Local legislators know that they can't keep multinationals from channeling funds to dictatorships in Nigeria and Burma, and they cannot prevent imports from companies that use child and prison labor in Pakistan and China, but they can do something else. They can collectively refuse to buy goods and services from these companies when they select their business partners for everything from cellular services to Little League soccer balls. The goal of "selective purchasing agreements," as these ethical trading policies are called, is twofold. First, the agreements may lead individual companies to decide that it is not cost-effective to continue to do business under unethical conditions abroad-for instance, if it is going to cost them contracts at home. Second, actions by local governments can put pressure on federal governments to take more principled positions in their foreign policy agendas.
Modeled after similar initiatives during the anti-apartheid years, the current local foreign policy "fad" (as one Republican commentator snidely called it) began, like so many other U.S. social-justice movements, in Berkeley, California.18 In February 1995, Berkeley's city council passed a resolution barring the purchase of goods or services from companies invested in Burma. Of course such companies could still sell their wares inside Berkeley-just not to municipal agencies, such as the police force or sanitation services. The move set off a domino effect across the country-at last count, twenty-two cities, one county and two states had selective purchasing agreements relating to companies in Burma, and a handful of cities had disqualified purchases from companies with investments in Nigeria. In February 1995, Berkeley's city council passed a resolution barring the purchase of goods or services from companies invested in Burma. Of course such companies could still sell their wares inside Berkeley-just not to municipal agencies, such as the police force or sanitation services. The move set off a domino effect across the country-at last count, twenty-two cities, one county and two states had selective purchasing agreements relating to companies in Burma, and a handful of cities had disqualified purchases from companies with investments in Nigeria.
Though each law has slight variations in wording, the gist is summed up in this one, passed unanimously by the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 8, 1998: WHEREASThe city of Cambridge declares the right to measure the moral character of its business partners in determining with whom it seeks to have business relationships; now therefore be itRESOLVEDThat as a matter of public policy the City of Cambridge declares that it will not purchase goods, services or commodities from any company or corporation that does business in the nation of Burma...
The most significant move came in June 1996 when the Massachusetts State Legislature passed the Massachusetts Burma Law, making it far more difficult for companies doing business in the dictator-run country to land a government contract in the state. As the influential Journal of Commerce Journal of Commerce noted, "The targets are far from home, but suddenly local governments are showing they can reach around the world." noted, "The targets are far from home, but suddenly local governments are showing they can reach around the world."19 Another popular purchasing restriction is one that does not broadly target all corporations in particular countries, but rather corporations engaged in a particularly objectionable practice-for instance, the practice of employing sweatshop or child labor. One such case involved the Los Angeles Monroe High School. After reading the Life Life magazine article on the Pakistani soccer-ball industry, a Monroe student, Sharon Paulson, recalled that she and her classmates "ran out during one practice and we were checking all the balls and they all said, 'Made in Pakistan.' That kind of made everything more real. Before, it was something that we read about, but then it was like, 'We won a city championship using these balls!' It gave us something to fight for." What they fought for-and won-was a commitment from the Los Angeles Board of Education to halt an order of balls made in Pakistan, and another from Los Angeles City Council "to investigate the production of soccer balls made in countries using child labor." magazine article on the Pakistani soccer-ball industry, a Monroe student, Sharon Paulson, recalled that she and her classmates "ran out during one practice and we were checking all the balls and they all said, 'Made in Pakistan.' That kind of made everything more real. Before, it was something that we read about, but then it was like, 'We won a city championship using these balls!' It gave us something to fight for." What they fought for-and won-was a commitment from the Los Angeles Board of Education to halt an order of balls made in Pakistan, and another from Los Angeles City Council "to investigate the production of soccer balls made in countries using child labor."20 According to the Investor Responsibility Research Center, "in 1997, some 20 U.S. cities and towns...adopted 'anti-sweatshop' ordinances that require that goods purchased by those city governments-including uniforms for police, fire and public works personnel-be made without sweatshop labor." According to the Investor Responsibility Research Center, "in 1997, some 20 U.S. cities and towns...adopted 'anti-sweatshop' ordinances that require that goods purchased by those city governments-including uniforms for police, fire and public works personnel-be made without sweatshop labor."
Though selective purchasing agreements have been primarily an American phenomenon, they are beginning to pop up elsewhere. The city of St. John's, Newfoundland, passed an anti-sweatshop resolution in June 1998, and a group of kids in Fort McMurray, Alberta, succeeded in getting their city council to pass a resolution banning the use of child-made soccer balls and fireworks on public property. Free Burma resolutions, meanwhile, are reaching even farther-on March 17, 1998, the Marrickville Council in New South Wales, Australia, "voted unanimously to become the first local authority outside the United States to enact a Burma selective purchasing law."21 In the past four years, the Berkeley City Council has passed so many boycott resolutions-against companies doing business in Burma, Nigeria, Tibet; companies associated with the arms industry or with nuclear power-that, as Councilor Polly Armstrong joked, "Pretty soon we'll have to do our own offshore drilling."22 It's true that between the Nigeria and Burma resolutions, and one about the It's true that between the Nigeria and Burma resolutions, and one about the Exxon Valdez Exxon Valdez oil spill, the council is prevented from using every single major oil company and is forced to fuel its ambulances and street-cleaning vehicles with gas from the little-known Golden Gate Petroleum Company. Berkeley banished Pepsi from its municipal vending machines because of its investment in Burma, returned to the company after it cut ties with Rangoon and then decided to boycott Coke because of its involvement in Nigeria. oil spill, the council is prevented from using every single major oil company and is forced to fuel its ambulances and street-cleaning vehicles with gas from the little-known Golden Gate Petroleum Company. Berkeley banished Pepsi from its municipal vending machines because of its investment in Burma, returned to the company after it cut ties with Rangoon and then decided to boycott Coke because of its involvement in Nigeria.
It may all sound like Alice in Wonderland, but the boycotts do affect the multinationals. They may smile at a tie-dyed college town like Berkeley boycotting everything but hemp paper and Bridgehead coffee, but when rich states like Massachusetts and Vermont get in on the action, the corporate sector is not amused. In May 1999, three more states-Texas, Washington and New York-had Burma laws pending. And it was beginning to cost. For instance, before it pulled out of Burma over the Celine Dion controversy, the telecommunication firm Ericsson lost a major bid to upgrade San Francisco's 911 services because of its business ties with Burma, and Hewlett-Packard is alleged to have lost several large municipal contracts as well.
Understandably, many companies have bowed to the demands of the human-rights campaigners. Since Massachusetts adopted its Burma Law in June 1996, there has been an exodus of big-name multinationals from the dictatorship, including Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, Philips Electronics, Apple computers and Texaco. But just because these companies decided to give in does not mean they plan to accept these new local roadblocks in international commercial transactions without a fight. As Robert S. Greenberger explains in The Wall Street Journal The Wall Street Journal, "Procurement contracts in California alone, for example, are worth more to some U.S. companies than any business they could secure in many countries, but they don't want to have to choose but they don't want to have to choose" (italics mine).23 Precisely because it forces such a stark choice, many people are convinced that localized foreign policy initiatives are the most effective political tool available for wresting back some control over transnational corporations. "Selective purchasing based on the Burma model," says Danny Kennedy, coordinator of mining lobby group Project Underground, "is our greatest hope."24 It's the kind of statement that has come to enrage the business community, which, after being caught off guard by the sudden rise of selective purchasing laws, is determined not to make the same mistake twice. A coalition of companies, including key Burma investors such as Unocal, and Nigeria investors such as Mobil, have banded together under the National Foreign Trade Council to launch an all-out assault on local selective purchasing agreements. In April 1997, the council formed USA*Engage, claiming to represent over 670 corporations and trade associations. Its express purpose is to fight these laws collectively, allowing individual corporations to avoid putting their own practices in the firing line. Frank Kittredge, who is both president of the NFTC and vice chairman of USA*Engage, explains that "a lot of companies are not anxious to be spotlighted as supporters of countries like Iran or Burma. The way to avoid that is to band together in a coalition."25 The group argues that foreign policy is a federal matter, and municipal and state governments have no business wading into the fray. To these ends, USA*Engage has developed a "State and Local Sanctions Watch List" to monitor all the towns, cities and states where selective purchasing agreements have passed, as well as communities that are considering passing them and are therefore still vulnerable to outside pressure. Aggressive lobbying by USA*Engage members has already succeeded in squashing a proposed law on Nigeria that was about to be adopted by the State of Maryland (in March 1998); and Unocal (which has not managed to keep its name out of this debate) succeeded in convincing the California state legislature not to adopt a Massachusetts-style Burma law.
The attacks have also come from farther afield. Acting at the behest of multinationals based in Europe, the European Union has launched an official challenge to the Massachusetts Burma Law at the World Trade Organization. At issue is the allegation that the law violates a WTO regulation that prohibits government purchases from being made on "political" grounds.26 There has even been talk that municipal and state governments in the U.S. could be sued by their own federal government for violating the WTO clause. Though federal legislators categorically deny that is their intention, on August 5, 1998, Congress narrowly defeated a resolution that would have barred the government from using public money for such a court challenge. There has even been talk that municipal and state governments in the U.S. could be sued by their own federal government for violating the WTO clause. Though federal legislators categorically deny that is their intention, on August 5, 1998, Congress narrowly defeated a resolution that would have barred the government from using public money for such a court challenge.
