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Gymboree’s empty promises
It’s interesting that Gymboree feels at least a tiny obligation to respond to the query I sent upon receiving word of its charitable leanings:
-Original Message–
From: cassandra_cavanaugh@yahoo.com
Date: 1/4/2010 4:34:58 PM
To: customer_service@gymboree.com
Subject: Fw: Happy New Year From Our Chairman & CEO [#144624]
Dear Mr. McCauley,
Support for a children’s hospital in no way excuses the misery your corporation is bringing to the children of Uzbekistan , forced by their authoritarian government to pick the cotton that goes into Gymboree clothes.
You have been contacted several times by the International Labor Rights Forum, asking you to pledge, as many other corporations (Gap, J. Crew, Walmart) have, to exclude Uzbek cotton from your supply chain. Why have you not responded?
If in 2010 you pledge to become part of the solution for Uzbekistan ’s exploited children, instead of part of the problem, I can go back to purchasing Gym Mart’s clothes for my small daughters. When I look at them, I often think of their age-mates in Uzbekistan , missing school from September to December, and there’s no way we can support a company that inflicts this upon them.
Sincerely,
Cassandra Cavanaugh
Some customer service drone at Gymboree finally sent of a formulaic response to my queries about its Uzbekistan policy (see the email below). Though Eric talks of “minimum standards” that vendors have to meet, he refuses to answer the question–do they use Uzbek cotton? Sounds like Gym Mart brands doesn’t know…and doesn’t want to find out. In which case, their “minimum standards” don’t mean a thing.
RE: Happy New Year From Our Chairman & CEOTue, January 5, 2010 12:49:56 PM
| From: | “Gym Orders orders@gymboree.com” <orders@gymboree.com> Add to Contacts | |
| To: | cassandra_cavanaugh@yahoo.com |
Dear Cassandra,
Thank you for contacting Gymboree Customer Service.
As we research prospective vendors and factories, we select companies that make compliance with laws and labor standards a top priority and whose policies and practices are consistent with our corporate mission to celebrate childhood. Gymboree does not allow forced child labor anywhere in the organization, nor anywhere in the supply chain. For all factories or vendors that we work with, we set forth the minimum standards and ethical requirements that they must comply with in order to conduct business with Gymboree.
As a condition of doing business with Gymboree, we require each factory and vendor to sign a product purchase agreement as a commitment that it will adhere to our Terms. Specifically, our Terms require, among other things, full compliance with all applicable laws and regulations including, but not limited to, environmental, wage and hour, and worker health laws, and the child labor, minimum wage and overtime requirements of those laws. All factories and vendors must also certify, among other things, that goods will not be produced with any use of child, forced, or prison labor, and that all employees will be provided with safe, clean working conditions.
Additionally, for many years now, Gymboree has used a reputable, independent auditing firm to evaluate factories prior to engagement and to routinely perform on-site inspections in order to actively monitor and assess factory operations to ensure compliance.
Thank you again for taking the time to contact us and for giving us the opportunity to provide you with information regarding Gymboree’s production standards and practices.
Sincerely,
Eric
Gymboree Customer Service
877 449 6932
www.gymboree.com
This last email has gone unanswered for a few weeks now, which tells us all we need to know about the seriousness of Gymboree’s pledges. If they won’t come out, either publicly or privately, specifically rejecting Uzbek cotton, all protestations are pretty meaningless.
This is nice, Eric, but it doesn’t address the issue I brought to your attention. Your factories, by which I assume you mean the factories that cut and sew the final product, or produce piece goods, might well be in compliance with local labor laws and your auditor may well have certified this. However, they are probably receiving yarn or cloth that includes cotton produced in Uzbekistan by forced child labor–that is, unless you have investigated the supply chain down to the primary commodity level and can certify otherwise.
Buying absolution? Charity to compensate for slavery
Gymboree is flaunting its charitable bona fides to customers, spreading news of its contributions to St. Judes Children’s Hospital. Never mind the Uzbek children crippled picking the cotton for its clothes have no access to plausible (or any) health care…
Matt McCauley just doesn’t seem to get it. More on that soon.
What you can do: email Gymboree, Fred’s and Abercrombie & Fitch
A select few retailers are getting closer to getting Uzbek cotton out of their supply chains. These include J. Crew, and Hanes, the t-shirt maker; some others don’t want to be named until they are further along in the process. But some corporations are just plain recalcitrant, including those named above.
When I go to buy school and play clothes for my 5 and 6 year olds, the last thing I want to think about are their Uzbek coevals shivering out in the fields getting dysentery from canal water. So in addition to returning the clothes I’ve bought from Gymboree lately, I’ll be sending this email to Matthew McCauley, Gymboree’s CEO, as well as his callous colleagues. Please join me.
