Do you call for boycotts?
No. The CCC wants workers to keep their jobs, so the worst thing
that can happen is that companies decide to cut their business in
a factory or country and move somewhere else. We encourage consumers
to keep buying sportswear and for companies to keep making it -
but in a way that doesn't put intolerable pressure on workers to
deliver it faster and cheaper, often in poor working conditions.
We ask consumers to help us tell the industry to clean up its act
and develop long-term ethical relationships with suppliers. To be
able to do that, the industry has to continue to operate at the
factory and in the country concerned.
In specific situations we might ask a sourcing company (a company
that places an order with an agent or a supplier/vendor) to inform
a factory that it will not buy there any more if the labour conditions
don't improve immediately. And if an entire society calls for
a boycott, we won't oppose it. A good example is a situation that
occurred in Burma in 2001, where the exiled trade union federation
of Burma, the Federation of Trade Unions - Burma (FTUB) together
with a significant segment of Burmese society called for support
of a campaign to demand that Triumph pull out of Burma. This was
also the demand of Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma's struggle
for democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
in 1991 and still under house arrest for her ongoing efforts in
defiance of the country's brutal military regime, supported this
strategy, as did the National League for Democracy (see http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies/triumph.htm).
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