While this trade wrangling went on, the multinationals didn't wait around to see if the selective purchasing agreements would survive. In April 1998, the National Foreign Trade Council filed a lawsuit in the federal district court in Boston that challenged the Massachusetts Burma Law as unconstitutional. The NFTC argued that "the Massachusetts Burma Law directly intrudes on the exclusive power of the national government to determine foreign policy, discriminates against companies engaged in foreign commerce, and conflicts with the policies and objectives of the federal statute imposing sanctions on the Union of Myanmar."27 Though the NFTC succeeded in winning a protective order that concealed the identities of the individual corporations funding the case, it claimed in court that thirty of its members had been affected by the law. And in November 1998, the NFTC won: the court ruled the Massachusetts Burma Law unconstitutional because it "impermissibly infringes on the federal government's power to regulate foreign affairs." Though the NFTC succeeded in winning a protective order that concealed the identities of the individual corporations funding the case, it claimed in court that thirty of its members had been affected by the law. And in November 1998, the NFTC won: the court ruled the Massachusetts Burma Law unconstitutional because it "impermissibly infringes on the federal government's power to regulate foreign affairs."28 The state has already lost one appeal, but both sides have said they are willing to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court. The NFTC openly acknowledges that the court challenge is an attempt to set a precedent that would effectively stamp out all municipal selective purchasing agreements, as well as campus and school-board bans. "We regard this law suit to be an important test case that will determine the very significant, perplexing and continuing issue concerning the constitutionality of state and local sanctions," said Frank Kittredge.29 For their part, proponents of selective purchasing argue that they are not trying to implement their own foreign policy. They say calling these laws "sanctions," as their critics invariably do, is a misnomer because selective purchasing agreements are not regulations placed on businesses, they are simply large-scale consumer pressure. Simon Billenness, the Burma campaigner who has helped draft these pieces of legislation, characterizes them colorfully as "boycotts on steroids."30 Just as consumers have the right to personal choice in the marketplace, so too do they have the right collectively, whether as schools, town councils or state governments. He also points out that the agreements have a proven track record of meaningful human-rights victories. During the anti-apartheid movement, five U.S. states, nine cities and fifty-nine universities passed resolutions that either barred purchases from companies in South Africa outright, or compelled them to adopt the Sullivan principles. "If USA*Engage had succeeded with their tactics during the apartheid years, Nelson Mandela might still be in prison," says Simon Billenness. Just as consumers have the right to personal choice in the marketplace, so too do they have the right collectively, whether as schools, town councils or state governments. He also points out that the agreements have a proven track record of meaningful human-rights victories. During the anti-apartheid movement, five U.S. states, nine cities and fifty-nine universities passed resolutions that either barred purchases from companies in South Africa outright, or compelled them to adopt the Sullivan principles. "If USA*Engage had succeeded with their tactics during the apartheid years, Nelson Mandela might still be in prison," says Simon Billenness.31 Perhaps most important, the assault on selective purchasing agreements has turned what were campaigns on behalf of citizens in faraway lands into battles for local rights and liberties as well. Billenness, for his part, describes the attempt to criminalize selective purchasing as "a violation of state sovereignty and local democracy."32 It may also prove a tactical miscalculation. In taking aim at these locally based actions, the NFTC has actively reinforced the very beliefs that led to their enactment in the first place: that corporations have become more powerful than governments; that federal governments have stopped serving the interests of people; and that in the light of these two facts, citizens have no choice but to confront corporate power themselves. It may also prove a tactical miscalculation. In taking aim at these locally based actions, the NFTC has actively reinforced the very beliefs that led to their enactment in the first place: that corporations have become more powerful than governments; that federal governments have stopped serving the interests of people; and that in the light of these two facts, citizens have no choice but to confront corporate power themselves.
The proposed Multilateral Agreement on Investment would not help matters. The MAI is stalled for the moment, but its supporters have in no way abandoned the project. According to a draft leaked in 1997, selective purchasing agreements could become instantly illegal. The agreement explicitly bans "discrimination" against corporations based on their trade relations with other countries, and states clearly that this clause would override any preexisting laws at all levels of government-including municipalities. Not only that, but multinationals would be granted the legal standing to sue governments directly for any alleged discrimination on this basis. Many now believe that these parts of the MAI will be part of the next round of World Trade Organization negotiations.
In the same way that citizens' groups from around the world mobilized against the MAI in 1998, many such groups have declared themselves ready to resist the business community's frontal assault on selective purchasing. Free Burma campaigners are vowing to "out" the corporations behind the NFTC lawsuit and target them for boycott campaigns. They also point out that local governments can easily carry out their "boycotts on steroids" with or without formal resolutions on the books. The city of Vancouver is a case in point. In 1989, at the tail end of the apartheid boycott, Vancouver passed a selective purchasing resolution that banned Shell gasoline from city-owned vehicles because of the company's controversial dealings in South Africa. Similar resolutions were passed-mostly relating to banks that issued loans to South Africa-by councils in Toronto, Ottawa and Victoria. But Shell Canada decided to take the City of Vancouver to court for discrimination. The case dragged on for nearly five years and in February 1994 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled, by a margin of five to four, in Shell's favor. Judge John Sopinka wrote that the council had indeed discriminated against Shell, and that councilors only had the jurisdiction to make procurement decisions based on concerns for Vancouver residents-not for people in South Africa. The purpose of the Shell boycott, he concluded, "is to affect matters beyond the boundaries of the City without any identifiable benefit to its inhabitants."33 Shell got what it wanted: the City of Vancouver's gas contract. But the company's problems were far from over. When Shell again became the subject of international approbation after the hanging of Ken Saro-Wiwa, local Sierra Club activists again began lobbying the Vancouver council to cut its ties to Shell. In light of the Supreme Court ruling, the council could not formally pass another selective purchasing resolution but, coincidentally, on July 8, 1997, it handed over a $6 million contract to fuel the fleet of ambulances and police and fire vehicles for the entire Greater Vancouver Regional District to Shell's competitor, Chevron. It is possible that the city's decision was based solely on the merits of each company's bid, but there is little doubt that the human-rights issue was also a factor. Included in the Greater Vancouver catchment area is the smaller municipality of North Vancouver; less than four months before the contract went to Chevron, North Vancouver councilors had voted unanimously to condemn Shell's behavior in Ogoniland and to direct its staff not to buy Shell gas. "We have to take a stand on corporations, against the way Shell has raped the Ogoni people," one councilor said at the time.34 But since the North Vancouver resolution was simply an expression of council's beliefs-with no mention of municipal contracts-Shell could not appeal legally. When the contract went to Chevron, local environmentalists, who had been keeping weekly vigils outside Shell gas stations in Vancouver for over a year, celebrated it as a victory. But since the North Vancouver resolution was simply an expression of council's beliefs-with no mention of municipal contracts-Shell could not appeal legally. When the contract went to Chevron, local environmentalists, who had been keeping weekly vigils outside Shell gas stations in Vancouver for over a year, celebrated it as a victory.
But was it a victory? Less than a year later, Bola Oyinbo, a thirty-three-year-old activist who led an occupation of a Chevron oil barge in Nigeria's Ondo State, would be writing the following report: Just as we were preparing to leave we saw three helicopters (choppers). They came like eagles, swooping on chickens. We never expected what followed. As the choppers landed one after the other discharging soldiers, what we heard were gunshots and fire. In fact they started shooting commando style at us even before they landed. They shot everywhere. Arulika and Jolly fell. They died instantly. Larry who was near him rushed to his aid, wanting to pick him up, he was also shot. More soldiers came and more shooting followed. Some of my colleagues jumped over board into the Atlantic, others ran into the platform. There was pandemonium. They shot teargas. White men flew all the helicopters...We were defenseless, harmless.35 The protest had begun peacefully on May 25, 1998, and it ended three days later in a bloodbath, with two activists dead. The circumstances were eerily similar to those that had prompted Ken Saro-Wiwa's campaign against Shell five years earlier. "Go to Awoye community and see what they have done," Oyinbo writes. "Everything there is dead: mangroves, tropical forests, fish, the freshwater, wildlife etc. All killed by Chevron.... our people complain of 'dead creeks.'" According to Oyinbo, the community attempted on several occasions to negotiate with Chevron, but its executives never showed up at the meetings. The occupation of the moored barge was a last resort, they say, and the only demand was for a formal meeting with Chevron.
