• Austria - Kampagne für faire Arbeitsbedingungen weltweit
• Belgium North - Schone Kleren Campagne
• Belgium South - Vêtements propres
• France - Collectif De l'éthique sur l'étiquette
• Germany - Kampagne für 'Saubere' Kleidung
• the Netherlands - Schone Kleren Kampagne
• Sweden - Kampanjen Rena Kläder
• Switzerland - Clean Clothes Campaign
• United Kingdom - Labour Behind the Label

Austria - Clean Clothes - Kampagne für faire Arbeitsbedingungen weltweit

Campaigns

Sports and Olympics Campaign
The preparations for the Olympics campaign are going well, and a separate working group inside the platform was established together with activists, consisting of a network of activists. In Vienna 20 volunteers are working for the Olympics campaign, in the regional capitals we have about 5 volunteers in each.
We developed a new workshop on the theme of football production with the main target group football clubs.

Fairtrade Weeks Vienna
In December the Fair Trade Weeks took place in Vienna. CCC organised Clean Clothes film days and theatre performances.

Theatre tour
In December we organised 20 CCC theatre performances all over Austria with an audience of 1500 people in total. The play was especially made up by a international group of actors from Latin America and Europe for the Austrian CCC.

Women's journey to India
In January Frauensolidarität organized a women's journey to India mainly focusing on Codes of Conduct. About 15 women (mainly politicians and journalists) took part.

Urgent Appeals

North Sails Lanka
We organised an Urgent Appeals tour with 4 representatives of the FTZWU from the 8th to 10th of December. We held a public meeting in Linz, and meetings with platform organisations. There was a press conference in Linz and we had negotiations at Boards&More headquarter together with trade union on the 9th of December. A understanding was reached which is a good starting point, and we agreed to pause campaign. Lots of newspaper articles appeared in the most popular Krone.

PT Kahatex
1186 people participated from September 2003 till now. We also did a series of press releases on the case because s.Oliver is the sponsor of a casting show called "Starmania" on Austrian television, and made up some stir.

Partner Activities

Meetings and activities together with FTZWU, Sri Lanka connected to NSL, see above.

Monitoring and Verification
We have ongoing talks with companies; still nothing concrete, because of a lack of resources.
Brand related work

Governmental Action
We engaged in discussions with the National OECD contact point on the "UN-Norms on the responsibilities of trans national corporations and other business enterprises with regard to human rights" in January.

Belgium North - Schone Kleren Campagne

Campaigns

Clean Clothes Communities
53 resolutions have been adopted as yet. Antwerp: presentation at a provincial NGO meeting + deputy commits to adopting resolution Ieper: training session with local politicians and civil servants from different departments. We are seeking legal advice concerning public tenders.

Clean Clothes at work
Several companies have reacted till now.

Urgent Appeals

PT Kahatex
We sent the appeal to our mailing list of teachers.

Social label
We have reached an agreement on verification. Several new proposals regarding the social label law have recently been developed.

Belgium South - Vêtements propres

Toy Campaign
November - December 2003
Results:

Olympic campaign
We are preparing the International Forum in Brussels (end of April).

Ethical Procurement

Public procurements: the field is now open for experimentation after the new EU directive; we will test the willingness of the public authorities.
Belgian social label: a new referential is published.

France - Collectif De l'éthique sur l'étiquette

Campaigns

Olympic campaign:

In 2005 and probably 2006 (World Football Cup in Germany) we intend to focus our campaigns on working conditions in the sportswear industry.

Urgent Appeals
PT Busana : Meeting with the president of Le Coq Sportif, 2 Indonesian unionists, Réseau solidarité and French CCC.

Germany - Kampagne für 'Saubere' Kleidung

Campaigns

Olympic Campaign:
We have established a working group on the Olympic campaign. We launched the campaign with the release of CCC-Oxfam-TU-report with a common press release at March 4th.

Activities: Participation at Karstadt-marathon 25.4/ action-seminar 10-13 of June/ Action day at June 12th: central action in Cologne with theatre, etc + press conference + activities in different German cities/ speakers tour with one women from El Salvador/ 30.6 torch in Berlin.
Mode, Macht und Frauenrechte:
Different activities of the city groups of TERRE DES FEMMES which will continue during the whole year of 2004.

