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Monday, July 19, 2010

Creative Capitalism: "Sweat Shop" That Pays Living Wages


Factory Defies Sweatshop Label, But Can It Thrive?

From the New York Times, by Steven Greenhouse

VILLA ALTAGRACIA, Dominican Republic

Sitting in her tiny living room here, Santa Castillo beams about the new house that she and her husband are building directly behind the wooden shack where they now live.

The new home will be four times bigger, with two bedrooms and an indoor bathroom; the couple and their three children now share a windowless bedroom and rely on an outhouse two doors away.

Ms. Castillo had long dreamed of a bigger, sturdier house, but three months ago something happened that finally made it possible: she landed a job at one of the world’s most unusual garment factories. Industry experts say it is a pioneer in the developing world because it pays a “living wage” — in this case, three times the average pay of the country’s apparel workers — and allows workers to join a union without a fight.

“We never had the opportunity to make wages like this before,” says Ms. Castillo, a soft-spoken woman who earns $500 a month. “I feel blessed.”

The factory is a high-minded experiment, a response to appeals from myriad university officials and student activists that the garment industry stop using poverty-wage sweatshops. It has 120 employees and is owned by Knights Apparel, a privately held company based in Spartanburg, S.C., that is the leading supplier of college-logo apparel to American universities, according to the Collegiate Licensing Company.

For Knights, the factory is a risky proposition, even though it already has orders to make T-shirts and sweatshirts for bookstores at 400 American universities. The question is whether students, alumni and sports fans will be willing to pay $18 for the factory’s T-shirts — the same as premium brands like Nike and Adidas — to sustain the plant and its generous wages.

Joseph Bozich, the C.E.O. of Knights, is optimistic. “We’re hoping to prove that doing good can be good business, that they’re not mutually exclusive,” he says.

Not everyone is so confident. “It’s a noble effort, but it is an experiment,” says Andrew Jassin, an industry consultant who says “fair labor” garments face a limited market unless deft promotion can snare consumers’ attention — and conscience. “There are consumers who really care and will buy this apparel at a premium price,” he says, “and then there are those who say they care, but then just want value.”

Mr. Bozich says the plant’s T-shirts and sweats should command a premium because the company uses high-quality fabric, design and printing.

In the factory’s previous incarnation, a Korean-owned company, BJ&B, made baseball caps for Nike and Reebok before shutting it in 2007 and moving the operation to lower-wage countries. Today, the reborn factory is producing under a new label, Alta Gracia, named after this poverty-ridden town as well as the Virgin of Altagracia, revered as protector of the Dominicans. (Alta gracia translates to “exalted grace.”)

“This sometimes seems too good to be true,” says Jim Wilkerson, Duke University’s director of licensing and a leader of American universities’ fair-labor movement.

He said a few other apparel companies have tried to improve working conditions, like School House, which was founded by a 25-year-old Duke graduate and uses a factory in Sri Lanka. Worker advocates applaud these efforts, but many say Alta Gracia has gone further than others by embracing higher wages and unionization. A living wage is generally defined as the amount of money needed to adequately feed and shelter a family.

“What really counts is not what happens with this factory over the next six months,” Mr. Wilkerson says. “It’s what happens six years or 10 years from now. We want badly for this to live on.”

Santa Castillo agrees. She and many co-workers toiled at other factories for the minimum wage, currently $147 a month in this country’s free-trade zones, where most apparel factories are located. That amount, worker after worker lamented in interviews for this article, falls woefully short of supporting a family.

The Alta Gracia factory has pledged to pay employees nearly three and a half times the prevailing minimum wage, based on a study done by a workers’ rights group that calculated the living costs for a family of four in the Dominican Republic.

While some critics view the living wage as do-gooder mumbo-jumbo, Ms. Castillo views it as a godsend. In her years earning the minimum wage, she said she felt stuck on a treadmill — never able to advance, often borrowing to buy necessities.

“A lot of times there was only enough for my kids, and I’d go to bed hungry,” she says. “But now I have money to buy meat, oatmeal and milk.”

With higher wages, she says, her family can move up in the world. She is now able to borrow $1,000 to begin building her future home and feels able to fulfill her dreams of becoming a minister at her local evangelical church.

“I hope God will continue to bless the people who brought this factory to our community,” she says.

