporations outsource to a large and shifting network of sweatshop factories they have no direct control over in order to reduce costs to the minimum.  This leads to factories cutting corners on environmental compliance, health & safety conditions for workers, and also wages and benefits.

Setting up corporate-controlled initiatives like this Sustainable Apparel Coalition, with a paltry $2 million budget, cannot begin to solve this problem, but they certainly hope that consumers will believe that the industry is doing something about this issue.  However, this leaves a lot of questions unanswered. When products hit the shelves with “sustainability” scores, will this be really meaningful information for consumers?  Will higher scores really mean better, more sustainable production, and how?  And what about the wages and working conditions for the workers who make these products.  Doesn’t that still matter?  If this effort is like most others, we can expect a lack of genuine transparency and little factory improvement. 

Moreover, in this project there appears to be no genuine labor rights organizations or unions involved that would represent the interests of the factory workers who suffer the most from harmful production processes.  For example, see the New York Times article photo, which shows no protective equipment in sight for these workers who are dying apparel fabric.  Verite is listed as a member of this Coalition, and the Times refers to them as a “labor rights group”, but that is a loosely used term. Organizations that work on labor rights for companies cannot replace the voice of trade unions; such groups do not represent workers and to imply that their participation represents workers' interest is to take away space from workers and their elected representatives.  

I’m sure this Coalition is intended to be more than just a public relations exercise for consumers, but fixing a systemic sweatshop industry will require a more comprehensive approach, the recognition that low product prices drive poor environmental practices and bad factory conditions, and the genuine empowerment of workers.