News

Board votes on labor issue

The city of Madison Board of Estimates took a stride toward human rights by unanimously approving the creation of a policy to eliminate the city’s purchase of goods made in sweatshops Monday night.

The proposal, made by Ald. Austin King, District 8, calls on the Board of Estimates and city staff to evaluate current city purchasing decisions and create a purchasing policy by July 19 this year.

Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4, informed King, who had arrived after adjournment, that the board unanimously approved the proposal. King victoriously pumped his fist at the news and then said he thinks Madison has some catching up to do when it comes to sweatshops.

“I was actually embarrassed when I was elected to find out we didn’t have this policy,” King said. “There are scores of cities all across the country — and not just the Madisons and Berkleys and Boulders of the world — but Milwaukee has a very strong anti-sweatshop ordinance that’s actually a model for the rest of the country.”

According to King, the anti-sweatshop policy aims to take advantage of the city’s role as a member of the marketplace.

“This resolution defines city policy in terms of the purchases that we make to ensure that we’re making ethical purchases,” King said. “This is our way of leveraging our buying power to make good things happen in the rest of the world.”

Ald. Ken Golden, District 10, raised concerns about the city’s ability to enforce the policy. He pointed out it would be difficult for the city to know the production practices of all of their purchased goods.

“It seems like [the policy] would be difficult to enforce effectively,” he said.

King said debate on how to best enforce the policy is inevitable.

“What the policy will become, in terms of enforcement, is going to be a real interesting question,” King said.

King said there are several different ways to enforce the policy and that assistance in monitoring city purchases is necessary.

“During the next year [the city] will be able to figure how we can join a group that will do the monitoring for us to enforce the goal of the policy,” King said.

King went on to explain how the city would use the assistance from a monitoring group to enforce the rules.

“Essentially the process is: [the monitoring group] finds an abuse — they come back to us. We call our contractor that is purchasing goods from the sweatshop in question and we threaten to pull the contract unless they clean up the sweatshop conditions.”

King said he sees the policy being effective and explained a hypothetical strength in numbers approach.

“The thing is, we’re not the only city doing it,” King said. “We’re one of a hundred cities doing it and all of a sudden 100 phone calls come in one day saying ‘you better clean up your act or we’re switching to your competitor.’ That’s when changes really happen.”