Oyinbo and his comrades accuse the company of hiring the soldiers who raided the barge, killing two men and injuring as many as thirty others. Chevron says it is not responsible for the actions taken by police officers on its rig-they were simply enforcing the law against "pirates." Chevron spokesperson Mike Libbey denies that the company paid the security officers to intervene, though he admits to alerting the authorities and providing transportation to the platform. "We think it is unfortunate that people died, perhaps unnecessarily, but that doesn't change the fact that in order for Chevron to do business in ninety countries around the world, we must cooperate with governments of many kinds," he told reporters.36 The company has further enraged the community by refusing to pay damages to the families of the deceased-only burial costs. "If they want other compensations, they should write to us and the company may decide to assist them on compassionate grounds," said Deji Haastrup, Chevron's community relations manager. The company has further enraged the community by refusing to pay damages to the families of the deceased-only burial costs. "If they want other compensations, they should write to us and the company may decide to assist them on compassionate grounds," said Deji Haastrup, Chevron's community relations manager.37 Perhaps fittingly, Chevron's CEO, Ken Derr, is one of the most active members of USA*Engage and its crusade against sanctions and selective purchasing. Perhaps fittingly, Chevron's CEO, Ken Derr, is one of the most active members of USA*Engage and its crusade against sanctions and selective purchasing.
Unlike Shell, Chevron has not yet become the subject of an international brand boycott, though there is a growing public awareness about the deaths that took place on May 28. Perhaps because Bola Oyinbo lacks Ken Saro-Wiwa's international connections, the deaths of his two colleagues were at first not even reported outside the Nigerian press. And it is sadly ironic that Chevron has undoubtedly benefited from the fact that activists have made a strategic decision to focus their criticism on Shell, rather than on the Nigerian oil industry as a whole. It points to one of the significant, at times maddening, limitations of brand-based politics.
Craig Kielburger, the teenager who successfully brought child labor to the world's attention, receives an award from Reebok, a company that has been embroiled in several sweatshop scandals. "Certified Organic," "Recycled" and "Dolphin Friendly." Will "No Sweat" become just another logo for the conscientious consumer?
Chapter Eighteen.
Beyond the Brand The Limits of Brand-Based Politics In this industry, the only reason to change is because someone has got a great cattle prod that keeps jabbing you in the rear end.
-Bud Konheim, president of Nicole Miller Inc. clothing company, September 4, 1997 When Good Things Happen to Bad Brands In One World, Ready or Not One World, Ready or Not, William Greider writes that "focusing on the moral values of particular companies-or their immorality-invites a self-righteous response among readers that is too easy and undeserved.... Nike has concocted a particularly sick ideology to sell its shoes-glamorous images of superstar athletes concealing the human brutalities-but why single out Nike or Michael Jordan when the U.S. government itself is implicated in the same sickness?"1 Greider has a valid point. The conduct of the individual multinationals is simply a by-product of a broader global economic system that has steadily been removing almost all barriers and conditions to trade, investment and outsourcing. If companies make deals with brutal dictators, sell off their factories and pay wages too low to live on, it's because there is nothing in our international trading rules to prevent them. But eliminating the inequalities at the heart of free-market globalization seems a daunting task for most of us mortals. On the other hand, focusing on a Nike or a Shell and possibly changing the behavior of one multinational can open an important door into this complicated and challenging political arena. Greider has a valid point. The conduct of the individual multinationals is simply a by-product of a broader global economic system that has steadily been removing almost all barriers and conditions to trade, investment and outsourcing. If companies make deals with brutal dictators, sell off their factories and pay wages too low to live on, it's because there is nothing in our international trading rules to prevent them. But eliminating the inequalities at the heart of free-market globalization seems a daunting task for most of us mortals. On the other hand, focusing on a Nike or a Shell and possibly changing the behavior of one multinational can open an important door into this complicated and challenging political arena.
The all-star multinationals that have been the focus of this book are the celebrity face of global capitalism, but when they come under close public scrutiny, the entire system is hauled under the microscope as well. This is often a quite conscious strategy on the part of brand-based campaigns. The Campaign for Labor Rights, for instance, openly admits that "when we debate Nike, we are debating the new global economy."2 Click on the Beyond McDonald's icon on the McSpotlight Web site and you'll learn that "due to its massive public prominence and indisputable arrogance [McDonald's] has simply been used as a symbol of all corporations pursuing their profits at any price." And Stephen Coats, in explaining why he chose to make Starbucks the center of a drive to improve conditions in the Guatemalan coffee industry, said simply: "You have to start somewhere. You start with one company." Click on the Beyond McDonald's icon on the McSpotlight Web site and you'll learn that "due to its massive public prominence and indisputable arrogance [McDonald's] has simply been used as a symbol of all corporations pursuing their profits at any price." And Stephen Coats, in explaining why he chose to make Starbucks the center of a drive to improve conditions in the Guatemalan coffee industry, said simply: "You have to start somewhere. You start with one company."3 Even the small-town battles against Wal-Mart take place at least partly on this symbolic level. John Jarvis, a historical preservationist and one of Wal-Mart's most vocal foes, explains that "the good thing about Wal-Mart was that it was big enough, nasty enough, and aggressive enough to make the problem of uncontrolled growth clear." Even the small-town battles against Wal-Mart take place at least partly on this symbolic level. John Jarvis, a historical preservationist and one of Wal-Mart's most vocal foes, explains that "the good thing about Wal-Mart was that it was big enough, nasty enough, and aggressive enough to make the problem of uncontrolled growth clear."4
But when one logo gets all the attention, even when it is being used tactically to illustrate broader issues, others are unquestionably let off the hook. As we have seen, Chevron has been awarded contracts that Shell lost, and Adidas has enjoyed a massive market comeback by imitating Nike's labor and marketing strategies, while sidestepping all of the controversy. The most hypocritical of all is Reebok, which has rushed to capitalize on Nike's controversies by positioning itself as the ethical shoe alternative. "Consumers are looking for what a company stands for," Jo Harlow, Reebok's vice president of marketing, says in relation to Nike's fall from grace.5 And to make sure that consumers find what they are looking for in Reebok, the company has taken to handing out high-profile Reebok Human Rights Awards to activists who fight against child labor and repressive dictatorships. This is all rather sanctimonious, coming from a company that produces many of its shoes in the very same factories as Nike, and that has seen more than its own share of human-rights violations, though with less attendant publicity. And to make sure that consumers find what they are looking for in Reebok, the company has taken to handing out high-profile Reebok Human Rights Awards to activists who fight against child labor and repressive dictatorships. This is all rather sanctimonious, coming from a company that produces many of its shoes in the very same factories as Nike, and that has seen more than its own share of human-rights violations, though with less attendant publicity.
Gerard Greenfield, whose firsthand research into garment, shoe and toy factories in Asia has been the backbone of dozens of international campaigns, admits that he has become tired of the double standard. He points out that in March 1997, the international community was outraged by a report that a group of women at a Nike factory called Pou Chen in Vietnam were beaten by a supervisor and forced to run laps around the grounds. But, he writes, "less than a month later the same severe punishment was imposed on workers at another Taiwanese-invested shoe factory, Giant V.... News of this case was sent out to the groups campaigning on labor practices at Pou Chen. However, despite the similarity in these cases, it was not taken up by human-rights and labor-rights campaign groups in Europe, North America and Australia, simply because the factory does not produce Nike shoes.... It seems that unless the Nike connection is made, such incidents are irrelevant."6 And so a warped hierarchy of oppression is emerging from the factories of the Third World: when it comes to seeking international solidarity, only designer injustices need apply. And so a warped hierarchy of oppression is emerging from the factories of the Third World: when it comes to seeking international solidarity, only designer injustices need apply.
Bob Ortega makes a similar point about the anti-Wal-Mart movement in his book In Sam We Trust In Sam We Trust.
There is a terrific irony-if one not much appreciated by Wal-Mart executives-in the fact that hundreds of towns and suburbs across North America will fight mightily to keep the dreaded Wal-Mart at bay, even as many of these communities let in scores of other superstore retailers that try to ape Wal-Mart in every way they can.... To the extent that Wal-Mart's critics blast it for wiping out Main Street businesses, for homogenizing communities, for trying to crush any and all rivals, for selling goods made in sweatshops here and abroad, they are missing the forest for the biggest tree.7 But there is also a clear value in the big-tree approach. Ken Saro-Wiwa's brother Owens points out that although all the gas companies have skeletons in their closets, focusing on one company-Shell Oil in the case of Nigeria-can have concrete advantages. "It is important not to make people feel powerless. After all, they need to fill their cars with something. If we tell them all companies are guilty, they will feel they can do nothing. What we are trying to really do, now that we have this evidence against this one company, is to let people have the feeling that they can at least have the moral force to make one company change."8 He also says that since Shell controls more than half of Nigeria's oil, whatever happens to Shell will serve as a lesson to all the other oil companies, including Chevron. He also says that since Shell controls more than half of Nigeria's oil, whatever happens to Shell will serve as a lesson to all the other oil companies, including Chevron.
When Bad Things Happen to the Unbrandables Wiwa is convinced that with continued pressure, Shell will eventually meet the campaign's demands for economic and environmental reparations in Ogoniland. The millions Shell has poured into public relations and restructuring already show how seriously even the most profitable company in the world must take its public image. But much of that has to do with the visibility and vulnerability of the Shell brand. Shell extracts a raw resource from the land and water in Nigeria, but it brands that resource with its logo and sells it at its own branded gas stations around the world. And it is at that point that consumers make a choice between Shell and Texaco or Shell and Chevron-a choice that is as arbitrary and image based as the one between Coke and Pepsi, McDonald's and Burger King. Oil is a raw resource, but it only really becomes accessible to most people as a brand.