In many ways, the factory owes its existence to an incident a decade ago, when Joe Bozich was attending his son’s high school basketball game. His vision suddenly became blurred, and he could hardly make out his son on the court. A day later, he couldn’t read.

A doctor told him the only thing that would cause his vision to deteriorate so rapidly was a brain tumor.

So he went in for an M.R.I. “My doctor said, ‘The good news is you don’t have a brain tumor, but the bad news is you have multiple sclerosis,’ ” he says.

For three days, he couldn’t see. He worried that he would be relegated to a wheelchair and ventilator and wouldn’t be able to support his family. At the same time, a close friend and his brother died, and then one of his children began suffering from anxiety.

“I thought of people who were going through the same thing as my child and me,” Mr. Bozich recalls. “Fortunately, we had the resources for medical help, and I thought of all the families that didn’t.”

“I started thinking that I wanted to do something more important with my business than worry just about winning market share,” he adds. “That seemed kind of empty after what I’ve been through. I wanted to find a way to use my business to impact people that it touched on a daily basis.”

He regained his full vision after three weeks and says he hasn’t suffered any further attacks. Shortly after Mr. Bozich recovered, Knights Apparel set up a charity, weKAre, that supports a home for orphans and abused children. But he says he wanted to do more.

A national collegiate bodybuilding champion at Vanderbilt, Mr. Bozich was hired by Gold’s Gym after graduation and later founded a unit in the company that sold Gold’s apparel to outside retailers. Building on that experience, Mr. Bozich started Knights Apparel in 2000.

Still solidly built at 47, he has made apparel deals with scores of universities, enabling Knights to surpass Nike as the No. 1 college supplier. Under Mr. Bozich, Knights cooperates closely with the Worker Rights Consortium, a group of 186 universities that press factories making college-logo apparel to treat workers fairly.

Scott Nova, the consortium’s executive director, says Mr. Bozich seems far more committed than most other apparel executives to stamping out abuses — like failure to pay for overtime work. Knights contracts with 30 factories worldwide. At a meeting that the two men had in 2005 to address problems at a Philippines factory, Mr. Bozich floated the idea of opening a model factory.

Mr. Nova loved the idea. He was frustrated that most apparel factories worldwide still paid the minimum wage or only a fraction above — rarely enough to lift families out of poverty. (Minimum wages are 15 cents an hour in Bangladesh and around 85 cents in the Dominican Republic and many cities in China — the Alta Gracia factory pays $2.83 an hour.)

Mr. Bozich first considered opening a factory in Haiti, but was dissuaded by the country’s poor infrastructure. Mr. Nova urged him to consider this depressed community, hoping that he would employ some of the 1,200 people thrown out of work when the Korean-owned cap factory closed.

Mr. Bozich turned to a longtime industry executive, Donnie Hodge, a former executive with J. P. Stevens, Milliken and Gerber Childrenswear. Overseeing a $500,000 renovation of the factory, Mr. Hodge, now president of Knights, called for bright lighting, five sewing lines and pricey ergonomic chairs, which many seamstresses thought were for the managers.

“We could have given the community a check for $25,000 or $50,000 a year and felt good about that,” Mr. Hodge said. “But we wanted to make this a sustainable thing.”

The factory’s biggest hurdle is self-imposed: how to compete with other apparel makers when its wages are so much higher.

Mr. Bozich says the factory’s cost will be $4.80 a T-shirt, 80 cents or 20 percent more than if it paid minimum wage. Knights will absorb a lower-than-usual profit margin, he said, without asking retailers to pay more at wholesale.

“Obviously we’ll have a higher cost,” Mr. Bozich said. “But we’re pricing the product such that we’re not asking the retailer or the consumer to sacrifice in order to support it.”

Knights plans to sell the T’s for $8 wholesale, with most retailers marking them up to $18.

“We think it’s priced right and has a tremendous message, and it’s going to be marketed like crazy,” says Joel Friedman, vice president of general merchandise at Barnes & Noble College Booksellers. He says Barnes & Noble will at first have smaller-than-usual profit margins on the garments because it will spend heavily to promote them, through a Web campaign, large signs in its stores and other methods.

