San Francisco Supports Anti-Sweatshop Law
San Francisco is the latest California city taking steps to ensure that everything the city contracts for, from cops’ uniforms to staplers, is produced without sweatshop labor.
On Aug. 4, San Francisco’s Budget and Finance Committee unanimously approved a “Sweatshop Free” bill. The bill mandates that San Francisco will monitor its contractors, subcontractors and vendors to make sure that products the city buys are produced by workers earning a living wage in safe workplaces.
The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote on the bill on Aug. 16. If it passes, it could be signed into law by September.
Last November, the Los Angeles City Council passed a similar contractor-monitoring law. The law requires city contractors and businesses on city-approved lists for employee purchases to sign a code of conduct that affirms that they and their suppliers abide by all workplace laws. The council also agreed to pay $50,000 to a company to monitor compliance, including factory inspections. The city will hire this company soon, said Josh Kamensky, a spokesperson for Los Angeles City Councilman Eric Garcetti, who co-authored the bill.
The city of Los Angeles spends an estimated $3 million on garments and textiles, according to Deborah Ramos, assistant general manager of the Los Angeles Department of General Services.
Lawyers advocating for garment workers applauded these bills as statements that cities will follow the letter of labor law.
“It’s easy to tear down something as pie in the sky and as something that’s impossible to enforce,” said Julia Figueroa-McDonough, a staff attorney for the Asian Pacific American Legal Center in Los Angeles. “These cities have given a lot of thought to enforcing these ordinances.”
But Randall Harris, executive director of San Francisco Fashion Industries—a nonprofit trade association of manufacturers, wholesalers and importers—said he thinks the bill will affect few of his members because not that many of them do business with the municipal government. Harris said there are about 250 garment companies in San Francisco.
—Andrew Asch
