Connections, Culture, and Coercion:
The Institutionalization of Labor Self-regulation in the Global Apparel Industry
Anna Wetterberg
University of California, Berkeley
I.
INTRODUCTION
In March 1992 Levi Strauss & Co. announced its Global Sourcing Guidelines which was the
first attempt at voluntary labor standards by an apparel firm. Levi Strauss had long been perceived as
a company with a strong progressive tradition refusing to lay off workers during the Great
Depression, integrating factories in the American South in the 1960s, offering pioneering health
benefits to domestic partners but the Global Sourcing Guidelines did not emerge out of the
company s proactive concern for worker welfare. Instead, it was a defensive reaction to revelations
that a Levi s supplier in Saipan was using forced labor to produce the firm s iconic blue jeans . In
response to negative media exposure, Levi s sought to re-establish its image as an ethical brand by
adopting a code of conduct, outlining specific labor standards for production of the company s
goods.
The same pattern has since repeated itself across the apparel industry. After fifteen years of
exposés by the anti-sweatshop movement, this type of labor self-regulation has been firmly
established at prominent brands, such as the Gap, H&M, Reebok, and Polo Ralph Lauren . An
OECD review of codes of conduct in apparel and other sectors found that 60% of the top 500 firms in
the United Kingdom had codes in 2000, compared to 18% a decade earlier .
Large, branded companies appear to have been coerced into paying attention to workers
rights after some very visible and vocal prodding by activists. Smaller firms, or those that have less
invested in their brands, have not been subject to the same kind of targeting, however, and may
therefore have avoided self-regulation. At the same time, the negative press and threat of consumer
boycotts afflicting brands could hardly have gone unnoticed, especially as many smaller firms have
ties to brands through production, licensing, or shared clients. It is thus possible that the anti-
sweatshop movement and related changes in the labor policies of large brands could have affected
practices throughout the industry.
Self-regulation shifts the responsibility for workers protection away from national
governments and into private hands. Voluntary standards have inherent flaws in terms of
accountability, transparency, and enforcement, but are an emergent form of governance on social
issues in a globalized world, where national governments are perceived as ineffective. Such soft
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Convention