on a trusted local production manager in her absence. But she suspects that her artisans, like apparel workers the world over, would lie to an auditor if she asked them to. “My artisans are going to say whatever I want them to say, because they don’t want to risk me walking away with my American dollar bills,” she says. One solution to the problem of ineffective audits, Reyes suggests, is to use inspectors who are embedded in the communities where they work and understand the local culture and conditions. Better Work, a collaboration between the United Nations and the World Bank, takes this approach in order to improve working conditions while boosting competitiveness. Technology can help as well. Confidential textmessaging hotlines are enabling garment workers to provide honest feedback in the auditing process. Mapping software that shows the location of every factory, mill, and farm involved in the production of a garment is giving companies a clearer look at their supply chains. Remote sensors and blockchain, a secure digital ledger, may one day provide a more reliable view of what’s actually happening on the shop floor. Kibbey, meanwhile, advocates moving from a pass-fail auditing system to scaled social responsibility assessments that score factories’ performance and offer incentives to improve, such as more business or better pricing. The Social Labor and Convergence Project, which originated as an offshoot of the SAC, is poised to unveil a uniform auditing questionnaire. Any user will be able to share data, elimi nating the need to audit
lives, explains Bitu Cao Minh, Fashion Design ’04, director of social compliance and human rights at J. Crew. Cao Minh visited a factory in India where workers used the funds to build a grocery store in their village. “This store was not only helping the factory workers, but also the community,” Cao Minh says. “For me, this is a great example of sustainable development and corporate social responsibility done right.” SPREADING THE MESSAGE Ultimately, however, the power to help garment workers lies with consumers: The more strongly we support ethically sourced goods, the more socially responsible the industry will become. That support exists, at least among millennial consumers. According to the Robin Report, a website devoted to retail apparel and related industries founded by former faculty member Robin Lewis, 65 to 70 percent of consumers under 35 around the world say they choose brands or retailers based on their ethical practices. And two thirds of global respondents in a recent Nielsen study said they would pay more for merchandise produced by firms that support social and environmental causes. But brands need to communicate their corporate social responsibility efforts to consumers. To that end, the NYFTC recently formed a committee of fairtrade advocates devoted to education and social media, to help people understand what socially responsible sourcing means, and why it matters— something Reyes tries to accomplish by leading her own fair-trade education trips to Uganda.
To better inform the public about the importance of ethical sourcing, she and her colleagues in the coalition are asking themselves a deceptively simple question: “How can we use our marketing skills to push this movement forward, grab people’s attention, and make this information known not just to the fashion community, but to everyone?”
WHAT IS OUR
RESPONSIBILITY
TO OVERSEAS GARMENT WORKERS? In a 1972 essay, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” philosopher Peter Singer argued that, just as we have a moral responsibility to save a drowning child, we have a moral responsibility to save lives in other countries. Lucy Collins, assistant professor of Social Sciences, teaches this essay in the Business Ethics course required for all Fashion Business Management and International Trade and Marketing students. “If we were face to face with starving people or endangered factory workers, most people would do what they could to prevent that,” Collins says. “But it’s so far removed—these are places most people will never go. However, the fact that we are not observing it doesn’t change our moral responsibility. My preference for buying clothes does not outweigh someone else’s preference for life.” —Jonathan Vatner
the same factories over and over. More than 160 manufacturers, retailers, audit firms, and national governments have signed on. THE CASE FOR ETHICAL SOURCING The motivation for companies to treat factory workers well isn’t entirely altruistic: Pulos, who co-wrote an e-textbook on business ethics (Good Corporation, Bad Corporation: Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Economy) with Guillermo Jimenez, associate professor of International Trade and Marketing, says that companies enjoy lower turnover and greater efficiency when they pay attention to fair wages and worker safety. Also, nonprofits like the Clean Clothes Campaign and the SAC that promote workers’ rights can sway investor and consumer sentiment, as can social media campaigns by fair-trade activists. Companies that behave irresponsibly risk damaging their reputations and, ultimately, their bottom lines. Many companies therefore belong to nonprofitcertifying organizations such as the Fair Trade Federation and the World Fair Trade Organization. Brands pay a premium on Fair Trade products, which funds community projects that improve workers’
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