It helps to have many universities backing the project. Duke alone placed a $250,000 order and will run full-page ads in the campus newspaper, put postcards in student mailboxes and hang promotional signs on light poles. Barnes & Noble plans to have Alta Gracia’s T’s and sweats at bookstores on 180 campuses by September and at 350 this winter, while Follett, the other giant college bookstore operator, plans to sell the T’s on 85 campuses this fall.

Still, this new, unknown brand could face problems being sold alongside Nike and Adidas gear. “They have to brand this well — simply, clearly and elegantly — so college students can understand it very fast,” says Kellie A. McElhaney, a professor of corporate social responsibility at the University of California, Berkeley. “A lot of college students would much rather pay for a brand that shows workers are treated well.”

Nike and Adidas officials said their companies have sought to improve workers’ welfare through increased wages and by belonging to the Fair Labor Association, a monitoring group that seeks to end sweatshop conditions. A Nike spokesman said his company would “watch with interest” the Knights initiative.

To promote its gear, Knights is preparing a video to be shown at bookstores and a Web documentary, both highlighting the improvements in workers’ lives. The T-shirts will have hanging tags with pictures of Alta Gracia employees and the message “Your purchase will change our lives.” The tags will also contain an endorsement from the Worker Rights Consortium, which has never before backed a brand.

In a highly unusual move, United Students Against Sweatshops, a nationwide college group that often lambastes apparel factories, plans to distribute fliers at college bookstores urging freshmen to buy the Alta Gracia shirts.

“We’re going to do everything we can to promote this,” says Casey Sweeney, a leader of the group at Cornell. “It’s incredible that I can wear a Cornell hoodie knowing the workers who made it are being paid well and being respected.”

ONE such worker is Maritza Vargas. When BJ&B ran the factory, she was a stand-up-for-your-rights firebrand fighting for 20 union supporters who had been fired.

Student groups and the Worker Rights Consortium pressed Nike and other companies that used the factory to push BJ&B to recognize the union and rehire the fired workers. BJ&B relented. Today, Ms. Vargas is president of the union at the new plant and sings a very different tune. In interviews, she and other union leaders praised the Alta Gracia factory and said they would do their utmost to make it succeed and grow. Mireya Perez said the living wage would enable her to send her 16-year-old daughter to college, while Yolando Simon said she was able to pay off a $300 debt to a grocer.

At other factories, workers said, managers sometimes yelled or slapped them. Several said they were not allowed to go home when sick, and sometimes had to work past midnight after beginning at 7:30 a.m.

Comparing this factory with other ones, Ms. Vargas said, “the difference is heaven and earth.”

Friday, July 16, 2010

'Waiting for Superman'


The much anticipated documentary, "Waiting for Superman", directed by Oscar-winner Davis Guggenheim, will be released this fall. The film takes an insightful look into the state of public education in America.

To learn more about the film or watch the trailer, visit their website.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Study: Hispanics View Racism at Center of Immigration Debate

A 30 percent plurality of Hispanics living in the U.S. view racism at the heart of the immigration reform debate, according to polling data released Wednesday by Latino advocacy groups.

The LatinoMetrics study, co-sponsored by The Hispanic Federation and League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and conducted by Hispanic marketing firms Garcia Research and Santiago ROI in the wake of Arizona's passage of a new immigration law, also found that at least one in four of the 84% of Latino voters who support national immigration reform would not go to the polls if legislation has not passed come November.

"This new poll demonstrates a tremendous shift in the importance that immigration has become for a wide cross section of the Latino population of the United States," LULAC National Executive Director Brent Wilkes said. "Latinos have taken offense to the way immigrants have been demonized by politicians and political interest groups and are prepared to vote accordingly."

According to the study, immigration reform has also spiked as a point of key personal concern among Latinos since December of last year, and is now ranked as the most important issue by 24%, one point behind the economy.

LULAC this week joined the spate of organizations to file suit against the Arizona law.

Written by Gabriel Beltrone

Copyright Politico 2010

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

PBS to Air Raising Hope


(Seattle, WA)— “You could say the government depends on me,” says Leticia Treviño, of McAllen, Texas, who like millions of Americans, cobbles together odd jobs to pay taxes and support her family. Treviño’s is one of five families profiled in Raising Hope: the Equal Voice Story, an inspiring documentary that chronicles the efforts of 30,000 low-income people to create a national platform for lifting families out of poverty.

