Michael Dreiling AND Brian Wolf
Assistant Professor, Sociology Doctoral Student, Sociology
University of Oregon University of Oregon
Our paper examines the development of political alliances against sweatshops that use the power of consumers to expand worker rights and improve the conditions of production in the global economy. We explore four carefully selected cases where labor rights advocates in the U.S.A. used boycotts or other consumer-based strategies to influence working conditions in sweatshops abroad. Our cases were selected for their historical timing, significance, and extent of involvement in a broad range of movement organizations. We begin with the 7 year-long Philip Van Heusen boycott and end with the recent Cities Against Sweat campaigns to require union-label in city purchasing contracts for apparel products. Our case-selection allows us to observe significant changes in consumer-based strategies over time as well as the evolution of a complex political environment over international labor rights. The evolution of political strategies to advance labor rights internationally have responded to political marginalization and cultural disillusionment by building alliances outside of traditional labor channels. Political opportunities expanded as alliances between labor unions, student groups, and human rights groups grew.
We also find that the various campaigns associated with this movement have targeted the “image” of apparel products in order to reveal beneath the sensuous images of fashion and fads an inhumane exploitation of workers. In this sense, we identify the way in which labor-consumer-based activism is propelled along by and oriented toward demystifying apparel products and improving international labor rights. The movement activism behind these efforts, we observe, are self-consciously evolving toward a goal of shaping not only how consumer goods are made but seen.