When the Business Social Compliance Initiative BSCI marked its 10th Anniversary last week in Brussels, the Clean Clothes Campaign ‘congratulated’ them with a veritable broadside attack in media.
Last weekend, just days before we expect to be informed about how concrete action will start to improve building and fire safety in the Bangladeshi garment industry, the International Labor Rights Forum ILRF in the US seems embarked on anti-capitalist campaigning and demonstrations against leading US retailers, for having chosen other approaches.
As such there is nothing wrong with this. Campaigning is acceptable and sometimes even important. Still, there are some question marks.
Very many of the European retailers and brands that signed up to the Bangladesh Building and Fire Safety Accord, if not most of them, are BSCI members and are actively engaged in this organisation. Many of them were in Brussels, and the CCC message was clearly badly received even if not publicly raised or commented. If the intention is to prepare the ground for a concrete and efficient cooperation in Bangladesh, the CCC attack was both misguided and poorly timed.
These campaigners in the Netherlands should reflect on how they can best contribute to a good start of project activities and try to control the temptation to continuously go after brands and retailers, giving the impression that one of the reasons is that they are brands and retailers, and represent big capital. This is not a good time for that kind of campaigning.
The ILRF campaigning against Wal-Mart and GAP – and now other retailers as well – has other motives and grounds of course, but is equally questionable as it is pulling the focus off practical project work in Bangladesh. If the aim is to build some kind of even minimal mutual confidence to enable cooperation and coordination on the ground in Bangladesh, then anti-imperialist field days like this just before the project launch will not help.
Yes I do of course strongly support the Accord that was finally introduced by IndustriALL. After all, I have been engaged myself in bringing the coalition and activities about.
This is not the same ‘Accord’ as some of these campaigner organisations were unsuccessfully pushing for since a few years back. It is a new creation, developed in cooperation with leading global retailers and brands, at the initiative of companies and stakeholders in Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP. When IndustriALL joined this process, facilitated by the German development authorities, a coalition started to form. Of course the 2011 campaigner driven project plan was one of the elements used when the Accord was created, but not more.
It is regrettable that a broad US brand and retailer participation fell on the clause on the Accord that deals with the possibility of litigation in courts. As I am not a US lawyer I cannot take a stand on whether the companies’ fears of campaigning through the courts are justified or not. Here the enterprises and the campaigners disagree. A reality is that most large US retailers and brands have stayed outside the Accord and launched their own initiative.
The next months and years will prove if this US approach is serious or not. The pressure on the companies involved to show that they can produce real results will be high, as it will also on the Accord.
It is a good sign that IndustriALL Global Union has continued to keep its sight set on what needs to be done to secure the success of the Accord. Without this organisation, a broad coalition like the one we see today would never have been possible.
Perhaps it is time for the unions to calm down their most eager NGO supporters, and help IndustriALL and the committed companies to get a good start for their activities. Nobody can afford internal strife in a situation where the challenges are as big as here, not the least in convincing the local players of the seriousness of the initiative.