The same cannot be said of most multinationals in the natural-resource industries. Mining, natural gas, seed and logging multinationals all trade in virtually unbranded commodities that they sell to governments and corporate clients who then transform them into consumer goods. Since resource companies don't sell directly to the public, they barely have to worry about their public image-a factor that brings up what is perhaps the most significant limitation of brand-based campaigns: they can be powerless in the face of corporations that opt out of the branding game.
So all over the world, children work in fields with toxic pesticides, in dangerous mines and in rubber and steel factories where small fingers and hands are sliced off or mangled in heavy machinery. Many of these children are producing goods for the export market: canned fish, tea, rice, rubber for tires. But their plight has never captured the world's imagination like that of the kids who make soccer balls with swooshes on them or clothing for Barbie dolls, because their exploitation is unbranded, and therefore less identifiable, less visible, in our image-obsessed world.
The Free Burma movement has felt this limitation keenly. The campaign has been astonishingly successful at shaming nearly every brand-name company out of the country, from Pepsi to Texaco. When Heineken pulled out in July 1996, CEO Karel Vuursteen minced no words in explaining his decision: "Public opinion and issues surrounding this market have changed to a degree that could have an adverse effect on our brand and corporate reputation"-another casualty of the branding boomerang.9 Relatively speaking, however, beer, soft-drink and clothing companies were never major players on the Burmese scene. The largest foreign development-accounting for half of all foreign investment-is a $1.2 billion gas line financed by Unocal, which is U.S. based, and Total, which is French-owned. But "Unocal," as Human Rights Watch noted in its 1997 World Report, "remained indifferent to protests." CEO Roger Beach defiantly told the press: "Let me say unequivocally that the only way we will leave is if we are forced to by the enactment of law." Relatively speaking, however, beer, soft-drink and clothing companies were never major players on the Burmese scene. The largest foreign development-accounting for half of all foreign investment-is a $1.2 billion gas line financed by Unocal, which is U.S. based, and Total, which is French-owned. But "Unocal," as Human Rights Watch noted in its 1997 World Report, "remained indifferent to protests." CEO Roger Beach defiantly told the press: "Let me say unequivocally that the only way we will leave is if we are forced to by the enactment of law."10 And why should Beach care what a bunch of university students and church groups have to say? In 1997, Unocal sold the last of its U.S. retail outlets and refiners. So we don't go and buy our bottles of Unocal at Wal-Mart, or slap the Unocal logo on baseball hats and T-shirts. Activists have tried to fight the gas company through the courts, but so far without luck. When brand image is the weapon, an unbranded company can get off the hook entirely. And why should Beach care what a bunch of university students and church groups have to say? In 1997, Unocal sold the last of its U.S. retail outlets and refiners. So we don't go and buy our bottles of Unocal at Wal-Mart, or slap the Unocal logo on baseball hats and T-shirts. Activists have tried to fight the gas company through the courts, but so far without luck. When brand image is the weapon, an unbranded company can get off the hook entirely.
Secondary Boycotts There are, however, ways around this obstacle, as the Lubicon Cree discovered when the Japanese pulp-and-paper giant Daishowa Marubeni-International unveiled plans for a major logging and mill operation on land that the Cree claimed was rightfully theirs. The area in Northern Alberta has been the subject of a fierce land-claim dispute in which the Canadian government has managed to avoid negotiating a settlement for sixty-five years. In the meantime, logging and mining have caused massive damage to the ecosystem and to the Lubicon way of life. So when Daishowa refused to withdraw its $500 million logging operation until the land claim was settled, the Lubicon saw it as the final straw. If neither the government nor the company would listen, they would have to go after Daishowa directly. But how? Daishowa is hardly a household name-it cuts down trees and turns them into paper goods that it then sells in bulk to other large corporations. How can you target a company that has absolutely no interaction with the general public?
The Friends of the Lubicon, an activist support group, were struggling with that very question over pizza one night in 1989 when one member of the group looked down at the Pizza Pizza paper bag on the table and saw, printed in small lettering at the bottom, the Daishowa trademark. There it was. The campaign strategy, the Lubicon soon decided, would be to call for a "secondary boycott": they would ask Daishowa's clients-among them Pizza Pizza, the Canadian clothing retailer Roots and Woolworths to sever their ties to Daishowa or face boycotts themselves. Though Daishowa has no brand image itself, many of its clients do, and good customer relations are of central importance to them. It wasn't long before many of them started getting their paper bags elsewhere. The strategy proved so successful that in 1995, Daishowa took the Friends of the Lubicon to court, claiming the boycott was unlawful and had cost the company $14 million in lost revenue.11 But on April 14, 1998, an Ontario court judge ruled in favor of the Friends of the Lubicon. After the ruling, the Lubicon vowed to bring back the boycott with renewed force unless Daishowa agreed to stay off the disputed land. Two weeks later, Daishowa pledged "not to harvest or purchase timber" in the entire contested area until the land claim was resolved. But on April 14, 1998, an Ontario court judge ruled in favor of the Friends of the Lubicon. After the ruling, the Lubicon vowed to bring back the boycott with renewed force unless Daishowa agreed to stay off the disputed land. Two weeks later, Daishowa pledged "not to harvest or purchase timber" in the entire contested area until the land claim was resolved.12 From the beginning of its clash with the Lubicon Cree, Daishowa insisted it was being unfairly targeted, caught in the crossfire of a dispute between the band and government. In many ways, that is true. The targeting of the multinational and its clients was an act of desperation. As Kevin Thomas, spokesperson of the Friends of the Lubicon, says, "The government was never going to settle so long as the Lubicon people were the only ones suffering-the only ones unable to carry on with business as usual."13 By making sure that Daishowa was also unable to carry out its business, the Lubicon drew one step closer to achieving a sustainable political solution. Greider is right: individual corporations are only one piece of the puzzle. But as the Daishowa case shows, they can be a piece of the puzzle that acts as a lever to achieve broader and more lasting political change. By making sure that Daishowa was also unable to carry out its business, the Lubicon drew one step closer to achieving a sustainable political solution. Greider is right: individual corporations are only one piece of the puzzle. But as the Daishowa case shows, they can be a piece of the puzzle that acts as a lever to achieve broader and more lasting political change.
The Daishowa precedent serves as a powerful warning to all the other faceless, resource-based corporations that conduct their operations in relative obscurity. Investigative activists are starting to track the progress of harvested natural resources through the economy to the point that they turn into consumer goods; at that stage public pressure can be applied at the mall, superstore or grocery chain. Nickel turns into batteries, genetically modified agricultural crops into packaged foods, old-growth wood into furniture, gold into jewelry.... There is no harvested resource that does not, eventually, turn into a brand.
This strategy has already proved enormously successful in the European campaign against genetically modified foods. For years campaigners had been railing against agribusiness giant Monsanto (that most impenetrable of multinationals) and its refusal to label which foods had been modified and which had not-and, in the case of soybeans, actually mixing the two together. But when campaigners broadened their focus to include not just companies like Monsanto and Novartis, responsible for the genetic engineering, but also the supermarkets that sold their foods, the issue finally grabbed the world's attention. With shoppers shouting about "Frankenfoods" on their doorsteps and Greenpeace campaigners leading customers on "gene food tours" through their aisles, the supermarkets could not afford to share Monsanto's cloistered attitude. Eventually, several large British supermarket chains including Sainsbury, Tesco and Safeway all removed bio-engineered foods from their private-label brands. Marks & Spencer went further, banning from its stores, in March 1999, all foods containing genetically modified ingredients.14 Chains across Western Europe followed suit, as did food giants Unilever U.K., Nestle U.K. and Cadbury. Chains across Western Europe followed suit, as did food giants Unilever U.K., Nestle U.K. and Cadbury.
Environmentalists have taken a similar tack with the forestry companies logging old-growth trees in British Columbia. Rather than continuing to face off against loggers in the deep woods-as was the strategy during the Clayoquot Sound demonstrations of 1993-Greenpeace and the Rainforest Action Network now target high-profile brands that buy products derived from old-growth timber. In response to this pressure, in December 1998, twenty Fortune 500 companies-including 3M, Kinko's, Hallmark, IBM and Nike-agreed to phase out their use of old-growth products, and they made their commitment public in a full-page ad in The New York Times The New York Times. But Home Depot-"the world's largest retailer of ancient forest products," according to the campaign-refused to sign on, sparking a wave of protests at dozens of Home Depot outlets across North America, as well as at the company's annual general meeting in Atlanta, in May 1999. The strategy proved successful: in August 1999, Home Depot announced it would phase out old-growth wood products by 2002.