LL Bean vows to exclude Uzbek cotton
Duckboots back on the shopping list
Of all the companies named by the International Labor Rights Forum on this year’s Sweatshop Hall of Shame for the use of Uzbek cotton, LL Bean was the fastest to respond, and vowed to (eventually) exclude it from their supply chain. Let’s hope their follow through is as exhaustive as their initial response was rapid.
Read more on the ILRF blog here. If you buy LL Bean products, take time to let their corporate office know that this is important to you.
The cost of cotton: no future
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports that Uzbek college students are regularly being expelled for refusing to pick cotton.
With that kind of a black mark in their past, any expelled student has little chance of ever completing higher education at home, which leaves the most likely option for survival in a country with mass un- and underemployment that of migrating for seasonal manual labor to Russia. But in the downturn, thousands of those migrants have been forced to return home…or forced into criminal activity.
LL Bean, Hanes, Gymboree: child exploiters
The International Labor Rights Forum released its list of Sweatshop Hall of Shame inductees for 2009. They include some of the best-known American retailers of children’s clothing…who refuse to stop profiting from the exploitation of children in Uzbekistan. ILRF writes:
While over 25 companies have committed to boycotting the use of Uzbekcotton until the government ends its abusive labor practices, there are stillmany companies that haven’t stepped up to the plate. Gymboree, Hanes,2and LL Bean have been contacted and yet they refuse to concretely address this pervasiveproblem.
While over 25 companies have committed to boycotting the use of Uzbek cotton until the government ends its abusive labor practices, there are still many companies that haven’t stepped up to the plate. Gymboree, Hanes and LL Bean have all been contacted, and yet they refuse to concretely address this pervasive problem.
My holiday shopping list sure has changed, and I hope many other consumers will do the same.
Tags: consumer action > ILRF > traceability
Dubai defaults…on human rights
It wasn’t too much of a surprise to read that the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre bonds were placed on credit watch negative recently, after being downgraded to junk status in June. Is a business model built on willful, knowing exploitation of forced child labor really sustainable in any sense?
Maybe five years ago, traders could claim ignorance about Uzbekistan’s mass child enslavement for the cotton harvest. Not anymore. Multiple actors have approached the Dubai Multi Commodities Centre with the evidence directly, at least from 2008. In July of this year the American Apparel and Footwear Association, in league with the (U.S.) National Retail Federation and two other major trade groups, wrote to the DMCC director, David Rutledge, and requested action. The DMCC, after all, is a critical actor enabling the Uzbek government to profit from it exploitive practices. And what action was taken? A big roll-out of new services at the Tashkent Cotton Fair, and more cotton purchases: the DMCC traded 20,000 tons by October and placed an order for 70,000 more! (Dr. Rutledge has since been replaced by the former head of the Dubai Gold Exchange, Malcolm Wall Morris.)
As the cotton works its way up the production chain, consumers are sending the message to retailers (and many retailers are reacting…and those that are not are being called on it). But the first-line facilitators of this outrage such as the DMCC have an obligation to act, too.
The UN Child’s Rights Convention is 20 years old (and Uzbek children are still out picking cotton)
It’s a trite formula for a story: note an anniversary of a worthy treaty/announcement/international agreement, then express regret that in spite of some laudable progress, look how far there is yet to go, throwing in a tear-jerking example or two. This past week, the 20th anniversary of the signing of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child presented this opportunity and as trite as it is, I don’t feel able to pass it by. Read more
Tags: Convention on the Rights of the Child > UNICEF
Following the trail of Uzbek cotton: taking names
Where does the cotton go, and how can Western end-users avoid consuming it? This is a question that needs a lot more exploration. According to a recent press release, the cotton fair in Tashkent was a great success, pushing the slave-harvested commodity out and probably into goods that stock our shops. Reportedly, contracts were signed for over 600,000 tons of this year’s crop alone, and the list of attendees was the largest ever. Clearly, not everyone is getting the message.
Fergana.ru published the list (see it reproduced below) of those attending the conference. It is an interesting document for many reasons, a few of which are highlighted here: Read more
Cotton is in, but kids are still out
Today the Veritas human rights group in Uzbekistan distributed their preliminary report on this year’s cotton harvest, with some photos to accompany it. The report is not yet on the web, or in English, so I’ll post its most striking findings here. Activists from the group surveyed conditions in 11 provinces; they recently toured through four provinces and found the following:
- 45-50% of the cotton is harvested by children;
- Though the government announced the harvest completed in early November, many children are still being forced to work in the fields picking the last remnants;
- Officials are withholding 60% of already miserly wages from the children for the “rent” of their schoolbooks–so instead of 5 US cents per kilogram picked, they may get 2. For high school and college students who are forced to board near the fields or in them, the percent withheld is even higher to cover the cost of their food (more on this later);
- Children down to the third grade have been mobilized (those are 8 and 9 year olds);
- Teachers and other officials encountered by the researchers are taking more pains to try to convince observers that the process is “voluntary,” perhaps indicating a greater degree of surveillance and official pressure than in years past.
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