Urgent Appeals

Kahatex, Indonesia

Ethical Procurement

Nordrheinwestfalen: Project with different cities is planned. First step will be sending around a questionnaire.
Hamburg: A resolution on ethical procurement was unanimously adopted by the council for development policy to which a member of TERRE DES FEMMES/CCC has been nominated by the Senate. The resolution has been discussed by the secretaries of the state of Hamburg in February and it was decided that concrete steps for implementation should be developed and proposed.

• Leaflet "Go" is introducing the activities in the Sports summer/ Olympic campaign. Action paper will be ready in March. (Both are made by CIR.)

• Nadelstiche von VerbraucherInnen - Modemultis in Bewegung - Die Entwicklung von Verhaltenskodizes seit 1992", by Ulrike Tscherner, SÜDWIND Materialien 8, December 2003. (4 EURO/ 3,50 EURO and 3 EURO). This brochure is a synopsis of the development of codes of conduct / social standards between 1992 and 2003 of adidas, C&A, KarstadtQuelle, Metro, Nike, Otto, Peek & Cloppenburg, puma, reebok and the Foreign Trade Association of German Retailers. It comprises tables by company as well as one summary table of all companies.

the Netherlands - Schone Kleren Kampagne

Campaigns

Fashion Files
The Fashion Files project has come to an end. The closing of this project took place with a presentation by some of the workshop leaders (Dutch students that visited Sri Lanka) at a public meeting - 7th December - which the CCC organised for her subscribers of the urgent appeal system. The materials (such as a video or discussion methods) can be applied for through the website. The workshop leaders aren't available any more, through this way schools still have the possibility to cover this subject at their classes.

Olympic Campaign
We are busy with the preparations. The coalition consists of CCC, Novib and FNV, but other organisations are willing to communicate information (publish articles, make links at their websites, distribute petition etc).
At November 26th, a first letter to the Dutch Olympic Committee (NOC*NSF) has been sent out. At December 5th, a meeting was arranged. Round the table sat: Yanti and Mulyani (unionist and ex- PT Busana Prima Global worker from Indonesia), marketing manager of the NOC*NSF, Novib, FNV and CCC. NOC*NSF is preparing of a letter to the IOC to underline their support to our campaign and our demand for a meeting between IOC at the one hand and a delegation of Oxfam Int., Global Unions and CCC at the other hand. Letters are sent to (three large) sports organisations.

Urgent Appeal Tour
From December 4th till 14th, the CCC organised a speaker tour with guests from Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Indrani Wijebandara (North Sails Lanka), Deepika Sriyakanthi (Jaqalanka), Sugandhi Jayakody (Star Garments) and Anton Marcus (Free Trade Zone Workers Union) from Sri Lanka, together with Mulyani (PT Busana Prima Global) and Emelia Yanti (ABGteks) from Indonesia visited four countries in Europe to raise awareness, meet with the companies involved in their respective cases and to try and push for an improvement of their situation using international pressure.

Museum night
During museum night, museums open their doors, so did the Union Museum at November 29th. CCC contributed with a huge T-shirt covering the whole room. People could stick their head through the T-shirt and then learn about the labour conditions in the garment industry. Letters of protest concerning the Shree Jee fire in India were distributed.

Urgent Appeals

North Sails Lanka
In follow up of the action at Makkum beach, North Sails action cards and letters of protest were distributed through workshops at schools. Also via the website people could send their signature of protest. With regard to the upcoming speaker tour, contact has been made with the importer of North Sails to organise a meeting with him and Indrani (dismissed NSL worker) and Anton (FTZWU). He refused. Instead, we passed by several North Sails shops (bus tour at December 5th) to discuss the problems at North Sails Lanka and asked them to contact the importer and Boards & More (of which North Sails is a division) to raise this issue. We also visited the shop of Stefan van de Berg, who is the former Olympic champion - he did sign the big action card. Our Sri Lankan guests went to Austria afterwards, where they had a meeting with the management of North Sails Lanka (they flew in for this meeting), the management of Boards & More, the Austrian CCC and OGB (Austrian union). CCC Austria organised a press conference in advance. An agreement was signed. In turn: CCC stopped their campaign as long as the negotiations are constructive.

PT Busana Prima Global
See December 4th of the Urgent Appeal tour. Mulyani left a message to Head on a video tape. We are preparing following up actions, exposing this message on a big screen in front of Mees Pierson again.

Monitoring and Verification
Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) has eight participants. The group of work wear companies seems to be an important group; FWF tries to reach these via the branch organization. With Vendex KBB, FWF has a pilot in India. Vendex KBB has their own monitoring system (AVE). At March 24th FWF will present the new partners to press and public.