The Writing on the Wall Despite the success of these strategies, it nonetheless seems odd that we need to go to such great lengths to reshape social and environmental injustices just so that they can be brought home to us shoppers. In a way, these campaigns help us to care about issues not because of their inherent justice or importance but because we have the accessories to go with them: Nike shoes, Pepsi, a sweater from the Gap. If we truly need the glittering presence of celebrity logos to build a sense of shared humanity and collective responsibility for the planet, then maybe brand-based activism is the ultimate achievement of branding. According to Gerard Greenfield, international political solidarity is becoming so dependent on logos that these corporate symbols now threaten to overshadow the actual injustices in question. Talk about government, talk about values, talk about rights-that's all well and good, but talk about shopping shopping and you really get our attention. "If we can only talk about workers' collective rights and struggles in the context of what people choose to buy as consumers," writes Greenfield, "then it seems we face a greater challenge to building a critical, popular social consciousness than we might imagine." and you really get our attention. "If we can only talk about workers' collective rights and struggles in the context of what people choose to buy as consumers," writes Greenfield, "then it seems we face a greater challenge to building a critical, popular social consciousness than we might imagine."15 There is no doubt that anticorporate activism walks a precarious line between self-satisfied consumer rights and engaged political action. Campaigners can exploit the profile that brand names bring to human-rights and environmental issues, but they have to be careful that their campaigns don't degenerate into glorified ethical shopping guides: how-to's on saving the world through boycotts and personal lifestyle choices. Are your sneakers "No Sweat"? Your rugs "Rugmark"? Your soccerballs "Child Free"? Is your moisturizer "Cruelty-Free"? Your coffee "Fair Trade"? Some of these initiatives have genuine merit, but the challenges of a global labor market are too vast to be defined-or limited-by our interests as consumers.
It took almost no time, for instance, for the White House Task Force on Sweatshops, set up in response to the Kathie Lee Gifford scandal, to become just another shopping exercise. Any substantial demands for labor-law reform were immediately hijacked by a new agenda: what provisions would U.S. companies have to meet before they could sew a "No Sweat" label on their garments? The immediate priority was finding a quick and easy way to protect the right of Westerners to buy branded goods without guilt. Tellingly, Bill Clinton's "No Sweat" labeling initiative is modeled after the "Dolphin Safe" stamp on cans of tuna, which reassures buyers that the much-loved dolphin was not killed in the canning of the fish. What this proposal fails to grasp is that the rights of garment workers, unlike dolphins, cannot be assured by a symbol on a label, the equivalent of a best-before date; and that trying to do so represents nothing less than the wholesale privatization of their (and our) political rights. The whole charade reminds me of a New Yorker New Yorker cartoon that shows a Norman Rockwellesque family unwrapping gifts under a Christmas tree. The parents are pulling out a new pair of sneakers, as the mother asks: "How are the human rights on these?" cartoon that shows a Norman Rockwellesque family unwrapping gifts under a Christmas tree. The parents are pulling out a new pair of sneakers, as the mother asks: "How are the human rights on these?"
There is another problem with the consumer-based approach. We are living, as Susan Sontag said, in the "Age of Shopping" and any movement that is primarily rooted in making people feel guilty about going to the mall is a backlash waiting to happen. Besides, the activists who are leading this movement aren't austere Luddites who are against shopping on principle. Many of them are creative twenty-somethings designing ad jams on their Mac laptops who happen to believe that there should be some some space left over that isn't trying to sell them something or cluttered with the debris of our consumer culture. They are young men and women in Hong Kong and Jakarta who wear Nikes and eat at McDonald's, and tell me they are too busy organizing factory workers to bother with Western lifestyle politics. And while Westerners sweat over what kinds of shoes and shirts are most ethical to buy, the people sweating in the factories line their dorm rooms with McDonald's advertisements, paint "NBA Homeboy" murals on their doors and love anything with "Meeckey." The organizers in the Cavite zone often dress for work in ersatz Disney or Tommy T-shirts-cheap knockoffs from the local market. How do they reconcile the contradiction between their clothes and their anger at these multinationals? They told me they had never really thought about it like that; politics in Cavite is about fighting for concrete improvements in workers' lives-not about what name happens to be on a T-shirt you happen to have on your back. space left over that isn't trying to sell them something or cluttered with the debris of our consumer culture. They are young men and women in Hong Kong and Jakarta who wear Nikes and eat at McDonald's, and tell me they are too busy organizing factory workers to bother with Western lifestyle politics. And while Westerners sweat over what kinds of shoes and shirts are most ethical to buy, the people sweating in the factories line their dorm rooms with McDonald's advertisements, paint "NBA Homeboy" murals on their doors and love anything with "Meeckey." The organizers in the Cavite zone often dress for work in ersatz Disney or Tommy T-shirts-cheap knockoffs from the local market. How do they reconcile the contradiction between their clothes and their anger at these multinationals? They told me they had never really thought about it like that; politics in Cavite is about fighting for concrete improvements in workers' lives-not about what name happens to be on a T-shirt you happen to have on your back.
Corporate codes of conduct are in many ways the most controversial byproduct of brand-based activism. The moment multinational companies like Nike, Shell, Mattel and the Gap stopped denying the existence of abuses at their sites of production and resource extraction, they began drafting statements of principles, codes of ethics, memorandums of understanding and other non-legally-binding documents of good intentions. These pieces of paper espoused high standards of business ethics: nondiscrimination, respect for the environment and for the rule of law. If any busybody customer wanted to know how their products were made, the public-relations department simply mailed them a copy of the code, as if it were the list of nutritional information on the side of a box of Lean Cuisine.
When you read the codes, it's difficult not to get swept up in the starry-eyed idealism of it all. These documents stare back at their readers with a look of perfect ahistorical innocence as if to ask, Why are you surprised? We have been like this all along.... And the reader would be forgiven for wondering, at least for a moment, if perhaps it is just as the companies say: one big misunderstanding, a "communication breakdown" with a rogue contractor, something lost in the translation.
Codes of conduct are awfully slippery. Unlike laws, they are not enforceable. And unlike union contracts, they were not drafted in cooperation with factory managers in response to the demands and needs of employees. Without exception, they were drafted by public-relations departments in cities like New York and San Francisco in the immediate aftermath of an embarrassing media investigation: Wal-Mart's code arrived after reports surfaced that its supplier factories in Bangladesh were using child labor; Disney's code was born of the Haitian revelation; Levi's wrote its policy as an answer to prison labor scandals. Their original purpose was not reform but to "muzzle the offshore watchdog" groups, as Alan Rolnick, lawyer for the American Apparel Manufacturers Association, advised his clients.16 But the companies who rushed to adopt these codes made a serious miscalculation: they underestimated, once again, the amount of information flowing between workers and villagers in Africa, Central America and Asia and campaigns in Europe and North America-and so rather than "muzzling" anyone, the documents have only raised more questions. Why did Shell fail to translate its manifesto, Profits and Principles Profits and Principles, into any language other than English and Dutch? Why, until two years ago, were Nike and the Gap's codes available only in English? Why weren't they distributed to workers in the factories? Why was there such a great discrepancy between the intentions espoused in the codes and the firsthand reports coming out of the zones and the oil fields? Who is supposed to monitor these codes through all the layers of contracting and subcontracting? Who will enforce them? What is the penalty of failure?
In short, these hybrids of advertising copy and the Communist Manifesto backfired. The offshore watchdogs kept on barking-and no wonder. Anti-corporate campaigns are fueled, at least in part, by people's deep sense of marketing overload-and for this reason, the last thing likely to mollify them is more marketing. A group of anti-Shell campaigners made that point dramatically in March 1999 after Shell launched a $32 million marketing campaign that flawlessly absorbed the rhetoric of both the Brent Spar and the Ogoni campaigns. "Exploit or Explore?" asks the glossy Shell ad.
Every business wants to make its mark. However, in the sensitive regions of the world, like our tropical rainforests and our oceans, the scars of industrialisation are all too apparent. Our shared climate and finite natural resources concern us as never before, and there's no room for an attitude of "It's in the middle of nowhere, so who's to know?" Time and again at Shell, we're discovering the rewards of respecting the environment when doing business. If we're exploring for oil and gas reserves in sensitive areas of the world, we consult widely with the different local and global interest groups. Working together, our aim is to ensure that bio-diversity in each location is preserved. We also try to encourage these groups to monitor our progress so that we can review and improve the ways in which we work.17 But rather than stemming the flow of criticism, Shell's extravagant spending on public relations-with the Ogoni's grievances left unresolved and demands for outside monitoring repeatedly rejected-sparked its own kind of backlash: a backlash against "greenwash." Essential Action, the hub of the Shell boycott, launched a postcard campaign urging Shell's executives to "Spend the money cleaning up your mess, not your image!" And, in April 1999, activists in London threw green and red paint on the doors of the company's international headquarters. The green paint, said the anonymous perpetrators, was an attempt to give Shell "a taste of its own greenwash."18 Throwing paint is one approach. Another, and one that has become increasingly popular, is throwing the promises in the codes of conduct back in the face of the corporations who drafted them. Once again, it's the Saul Alinsky theory of political jujitsu: "No organization...can live up to the letter of its own book. You can club them to death with their 'book' of rules and regulations."19 Bama Athreya of the U.S.-based International Labor Rights Fund explains how this strategy can work with relation to Nike's high-minded code of conduct: "Let's face it, hypocrites are far more interesting than mere wrongdoers, and it's been much easier to sensitize press and public to Nike's failure to implement its own code of conduct than to its failure to comply with Indonesian labor law." Bama Athreya of the U.S.-based International Labor Rights Fund explains how this strategy can work with relation to Nike's high-minded code of conduct: "Let's face it, hypocrites are far more interesting than mere wrongdoers, and it's been much easier to sensitize press and public to Nike's failure to implement its own code of conduct than to its failure to comply with Indonesian labor law."20
As it became clear that these flimsy codes of conduct had failed to quiet dissent (and may have exacerbated it), several multinationals moved on to a more advanced brand of corporate code. These codes, while still not legally binding and still implemented on a voluntary basis with little monitoring, are nonetheless more substantial than a simple statement of good intentions. And by 1998, there were so many different models of these codes floating around that even the most committed anti-sweatshop campaigners had to admit that they had lost track. Some were drafted in cooperation with human-rights groups or ethical investment specialists in the West. Others, like Bill Clinton's Apparel Industry Partnership's code, were organized according to where the multinationals were headquartered. The Gap has a code that applies to one factory in El Salvador, allowing it to be monitored by local human-rights activists; a code adopted by Levi's, Mattel and Reebok refers specifically to doing business in China. A code on child labor drafted by Unicef, the International Labour Organization and an association of Pakistani manufacturers was signed by all the major soccer-ball manufacturers; it provides for outside monitoring as well as education and rehabilitation for the child laborers. Following the wave of anti-sweatshop student activism in 1998 and 1999, dozens of universities adopted their own codes, only to decide subsequently to sign on to the Clinton Apparel Industry Partnership's code en masse en masse-a totally different text. Meanwhile, the Collegiate Licensing Company proposed its own anti-sweatshop code, to apply to all 160 American schools it represents-meaning that some schools were looking at three tiers of codes. And unlike the tough codes adopted by universities like Duke, the CLC code has no provision for disclosure and does not require contractors to pay a living wage, only the minimum wage.
