MAYOR NEWSOM TAKES LEAD ON SF SWEATFREE ORDINANCE,
SUPERVISOR AMMIANO INTRODUCES MEASURE TO BOARD
SAN FRANCISCO. Before a huge array of cameras and a cheering crowd of supporters, Gavin Newsom became the first mayor in America to publicly embrace an anti sweatshop model of government procurement on Monday on the steps of San Francisco city hall. Supervisor Tom Ammiano promptly introduced the ordinance to the supervisors’ finance committee, where it already has nine co-sponsors out of 11 members.
The measure, which provides $100,000 for enforcement, is expected to clear the finance committee this week. Then after a thirty-day waiting period, the new policies will be take up by the full board for expected approval. The measure would go into effect this fall.
It was a triumphant day for the grass-roots coalition organized by Valerie Orth of Global Exchange, which included the country labor federation and numerous advocates from immigrant, community, clergy, and human rights groups. (for information on the coalition, contact valerie orth valerie@globalexchange.org. Tom Hayden of No More Sweatshops drafted the original ordinance, met with Mayor Newsom last fall, and taught a weekly class on anti-sweatshop organizing sponsored by the New College for the
past six months.
The ordinance is the strongest in the country, especially because of the mayor’s personal commitment to a several year period of implementation. The package also includes resolutions committing San Francisco to fair trade and organic purchasing practices, policies the coalition will lobby to incorporate in law.
At a time when the Walmart Model of government expenditures for corporate welfare is under challenge, the “San Francisco Model” points to a more positive role forgovernment as a market participant.
Nevertheless, the ordinance is a compromise between the sweatfree vision, embraced by the mayor, and cautious pragmatists within the city bureaucracy. It is limited to the garment sector only for the first year of implementation, with a commitment to expand the scope to all procurement in later years, under the influence of a community-based advisory council. The $100,000 will be divided between an in-house monitor under the department of labor enforcement, and an independent monitor charged especially with investigating sweatshop abuses in other countries.
With Los Angeles and San Francisco adopting sweat-free ordinances with funding for enforcement, the question is how to draw more public entities into the battle to assure that public tax dollars are expended for public purposes, including wages above the poverty level for the workers on whom government depends. |
Tom Hayden is national co-director of No More Sweatshops!, a coalition of labor, clergy, community and campus advocates of "sweat-free" guidelines on public procurement and enforceable labor standards for corporate behavior.