Ethical Procurement

Clean Clothes Communities

The Clothes She Wears: exhibition
The opening of this new exhibition took place at the public meeting at December 7th. This exhibition is composed by Siobhan Wall who is an artist and volunteer for the CCC. It shows the clothes of eight women of different countries working in garment factories or at home. This goes along with their personal stories. The exhibition will travel through the Netherlands and Europe. A brochure is made (Dutch / English).
Dutch newsletter ´Schoon Genoeg´, December 2003: new style, new lay-out.
Brochure on garment industry in Southern Africa , focus on Madagascar and Mauritius, based on SOMO research executed in 2002
Coin stickers

Sweden - Kampanjen Rena Kläder

Campaigns

Play Fair at the Olympics
On December 18th 2003 we sent a letter to the president of the Sweden's Olympic Committee. Till now, we have received no answer. Much of the work right now is focusing on initiating local activities all over Sweden. So far at least five cities have joined in, but there will be more. We are also working on a Swedish campaign website, which should be the motor of the campaign in Sweden. One of our member organisations created a special focus group for the campaign - they will try and get sport celebrities to in some way support the campaign.

Other activities and Events

INTUC exchange
At the end of 2003 an exchange program took place between the Swedish and the Indian trade union movements. The purpose of this exchange was to increase the understanding between the movements and figure out how we can help each other.
A sample of activities in Sweden during the stay of the Indian delegation:

Action days in December
In December 2003 two small actions took place. One in Visby and one in Gothenburg. On both places around ten activists were leafleting outside garment stores. In Visby it was arranged by Industrifacket and Social Democratic Youth and in Gothenburg it was arranged by Swedish Church Youth.
Op-ed article in Göteborgs Posten
On the 13th of December 2003 all presidents of the member organisations of Rena Kläder and the co-ordinator wrote an Op-ed in Göteborgs Posten. The issue was the fact that none of the Swedish garment and shoe retailers have implemented their code of conduct in a proper way.
School Tour October 2004
We are planning a joint project with the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO). The main purpose is to reach youth in upper high school. We want to arrange seminars and workshops for the kids. LO feel the need to explain the idea of trade union membership and trade union rights, because it gets harder and harder to organize young people in Sweden. We think that young people are interested in international questions and solidarity issues, so the CCC will explain why trade union rights are important with our examples from the rest of the world.
LO has got 19 districts all over Sweden. We invited them all to join the Tour, and from a central level LO provided funding for the districts if they did. 18 answered positive. All districts have special educated activists with experience in informing youths in schools. CCC will have a special course for this people about the garment industry and the CCC. We will produce 18 exhibitions and distribute them to the districts. The president of LO (Wanja Lundby-Wedin) offered schools a whole day with seminars and workshops about global economy, the trade union and the garment industry for free.
In October this year, during one week, 90 upper high schools will learn about trade unions rights and the garment industry. Except for seminars and workshops there will postcards actions and something to attract local media with. Hopefully, the board of LO will visit some schools during this week. The teachers will be provided a guide about how to work with this issue before and after the lessons.
This means that in 18 districts we visit five schools each, and with 600 - 1000 pupils per school we will reach 54 000 - 90 000 children.
Result: Higher knowledge about CCC among youth, more contact and cooperation with LO both on a board level and on a grassroots level, media attention both in local and national media (national if the LO board makes a mini-tour during the week), reaching a lot of teachers and hopefully a lot of postcards are sent to companies.

Partner Activities
The INTUC exchange described above.

Monitoring and Verification

Report on Swedish Codes
We have made a report about the codes of Swedish retailers, and how they work with it and implement it.

Ethical Procurement

This Autumn we decided to work on the Clean Clothes Communities project. Soon, we realised that there is special legislation in Sweden around Public Procurement: a municipality is allowed to demand ethical efforts of suppliers. As we don't know how frequent this legislation is used, before we start campaigning we need an overview of that. This resulted in our support for a project that tries to evaluate the legislation but at the same time develops a guide for both community authorities that plan to procure ethically and citizens that want to campaign on the authorities to do so. This will result in a publication at the beginning of this Summer.