Layered on top of these stacks of codes was one drafted by the Council on Economic Priorities, a consumer watchdog group in New York, along with several large corporations. The CEP plan would inspect factories for adherence to a set of standards covering key issues such as health, safety, overtime, child labor and the like. Under this model, brand-name multinationals like Avon and Toys 'R' Us, rather than trying to enforce their own codes around the world, simply place their orders with factories that have been found to be in compliance with the code. Then, the factories are monitored by a private auditing company, which certifies factories that meet the code as "SA8000" (SA stands for "Social Accountability"). For many multinationals, this plan was far too demanding; the American Apparel Manufacturers Association, for instance, launched its own, less stringent, voluntary code, which would also certify factories "sweatshop free."
Not surprisingly, by mid-1999 the entire sweatshop issue had degenerated into a maze of warring codes. Unions and religious groups who had been participating in the Clinton Apparel Industry Partnership walked out in protest at its weak enforcement and monitoring measures, and accused the human-rights groups that stayed in the Partnership of "selling out." The student anti-sweatshop activists launched an offensive against their own universities' participation in the Clinton Partnership, insisting that no code drafted or monitored by the corporations themselves-even at arm's length-could possibly have any merit. Monitoring had to be done by unions or by human-rights groups.
Confusing matters still further was a strange conflation of several large human-rights groups and the corporate sector. In 1999, some of the most maligned multinationals on the planet-Dow Chemical, Nestle, Rio Tinto, Unocal-rushed into partnership with human-rights groups and the United Nations Development Programme. Together they formed brand-new umbrella organizations with names like the Business Humanitarian Forum, Partners in Development and the Global Sustainable Development Facility, which promised to "improve communications and cooperation between global corporations and humanitarian organizations."21 Multinationals and human-rights groups, they claimed, actually have the same goals; human rights are good for business-they are the "third bottom line." Multinationals and human-rights groups, they claimed, actually have the same goals; human rights are good for business-they are the "third bottom line."
It's tempting to take this dramatic shift in direction on the part of so many multinationals as a massive victory for the campaigners who have battled the Nikes and the Shells all these years. Maybe corporations really have seen the light, and we're all on the same page now.... Harvard business professor Debora L. Spar is among those hailing the dawn of this new age. She argues that the rise of brand-based activism has been so successful in shaming corporations, it is no longer in the financial interest of brand-name multinationals to allow abuses to occur. She calls this theory the "spotlight phenomenon." There is no need for outside regulations because "firms will cut off abusive suppliers or make them clean up because it is now in their financial interest to do so," she writes. "The spotlight does not change the morality of U.S. managers. It changes their bottom line."22 There is no doubt that companies like Nike have learned that labor-rights abuses can cost them. But the spotlight being shined on these companies is both roving and random: it is able to shine down on a few corners of the global production line, but darkness still shrouds the rest. Human rights, far from being protected by this process, are selectively respected: reforms seem to be implemented solely on the basis of where the spotlight's beam was last directed. There is absolutely no evidence that any of this reform activity is coalescing into a universal standard of ethical corporate behavior that will be applied around the world; and no system of universal enforcement is on the horizon.
Instead, what we have with the proliferation of voluntary codes of conduct and ethical business initiatives is a haphazard and piecemeal mess of crisis management. In mid-1999, for instance, when Nike was coming off as a savior in Indonesia for increasing wages, it was also cutting its ties with higher-waged workers in the Philippines and rushing into China, where workers' rights are least protected, monitoring is next to impossible and wages are lowest. Levi's pulled out of Burma, because its conscience simply would not allow it to stay, only to go back to China, which it had abandoned a few years earlier for the same reason. It then drafted a breakthrough code of conduct for China, but at the same moment it was laying off thousands of workers in Europe and North America. The Gap, meanwhile, was being held up as a model of openness and reform in El Salvador, while protestors outside its stores in New York and San Francisco shouted about the abhorrent conditions at its factories in Saipan and Russia. In addition, there were wildly diverging reports about whether even the toughest codes were actually being implemented in the factories, and whether the vast majority of workers around the world had even heard of them. And, of course, there is still no monitoring system in place to get an accurate picture of what's really happening in the factories. Without question, some imaginative and effective initiatives have come out of these PR scrambles, but the fact remains that this patchwork approach is no way to draft a sustainable labor or environmental policy for the global economy.
If the way multinationals like Nike and Shell have handled their respective scandals seems uncharacteristically chaotic for such streamlined operators, that chaos could well be deliberate. Even when the codes fail to stamp out abuses, what they do manage to do, rather effectively, is obscure the fact that multinationals and citizens do not actually share the same goals when it comes to deciding how to regulate against labor and environmental abuses. Even when there is genuine agreement on the need to address a problem (child labor, for instance), beneath the talk of ethics and partnerships the two parties are still engaged in a classic power struggle.
Ever since key multinationals stopped denying the existence of any human-rights abuses in their global production operations, the struggle has not been over whether controls need to be put in place, but rather over who will get to place those controls. Will it be the people and their democratically elected representatives? Or will it be the global corporations themselves? It's clear from the privatized codes which direction the corporations want to go. The question is, What will citizens do in response?
The subtext of the codes of conduct is a settled hostility toward the idea that citizens can-through unions, laws and international treaties-take control of their own labor conditions and of the ecological impact of industrialization. In the twenties and thirties, when the crises of sweatshops, child labor and workers' health were at the forefront of the political agenda in the West, these problems were tackled with mass unionization, direct bargaining between workers and employers and governments enacting tough new laws. That type of response could be marshaled again, only this time on a global scale, through the enforcement of existing International Labor Organization treaties, if compliance with those treaties were observed with the same commitment that the World Trade Organization now shows in its enforcement of the rules of global trade.
The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights already recognizes the right to freedom of association. If respecting that right became a condition of trade and investment, it would transform the free-trade zones overnight. If workers in the zones had the freedom to bargain for their rights without living in fear of either a government crackdown or immediate factory flight, the need for private codes and independent monitors would virtually disappear. In countries like the Philippines and Indonesia, governments would enforce these standards, and their own laws, or fear the economic repercussions. But then, this type of rigid regulation is exactly what the corporate sector has so aggressively fought since free trade was introduced-by yanking the teeth out of the UN's declarations and treaties, and by steadfastly opposing all proposals to link trade deals to enforceable labor and environmental codes. In fact, it is precisely this kind of regulation that multinationals are now trying so frantically to circumvent by drafting their own voluntary codes.
And so, after Nike and dozens of universities had joined the White House Partnership, Charles Kernaghan saw clearly that the anti-sweatshop movement he helped launch had become an entirely new ball game. Gone were the days when the most pressing task was convincing companies that they even had a problem. "Nike hopes to co-opt our movement," he writes. "In this view, what we are seeing is no less than a struggle over who will control the agenda for eradicating sweatshop abuses. Nike's implicit message is: 'Leave it to us. We have voluntary codes of conduct. We have a task force. We'll take care of it from here. Go home and forget about sweatshops'."23 There is something Orwellian about the idea of turning the enforcement of basic human rights into a multinational industry, as the private codes would do, to be checked like any other quality control. Global labor and environmental standards should be regulated by laws and governments-not by a consortium of transnational corporations and their accountants, all following the advice of their PR firms. The bottom line is that corporate codes of conduct-whether drafted by individual companies or by groups of them, whether independently monitored mechanisms or useless pieces of paper-are not democratically controlled laws. Not even the toughest self-imposed code can put the multinationals in the position of submitting to collective outside authority. On the contrary, it gives them unprecedented power of another sort: the power to draft their own privatized legal systems, to investigate and police themselves, as quasi nation-states.