Produced and directed by Maria Bures of Onda Films, Raising Hope was filmed between 2007-2009, as the Great Recession began, and it shows everyday people grappling with many of the country’s most pressing problems and finding solutions. The film follows them through town hall meetings, a multi-city convening and, finally, to Washington, D.C., where those who have long been talked about – but rarely spoken to – deliver the Equal Voice National Family Platform to federal representatives.

From living rooms to the steps of the nation’s capitol, Raising Hope shows families uniting across income levels, races and geographic regions to propose policy changes. It urges America to do better by its families.

Raising Hope will be available over the summer and fall on public television. The National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA), in collaboration with Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), will provide a satellite feed of the film to PBS stations across the country. LPB will facilitate community engagement, bringing together PBS stations, organizations and participants from the Equal Voice campaign and other stakeholders to inspire discussion and strategies to overcome poverty.

Broadcast Information and Air Dates

  • Fresno, California KVPT -- Monday, June 24, at 10 p.m. PDT
  • San Francisco, California KCSM -- Thursday, July 15, at 9 p.m. PDT
  • Los Angeles, California KLCS -- Monday, July 19, at 8 p.m. PDT
  • Chicago, Illinois WTTW -- Sunday, July 25, at 2 p.m. CDT
  • Miami, Florida WLRN -- Sunday, July 25, at 3 p.m. and 10 p.m. EST
  • New Orleans, Louisiana WYES -- Sept. 27 at 9:30 p.m. CDT and Sept. 30 at 9 p.m. CDT
  • Seattle, Washington KCTS -- Sunday, October 10th (time TBD)
  • Albuquerque, New Mexico KNME plans to air the film in February 2011 (date TBD)
  • Atlanta, Georgia WPBA plans to air it in August (date TBD)
  • Phoenix, Arizona KAET plans to air the film (date TBD)
*Please check your local listings for updates.

About Producer/Director Maria Bures of Onda Films
Maria Bures has two decades of broadcast experience that includes work for the Discovery Channel, Discovery Health Latin America, and the Univision Network. Currently the Vice President and Executive Producer of Onda Films, Bures is known for weaving engaging new media out of traditional documentary formats.

About Latino Public Broadcasting
Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB) supports the development, production, acquisition and distribution of public media content that is representative of Latino people, or addresses issues of interest to Latino Americans. These programs, including the series ‘VOCES,’ are produced for dissemination to the public broadcasting stations. Edward James Olmos is founder and Chairman of the LPB Board of Directors. For more information, please visit www.lpbp.org and www.voces.tv.

*Raising Hope was produced with the support of the Marguerite Casey Foundation; a private grantmaking foundation dedicated to building a movement of working families who can advocate in their own behalf.


# # #

Tuesday, July 6, 2010

World Cup Highlights the Immigrant Story

This year's International Federation of Football Association (FIFA) World Cup is showing off the global appeal of futbol, as well as the ways immigration is playing a critical role in sports. The United States team, who recently lost their place in the tournament after losing to Ghana, was no exception. Of the 23 players, 15 were born from at least one immigrant parent, and one was actually born abroad.

We are used to discussing immigration in this country through a political lens, and here in San Jose, it has become a heated debate. The emotions tied to the immigration issue was on display at a recent City Council meeting where dozens of pro and anti-immigration activists fiercely argued their positions on Arizona SB 1070. It seems every aspect of society is touched by immigration, and that includes sports. Just by taking a look at the rosters of most teams that are participating in the World Cup, we can see the reflection of immigration at a world level.

At the first World Cup to be played on African soil, South Africa 2010, we see Arab, Turkish, Hispanic or Polish names in the German team, Brazilian names in the Mexican team, Slavic names in Scandinavian teams, Africans in European teams, and so on.

Here are just a few examples of the shifting national identities of players: Mark González who plays for Chile returns to South Africa, where he was born; Mario Gómez, whose father is a Spaniard, plays for Germany, as well as his teammates Jerome Boateng whose parents are from Ghana, Sami Khedira whose father is Tunisian, and the rising German star Mesut Özil who has Turkish background; Argentinian-born Lucas Barrios defends the Paraguayan colors, land of his mother. Also in the Mexican team, head coach Javier Aguirre is one of thousands born in Mexico from Spanish parents who left Spain during the Franco dictatorship. Most teams have at least two or three immigrant players. Even the North Koreans have players who were born in Japan and South Korea.