Switzerland - Clean Clothes Campaign

Olympics 2004
Media work in Spring time and public actions during Summer time (July / August 2004) is planned.
Public Eye on Davos (=parallel conference to the World Economic Forum WEF, January 04)
On January 22 2004 there was a panel discussion and a workshop on labour conditions in the sporting goods industry in Davos, organised by Berne Declaration. Results: the main struggle in Bangladesh today is the fight for the right to organise in EPZs (where TUs are still illegal by law); BIGUF asked companies and institutions for more workers participation, more transparency and for long-term relationship with suppliers, but the Sporting goods industry (WFSGI) refused to participate; FLA-CEO A. van Heerden confirmed non-compliance with labour laws and social standards within suppliers for FLA-companies; F. Roselaers confirmed that the fight against child labour is part of a general attempt to improve the respect of the core labour standards; the question "what is the approach of the parallel means for trade union rights (ex in the SA 8000 system)?" remained unanswered.
Participants at the panel "Are fair labour conditions possible in the sporting goods industry?" : Ms. Asma, President, Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers' Union Federation (BIGUF) and former factory worker; Neil Kearney, (ITGLWF), Frans Röselaers, Director, International Programme for the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC), International Labour Organization (ILO); Auret van Heerden, President and CEO, Fair Labor Association, Ineke Zeldenrust, International Secretariat of the Clean Clothes Campaign, Netherlands; Moderation: Stefan Indermühle, Berne Declaration, Switzerland (http://www.evb.ch/index.cfm?page_id=2787).

Public debates Discussion on CCC at the University of Lausanne (15.12.2003 on CSR and the role of NGOs) and University of Zurich (7.1.2004 on ethical trade and marketing); debate on fair trade in Wettingen (23.11.2003) and in Zurich on Bangladesh (with Asma from BIGUF with the documentary film: "Race to the Bottom" www.esperanza.ie/news.html, 23.1.2004). Planning: University of Zurich (21.2.04) on CSR + Ethics; women group in Bülach (4.3.04) on fashion and fair trade.

North Sails Lanka
We have put an update on the Swiss web page.

Assessment of retailers
In collaboration with a consumer organisation we'll make a joint publication in 2004. A questionnaire has been send out to around 35 companies. We have had a very good response so far. Publication is planned for September.

United Kingdom - Labour Behind the Label

Campaigns

A Clean Clothes at Work campaign is just starting in the UK. Research is being carried out to clarify the legal situation (some contradictory evidence so far) and to identify local authorities willing to take part in a pilot project. A meeting (between researcher, No Sweat, UK unions and LBL) has taken place on 14 February to take this project further forward.
Olympic campaign
TUC, LBL and Oxfam GB have so far worked together to plan the details of the campaign launch (4 March), to identify most appropriate targets, to organise Olympic campaign stalls and fringe meetings at some 12 trade union conferences, to produce campaign materials and to identify international speakers.

Other activities and Events

Fashion colleges: We are planning to work with a number of fashion colleges to design a teaching module on ethics in the garment industry. At present working on a pilot with one London college.
Also: school workshops, seminar for fashion students, presence at a number of national events, street actions outside La Senza shops (Gina Form).

Urgent Appeals

Urgent appeals were sent to MEPs on public procurement, UK members of Parliament about CSR, and disseminating calls for international solidarity from workers of Tarrant in Mexico, Jaqalanka in Sri Lanka and PT Busana in Indonesia.

Brand related work

As part of PT Busana appeal, LBL organised a programme of activities in the UK for Mulyani (PT Busana Prima Global) and Emelia Yanti (ABGteks). Mulyani and Emelia Yanti met with the management of GPS, the company where Le Coq Sportif, Lotto and Head place their orders, and which then subcontracts these to Pt Busana Prima Global. GPS had up to this point always refused to get in direct contact with the union. During this meeting between GPS holding company Vertical Sports Group, ABGteks, LBL War on Want and GMB London, GPS agreed to inform PT Busana Prima Global management that they support freedom of association and will facilitate a meeting between the union and factory management. This meeting has now taken place and we have just heard that it has failed to make any progress towards the re-instatement of workers. During the meeting, GPS said that they would audit the factory in February.

Mulyani and Yanti met with several representatives of UK unions, were interviewed on BBC Radio 4 and spoke at a public meeting at the University of London, jointly organised by LBL, No Sweat and War on Want.

Ethical Procurement

Legal action: LBL supporting lobbying by Core, a coalition of UK NGOs calling for regulations of activities by UK-based TNCs.

The website of LBL has been redesigned.
We have produced bulletins 18 to 20.