So this is a power struggle, make no mistake. In an editorial in The Journal of Commerce The Journal of Commerce, codes of conduct are explicitly presented to employers as a less threatening alternative to externally imposed regulation. "The voluntary code helps diffuse a contentious issue in international trade negotiations: whether to make labor standards part of trade agreements. If...the sweatshop problem is solved outside the trade context, labor standards will no longer be tools in the hands of protectionists."24 Such warnings hint that despite the ineffectiveness of governments and the rhetoric of corporate triumphalism, there are still some mechanisms left with which to regulate multinationals. As we have seen, there are trade agreements and local selective purchasing laws, as well as ethical investment drives-but conditions can also be attached to government loans and insurance offered to foreign investors, as well as to involvement in government trade missions. It may seem unrealistic to suggest that multinationals would ever accept such restrictions on their global mobility. Then again, the past four years have seen the world's most powerful and profitable brand-name multinationals forced to continually raise the bar of their own public relations. If the public will is there, the bar can be raised further still, taking these issues away from corporate control and forcing them into the public domain.
French farmers protest cuts to farm subsidies by throwing bags of corn gluten and chicken feed into the Seine, Paris, November 1992. G-8 leaders pose for official family photo, Cologne, June 1999.
Conclusion Consumerism Versus Citizenship The Fight for the Global Commons The beers at my hotel bar in Rosario were blissfully cold, and the gang from the Workers' Assistance Center were all getting a little drunk. We were arguing, once again, about whether codes of conduct have any merit whatsoever. Zernan Toledo (who personally favors armed revolution-it's just a question of when) pounded the table. "These documents are written by the transnational corporations, so they will only serve the transnational corporations-haven't you read Marx?"
"It's different now," I countered. "With globalization, there need to be some common standards-and the governments certainly aren't setting them."
"Globalization is nothing new. We have always had globalization," said Arnel Salvador, another of the WAC organizers. His eyes were fixed not on me, but on something across the bar. Since the hotel where I stayed is the only one near the Cavite Export Processing Zone, it was, as usual, packed with visiting factory owners, contractors and buyers who were here to stay up all night singing karaoke and cutting deals for cheap clothes and electronics. I followed Arnel's eyes to a young man slouched in his chair, his feet up on the table across from him, his knees splayed apart as if he owned the world. Trendy and modern, he looked like a character from one of the many cell-phone commercials on Asian TV. "You can always tell the foreigners," Arnel said slowly, his usually warm voice icy. "No Filipino would sit like that."
The foreign investors who sing karaoke at the Mountain and Sea Hotel in Rosario are part of a long and bitter history of colonialists in the Philippines: first the Spaniards came and conquered, then the Americans arrived, setting up army bases and turning teenage prostitution into one of the country's largest industries. Now colonialism is dead, the U.S. military has receded and the new imperialists are the Taiwanese and Korean contractors in the export processing zones, sexually harassing the eighteen-year-old Filipinas on the assembly lines. Several of the free-trade zones in the Philippines (though not Cavite) are actually built on land that only a few years back housed U.S. military bases, and all over the country workers are shuttled to and from the zones in U.S. army jeeps converted into mini-buses. To Arnel Salvador and Zernan Toledo, the much-vaunted joys of economic globalization amount to pretty much more of the same: the boss has just traded in his military uniform for an Italian suit and an Ericsson cell phone.
The day after our night of drinking, I sat with Nida Barcenas in the backyard of the Workers' Assistance Center and asked her what motivates her, night after night, to trudge out to the dorms at 11 p.m. to meet with garment workers when they finally get off work. My question took Nida by surprise. "Because I want to help the workers. I really want to help them," she said. Then the tough composure that helps her stand up to zone bosses and petty local bureaucrats disappeared and fat tears rolled down her smooth cheeks. All she managed to say was "It's like Arnel said-it's just been so long." What has been so long is not the fight for rights for her fellow factory workers, although she means that as well. What has been so long is the fight against feudal landlords, against military dictators and now against foreign factory owners. I turned the tape recorder off and we sat in silence until her colleague, Cecille Tuico, quietly brought us mugs of syrupy-sweet vanilla ice cream that turned to soup in the hot sun.
Because the Workers' Assistance Center's chief mission is to empower workers to stand up for their rights, WAC organizers don't much like the idea of Westerners swooping into the zone brandishing codes of conduct, with teams of well-meaning monitors trailing behind. "The more significant way to resolve those problems," says Nida Barcenas, "lies with the workers themselves, inside the factory." And codes of conduct, she says, have little hope of helping because the workers have no hand in drafting them. As for third-party independent monitoring, Zernan Toledo believes that no matter who performs it, it's just that: third party. All it will do is reinforce the idea that somebody else is looking after the workers' destiny, not the workers themselves. To some this flat-out rejection sounds stubborn and ungrateful, an unfair dismissal of all the well-meaning work being conducted in boardrooms in Washington, London and Toronto. But the right to sit down and bargain-even when you don't get the perfect deal-is the fundamental right for which the international trade union movement has struggled from its inception; it has always been about self-determination. Zernan Toledo invokes an old and familiar aphorism to explain the distinction: "If you give a man a fish, he will eat for one day. But if you teach him how to fish he will eat forever." And so, every evening at the Workers' Assistance Center, Zernan, Arnel, Cecille and Nida give the workers their fishing lessons. A little blackboard stands in the backyard with the chickens, and the organizers take turns leading seminars. Sometimes fifty workers show up, other times just one. Though this route will no doubt take longer than the ready-made codes and monitoring, the WAC organizers say they are willing to wait. As Nida says, it has already "been so long," they may as well get it right.
It's a message that applies not just in Cavite, but to all those concerned about corporate abuses around the world. When we start looking to corporations to draft our collective labor and human rights codes for us, we have already lost the most basic principle of citizenship: that people should govern themselves. As we have seen, Nike, Shell, Wal-Mart, Microsoft and McDonald's have become metaphors for a global economic system gone awry, largely because, unlike the back-door wheeling and dealing at NAFTA, GATT, APEC, WTO, MAI, the EU, the IMF, the G-8 and the OECD, the methods and objectives of these companies are plain to see: workers and foreign observers alike understand very well what they are up to. They have become the planet's best and biggest popular education tools, providing some much-needed clarity inside the global market's maze of acronyms and centralized, secretive dealings.
By attempting to enclose our shared culture in sanitized and controlled brand cocoons, these corporations have themselves created the surge of opposition described in this book. By thirstily absorbing social critiques and political movements as sources of brand "meaning," they have radicalized that opposition still further. By abandoning their traditional role as direct, secure employers to pursue their branding dreams, they have lost the loyalty that once protected them from citizen rage. And by pounding the message of self-sufficiency into a generation of workers, they have inadvertently empowered their critics to express that rage without fear.
But the fact that the brands have led us into this maze does not mean we should look to them to lead us out. Nike and Shell are shiny new doorways opening onto the much more complicated and less glamorous world of international law. And though it won't be easy and it won't come quickly, we will find our way out as citizens, on our own. We may feel a little like Theseus, clutching his thread as he entered the Minotaur's labyrinth, but nothing else will do. Political solutions-accountable to people and enforceable by their elected representatives-deserve another shot before we throw in the towel and settle for corporate codes, independent monitors and the privatization of our collective rights as citizens.
It is a daunting task but it does have an upside. The claustrophobic sense of despair that has so often accompanied the colonization of public space and the loss of secure work begins to lift when one starts to think about the possibilities for a truly globally minded society, one that would include not just economics and capital, but global citizens, global rights and global responsibilities as well. It has taken many of us a while to find our footing in this new international arena, but thanks in large part to the crash course provided by the brands, we are closer than ever before.
The first step has been an astonishingly successful network of popular-education projects. In 1995, the International Forum on Globalization held its first Global Teach-In in New York, which brought together leading scientists, activists and researchers to examine the impacts of a single, unfettered world market on democracy, human rights, labor and the natural environment. There were seminars on NAFTA, APEC, the IMF, the World Bank, Structural Adjustment of the North and every other global body or trade agreement you never understood but were afraid to ask. The New York Conference attracted several hundred people, but at the second conference in Berkeley, California, two thousand people showed up (with zero pre-publicity and no media coverage-just some posters and E-mail lists). A conference a few months later in Toronto attracted even more people and there have been similar gatherings on university campuses around the world.
And world leaders can't have lunch together these days without somebody organizing a counter-summit-gatherings that bring together everyone from sweatshop workers trying to unionize the zones to teachers fighting the corporate takeover of education. At these events-in Geneva, Cologne and Birmingham-alternative models of globalization spill onto the streets during the day, and the Reclaim the Streets parties go on all night.