These are the sons of immigrants, or immigrants themselves, representing the country that gave their parents a new opportunity in life. Some were professional soccer players who moved to play professionally abroad. Some migrated for the more common story – traveling to a new country in search of better economic opportunities, escaping war or a dictatorship, or just personal option rather than necessity.

The United States team, however, is perhaps one of the strongest examples of this point, as 15 of the 23 players in the squad were born from at least one immigrant parent -- from Haiti, Nigeria, Brazil and Austria, and one of them is an immigrant from Scotland. Four players are Mexican-American: Jonathan Bornstein, Carlos Bocanegra, Hercules Gómez, and Francisco “el Gringo” Torres.

Gómez and Torres have similar stories. They both faced discrimination after they migrated south of the border, the same discrimination that thousands of Chicanos, or Mexican-Americans, face when they visit the land of their parents. Both of them had the opportunity of representing Mexico, but chose to play for the land where they were born. For “Gringo” Torres, that was not an easy decision.

His Mexican father migrated to Texas in search of better economic opportunities. There he met and married Torres's mother, even when neither of them spoke each other's language. El Gringo was born in the small town of Longview, Texas, and as soon as he learned to walk, he began kicking a soccer ball influenced by his Hispanic side of the family, especially by one of his uncles.

During his teenage years, a scout from the Mexican team Pachuca (it is becoming more common for professional teams from south of the border to send scouts to the United States), “discovered” el Gringo, and brought him to play for Mexico's oldest professional team. El Gringo left amidst tears of joy and sadness from his mother and family.

Once he arrived in Mexico, he began to deal with insults so commonly and viciously launched at “pochos,” a derogatory way of calling Chicanos in Mexico. “They used to tell me, "Why are you here? You don't know how to play futbol?',” said El Gringo during an interview with ESPN. However, he fought hard and is nowadays in the starting lineup each weekend for Pachuca. He became such a good player that both the Mexican and the North American teams were in search of his skillful left foot.

Two years ago at the age of 20, he faced a pivotal decision in regards to the country he would represent on the largest sport stage in the world -- the FIFA World Cup. The moment a player participates at an official FIFA match, he cannot change jerseys ever again. He chose to play for the United States.

Some Mexicans scorned him for being a traitor to his father's land. However, the fact that he played during the World Cup for the United States, does not mean he betrayed his roots. He chose to play for the land that gave his father a new opportunity, and where he was born. He has always been proud of his Mexican background; he carries both lands in his heart, despite only wearing one uniform officially.

Gómez, born in Los Angeles, California and raised in Las Vegas, Nevada, began his professional career in the Major League Soccer (MLS) the United States top professional soccer league. However, like Torres, he moved south of the border to join what is considered to be a more competitive league, which might eventually become a spring-board to Europe, the dream of most soccer players.

In such a short span, Gómez already won a scoring championship while playing for Puebla in Mexico's top flight, and for the remainder of 2010, he will join Torres at Pachuca.

Both Torres and Gómez, along with the 15 sons of immigrants, set a great example that hard work and fighting adversity will take you to achieve your dreams. They both saw action during the United States surprising run in South Africa. They both had that "American dream" come true, even when there are laws that attempt to separate young people like them from their families, and other laws that pretend to remove their citizenship rights if the parents are undocumented.

Gerardo Fernandez is a contributing writer for Alianza News.
Collage image by Fernando Perez.

Copyright Alianza News 2010

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Illegals Invite You to Take Their Jobs

Illegal immigrants boost the crime rate and take American jobs — right?

Well, wrong. But if you don't believe the experts, see for yourself. The UFW invites unemployed Americans to take the farm jobs occupied by illegal immigrants. That's about half of all farm jobs.

What's the catch? The jobs are absolutely grueling and you'll be working 10 hours a day, six days a week. Only after the 10th hour will overtime pay kick in — and that's in California. Most states don't have any overtime pay for farm work.

Small farms aren't bound by minimum wage laws, and 15 states don't require farm labor — which involves quite a bit of dangerous equipment — to be covered by workers compensation laws.

Any takers?

The UFW's Take Our Jobs campaign will be featured on the July 8 episode of the Colbert Report.

This piece was written by Cameron Scott of the SFGate on June 28, 2010.

Copyright SFGate 2010