FLA's new approach to labor enforcement lets corporations off the hook
A new spin on the same FLAws

You can read about FLA 3.0 on the FLA's website at: http://www.fairlabor.org/all/resources/FLA3.0/index.html

"The price [Nike pays] never increases one penny, but compliance with labor codes definitely raises costs."
-Peter Wang, Manager of Zhi Qiao Garments Co., China

FLA 3.0 is the organization's newest tool to enforce workers' rights standards, given, as the FLA says on its website, that Òmonitoring is not an effective way of bringing about change at any level of the supply chain.Ó While we applaud the FLA for acknowledging the flaws in the current system, the approach that is proposed in FLA 3.0 does nothing to address the problems inherent in the apparel industry's current approach to monitoring and enforcement of labor standards.

While the rest of the anti-sweatshop community has come to recognize that the root causes of sweatshop abuse lie in the sourcing practices of apparel brands and retailers, the FLA makes no mention of addressing these practices in presenting its 3.0 scheme. Instead, the FLA apparently believes that the primary reason for the existence of sweatshops is that Òmanagers and workers have too little understanding of the code to achieve sustainable compliance.Ó So the FLA's solution to the lack of compliance with codes of conduct is to engage in what they call Òcapacity building at the supplier level,Ó with no attention to the issues of pricing, delivery time, and stable orders that have been identified both within the industry and outside of it as major factors contributing to non-compliance.

After purportedly spending the past eight years devoted to the cause of workers' rights, and with access to the resources of some of the most profitable apparel companies in the world, it is appalling that the only conclusion that the FLA has reached regarding the reasons for the continued existence of sweatshop labor is that factories simply don't know that it's wrong to violate workers' basic human rights. Implying that the only reason for workers' rights abuses is that management and workers just don't know any better is both insulting to workers around the world and completely ignores the responsibility of the brands to ensure compliance throughout their supply chains. FLA 3.0 does nothing to address the root causes of sweatshop labor, namely downward price pressure on suppliers and a complete lack of support for factories that do comply with codes of conduct as brands are permitted to cut and run from factories with decent conditions in search of cheaper labor.

Of course it's really no surprise that the FLA developed a new approach to labor rights enforcement that fails to address the widely-recognized causes of sweatshop working conditions. After all, addressing corporate sourcing practices to ensure the fair prices, reasonable turnaround times, and basic stability that factories need to comply with labor rights standards would directly conflict with the apparel industry's drive for the lowest cost goods. Until its member corporations are willing to take responsibility for their direct role in perpetuating the daily abuse of workers in their supplier factories, the FLA, no matter how many versions it creates, will continue to remain a clear and potent example of the failure of corporate monitoring to have a real and lasting impact on working conditions.