Excellent piece by David Bacon: Laundering the Public Image of Worker-Killing Sweatshops
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/16212-laundering-the-public-image-of-worker-killing-sweatshops
But the strategy employed by most large manufacturers is not to improve the conditions that kill workers. They are especially unwilling to recognize workers' unions that would act as monitors and enforcers of signed agreements guaranteeing livable wages and safety procedures that wouldn't put lives at risk.Instead, the big label companies "helped spawn an $80 billion industry in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social auditing," according to a new report by the AFL-CIO, "Responsibility Outsourced."
"Yet the experience of the last two decades of 'privatized regulation' of global supply chains has eerie parallels with the financial self-regulation that failed so spectacularly. . . " That CSR industry, the report charges, "helped keep wages low and working conditions poor, [while] it provided public relations cover for producers."