Wis. Activists Attack Kohls Sweatshop Ties

By Roger Bybee
Kohl’s Corp. continues to wear a poker face, claiming that it still holds a strong hand in the face of anti-sweatshop protests over the Chentex factory where its products are made in Nicaragua.

After workers at the Chentex plant in Nicaragua–who average just 48 cents an hour–sought 8 cents more for every piece of $30 clothing they make for Kohl’s, plant management fired about 300 workers and dozens were arrested. This has triggered protests against the Menominee Falls-based firm from religious, student, and labor groups in Milwaukee and Madison.

The protests escalated at the busy Southridge store in the Milwaukee suburb of Greendale, October 14. Four young anti-sweatshop activists were arrested at Kohl’s after unfurling a banner calling upon Kohl’s to "Do the Right Thing," chanting slogans, and distributing leaflets describing the situation in Nicaragua. They were handcuffed by Greendale police, and as they were led away, the young people began softly singing the civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome."

The arrests were the first to occur in Milwaukee-area protests which began last May and have been drawing in a wider circle of allies. The arrests captured prominent media attention and are likely to be a harbinger of more civil disobedience at Kohl’s stores, as has taken place in Ann Arbor.

As a participant in the Southridge protest, I observed that almost all the Kohl’s customers I approached with leaflets were interested and respectful. Other protesters also reported an unusually positive response. A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article the next day similarly quoted supportive responses from two Kohl’s customers. (Reflecting the fact that the Bill of Rights ends at the entrance to privately-owned malls, local TV stations declined to cover the protest inside Southridge, saying that their access as news-gatherers is routinely denied at almost all area malls.)

Up until now, Kohl’s has been sticking to its cards. Kohl’s maintains that a PriceWaterhouseCoopers study "did not find that the workers were underpaid," and that it cannot "intercede" in labor relations in a plant it does not own.

However, along with the protest at Southridge, the corporation has been dealt some other unfavorable cards in recent days:

• U.S. Trade Secretary Charlene Barshefsky wrote the Nicaraguan government calling attention to labor disputes at the Chentex and Mil Colores plants where Kohl’s products are made. This kind of official attention, especially coming from a trade official normally counted on to be pro-corporate, considerably ups the ante. The Barshefsky letter became the lead story in the Oct. 13 business section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

• The PriceWaterhouseCoopers report lost much of its public credibility when MIT professor Dara O’Rourke discovered that the auditing company has severe flaws in its factory-inspection practices.

O’Rourke, the September 28 New York Times reported, found that PWC "had a pro-management bias, did not uncover the use of carcinogenic chemicals, and failed to recognized that some employees were forced to work 80-hour weeks."

Despite these developments, Kohl’s remains stone-faced, claiming that it enforces a code of conduct for Chentex and its contractors and that it is conducting an investigation of the labor dispute.

However, corporate "human rights policies" have become empty, unenforced tools to deflect protest over sweatshop conditions. At this point, such codes of conduct are probably included on every software package that major corporations buy. Nike, Reebok, and many of the other worst exploiters of sweatshop labor all are able to hire lawyers who draft lofty-sounding but toothless human-rights policies. But these policies generally have remained encased in a frame back at corporate headquarters while the local contractor in China, Indonesia, or Mexico continues to pay 20 to 60 cents an hour for 60-hour weeks, with silent approval of the controlling corporation.

And when somebody does insist that human-rights policies be taken seriously, big corporations are not amused. After the University of Oregon selected the Workers Rights Consortium rather than a more pliable alternative to monitor conditions in the Third World factories where Nike products are made, an infuriated Nike CEO Phil Knight tore up a $30 million check he had planned to give the university. Nike simply won’t allow the Workers Rights Consortium to handle the monitoring of its contractors’ factories.

As for investigating conditions in Nicaragua, Kohl’s assigned Price-WaterhouseCoopers to conduct a study. Besides noting that some safety problems existed, the PWC report asserted that workers were "not underpaid," as a Kohl’s representative told the Journal Sentinel. But Kohl’s is refusing to make public the PWC report, according to Steve Watrous of the Wisconsin Fair Trade Campaign.

Moreover, Kohl’s executives have shown a remarkable disinterest in talking first-hand to those who have observed conditions in Nicaragua. The corporation turned away a delegation including Detroit Archbishop Thomas Gumbleton, recently expelled from Nicaragua after visiting sweatshops producing for the U.S. market. At this point, Kohl’s has spurned four opportunities to meet with delegations from Nicaragua.

Further, Sen. Herb Kohl, whose family formerly owned the department stores, wrote Kohl’s on August 29 urging them to meet with groups challenging the sweatshop conditions, but no meeting has taken place. One may well question the sincerity of Kohl’s commitment to a real investigation of conditions. Thus far, it seems to be about as intensive as O.J. Simpson’s search for the "real killer" of Nicole.

However, escalating protests in Kohl’s home territory and unwelcome attention from the U.S. trade representative may finally force the company to play its cards. Kohl’s can hardly be happy about the prospect of a mounting wave of bad publicity as it heads toward the big Christmas shopping season.

Roger Bybee, former editor of Racine Labor, works with the Wisconsin Fair Trade Campaign and is the communications director of Wisconsin Citizen Action.