from HuffPost:
Tom Hayden
San Francisco No Longer Sweat-free?Posted November 1, 2007 | 06:36 PM (EST)
Anti-sweatshop advocates are stunned by progressive San Francisco's granting to garment contractors five-year exemptions from the city's historic "sweat-free" procurement ordinance. When Mayor Gavin Newsom signed the measure two years ago, he declared that San Francisco would lead the way to new standards in the global sweatshop economy.
How can the highly-regarded liberal mayor, widely expected to rise as a state and national political figure, have granted such lengthy exemptions to taxpayer-subsidized contractors who admittedly fail to comply with the sweat-free law? According to the city's own sweat-free staff, San Francisco police trousers are assembled by Flying-Cross Fechheimer, a city contractor, in Colombia, where assassins routinely gun down labor leaders.
City officials have worked hard to implement the ordinance, but assert that the sweat-free standards are beyond what contractors are willing to accept. The toughest part of the ordinance, they say, is the requirement that contractors are liable to pay penalties for violations. But while that sticking point is a serious one, many of the contractors receiving exemptions refuse even to disclose their factory locations, a key barrier to any monitoring.
The basic point made by city officials is that there are "no compliant bidders," and police, firefighters, and Muni workers simply cannot go without new uniforms. But this claim is refuted by three facts:
* first, an SF city controller has stated that the procurement agency can avoid any supply crisis by issuing purchasing orders as needed, rather than five-year exemptions;
* second, Los Angeles officials say that San Francisco can attach itself to the existing LA sweatfree contract to obtain uniforms;
* third, while the shortage of responsible bidders is a serious problem, SF officials may not have searched seriously beyond the culture of traditional contractors. For example, the LA-based American Apparel expresses willingness to enter the uniform market as a bidder, but an SF official dismissed the company for "only making tee shirts." ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-hayden/san-francisco-no-longer-s_b_70822.html