It is sometimes difficult to tell whether these trends are the start of something genuinely new or the last gasps of something very old. Are they, as the engineering professor and peace activist Ursula Franklin asked me, simply "wind blocks," creating temporary shelter from the corporate storm, or are they the foundation stones of some as yet unimagined, free-standing edifice? When I started this book, I honestly didn't know whether I was covering marginal atomized scenes of resistance or the birth of a potentially broad-based movement. But as time went on, what I clearly saw was a movement forming before my eyes.
Three years ago, when I attended the Berkeley teach-in on globalization, I was frustrated that the speakers were all over fifty and that the links with the college-age culture jammers and anticorporate campaigners had yet to be made. A year later, these generations of activists and theorists were already enmeshed on several fronts, lending urgency and depth of analysis to each other's actions. During this same time, campaigns focusing on a single corporation in a single place-Shell in Nigeria, say, or Nike in Indonesia-had also found each other and were starting a process of intellectual cross-pollination, often at the click of a hotlink, thanks to the Net.
This emerging movement even has a major victory under its belt: getting the Multilateral Agreement on Investment taken off the agenda of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development in April 1998. As the Financial Times Financial Times noted with some bewilderment at the time, "The opponents' decisive weapon is the Internet. Operating from around the world via web sites, they have condemned the proposed agreement as a secret conspiracy to ensure global domination by multinational companies, and mobilized an international movement of grassroots resistance." The article went on to quote a World Trade Organization official who said, "The NGOs have tasted blood. They'll be back for more." noted with some bewilderment at the time, "The opponents' decisive weapon is the Internet. Operating from around the world via web sites, they have condemned the proposed agreement as a secret conspiracy to ensure global domination by multinational companies, and mobilized an international movement of grassroots resistance." The article went on to quote a World Trade Organization official who said, "The NGOs have tasted blood. They'll be back for more."1 Indeed they will. Indeed they will.
On June 18, 1999, these virtual connections were made real when a coalition of groups including Reclaim the Streets and People's Global Action held the second Global Street Party, this time to coincide with the G-8 meeting in Cologne, Germany. The event, billed as a "global carnival against capital," took aim squarely at corporate power. All around the world, parties and protests were held in financial districts, outside stock exchanges, superstores, banks and multinational headquarters. With simultaneous action in seventy different cities, the day was the coming-out party for this new global political player: it displayed all of the movement's promise and creativity-and showed more forcefully than ever before just how much anticorporate rage is brewing.
Though they were organized locally, a common theme ran through all the events. In Bangladesh, women garment workers held a protest against sweatshop conditions; in San Francisco, they protested those same conditions outside Gap stores. In Montevideo, Uruguay, activists turned the main square of the city's financial district into a "fair trade" show, with exhibits on every corporate abuse from child labor to the arms trade; in Madrid, the entrance to the stock exchange was blocked. And in Cologne, site of the G-8 summit, European activists held a counter-summit and demanded debt forgiveness for Third World countries. The event was joined by five hundred Indian farmers who were traveling across Western Europe in an "intercontinental caravan." Along the way, they stopped off at the corporate headquarters of agribusinesses such as Cargill and Monsanto whose seed patents and genetic engineering of crops have burdened many Indian farmers with massive debts.
On the same day that the Indian farmers were peacefully protesting in Cologne, London's financial district turned into a war zone-the city hasn't seen anything like it since the 1990 poll-tax riots. The 10,000-strong gathering started as a classic RTS surreal political party. The streets were cleared by a Critical Mass bike ride and were flooded by activists dressed in secondhand suits with slogans painted on the backs. They danced in the doorsteps of office towers, formed a human chain around the Treasury and held peaceful sit-ins at several banks. The bankers and investment brokers, meanwhile, came to work disguised in casual sports clothes, having been advised by police to "blend in" with the activists so as not to catch a flying pie. But as the day wore on, the crowd splintered into smaller groups and became gradually more violent. One group stormed the Futures Exchange, breaking all the glass in the lobby, disrupting automated stock trading and forcing an evacuation of the building. In other parts of London, a McDonald's outlet, a bank and a Mercedes Benz dealership were trashed, a protestor was run over by a police van and several police were injured. There was also mob violence in Eugene, Oregon: windows were broken at banks and fast-food restaurants, cars were stormed, protestors attacked cops with rocks and cops attacked protestors with pepper spray. In both cities, the political messages about widening economic disparities and the brutalities of free-market globalization were drowned out by the sound of shattering glass.
In Geneva, the message was clear as day: rather than throwing rocks through windows, activists arrived with sponges, soap and squeegees to wash the facades of the big downtown banks. The organizers explained to the press that they only wanted to help these fine institutions clean up the stains left behind by crippling Third World debt and Nazi gold. In Port Harcourt, Nigeria, the mood at the "Carnival of the Oppressed" was militant but celebratory. A crowd of 10,000 welcomed Ken Saro-Wiwa's brother back to his homeland after years in exile. After listening to a speech by Owens Wiwa, the crowd proceeded to the gates of the city's Shell Oil headquarters and blocked entry for several hours. The next stop was a street named after the late Nigerian dictator, General Sani Abacha, where members of the crowd lowered the street sign and temporarily renamed the road after one of the men whose lives he stole: Ken Saro-Wiwa. According to the organizers, "There was dancing and singing in the streets, bringing Port Harcourt, Nigeria's petroleum capital, to a standstill."
And all of this happened on a single day.
When this resistance began taking shape in the mid-nineties, it seemed to be a collection of protectionists getting together out of necessity to fight everything and anything global. But as connections have formed across national lines, a different agenda has taken hold, one that embraces globalization but seeks to wrest it from the grasp of the multinationals. Ethical shareholders, culture jammers, street reclaimers, McUnion organizers, humanrights hacktivists, school-logo fighters and Internet corporate watchdogs are at the early stages of demanding a citizen-centered alternative to the international rule of the brands. That demand, still sometimes in some areas of the world whispered for fear of a jinx, is to build a resistance-both high-tech and grassroots, both focused and fragmented-that is as global, and as capable of coordinated action, as the multinational corporations it seeks to subvert.
Afterword.
Two Years on the Streets: Moving Through the Symbols The first edition of No Logo No Logo ends with an image of activists speaking in hushed tones about their plan to build a global anti-corporate movement. Then, when the book was at the printers, something happened that changed everything: on November 30, 1999, the streets of Seattle exploded in protests against the World Trade Organization. Overnight, that hushed whisper turned into a shout, one heard around the world. This movement was no longer a secret, a rumor, a hunch. It was a fact. ends with an image of activists speaking in hushed tones about their plan to build a global anti-corporate movement. Then, when the book was at the printers, something happened that changed everything: on November 30, 1999, the streets of Seattle exploded in protests against the World Trade Organization. Overnight, that hushed whisper turned into a shout, one heard around the world. This movement was no longer a secret, a rumor, a hunch. It was a fact.
Seattle took the political campaigns described in this book to a much more prominent place in the political discourse. As the mass demonstrations spread to Washington, D.C., Quebec City, New Delhi, Melbourne, Genoa, Buenos Aires, and elsewhere, debates raged in the press about police and protester violence, as well as what alternatives there are-if any-to what the French call "wild capitalism" (capitalisme sauvage). The issues behind the protests changed too. In very short order, college-age activists who started off concerned with the unethical behavior of a single corporation began questioning the logic of capitalism itself, and the effectiveness of trickle-down economics. Church groups who had previously demanded only the "forgiveness" of Third World debt were now talking about the failure of the "neoliberal economic model," which holds that capital must be freed of all encumbrances to facilitate future development. Instead of reform, many were calling for the outright abolition of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. And adbusters were no longer satisfied with jamming a single billboard, but were busy creating new and exciting networks of participatory media like the Independent Media Centres, now in dozens of cities around the world.
Meanwhile, the institutions that have been the primary enforcers and defenders of global neoliberal policies have been going through their own metamorphoses. The World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, and the World Economic Forum have stopped denying that their model of globalization is failing to deliver the promised results, and have begun preoccupying themselves-at least in public statements-with the paradoxes of debt slavery, the AIDS pandemic, and the billions left out of the global market.
It became clear to me that I would need to update No Logo No Logo. The problem was that despite all these changes-or more accurately, because of them-I could never quite get around to doing the updating. Like so many other activists and theorists in this field, ever since Seattle exploded onto the world stage I have been swept up in the unstoppable momentum of the globalization battles: speaking, debating, organizing, and travelling way too much. We've been doing, in other words, what movements should do-we've been moving. Often so fast that it has seemed impossible to keep up with the latest twists and turns, let alone to step back and reflect about where all this motion is leading us.
It was only after the September 11 attacks that, at least in North America, this context began to change. All of a sudden, everyone seemed to be talking about the gap between the global haves and have-nots, as well as the absence of democracy in so many parts of the world. But though the North American public was more aware of the failings of the global economy-failures glossed over in the press by the euphoria of boom-time prosperity-it was suddenly much harder to transform that awareness into political action. Rather than pushing governments to change clearly faulty policies, a fearful population was instead handing their politicians stacks of blank checks, freeing them to barrel ahead with more of the same: new tax cuts for wealthy corporations, new trade deals, new privatization plans. To engage in dissent in this climate was cast as unpatriotic.
There are other challenges that North American activists have faced since September 11. As this book has argued, activists began targeting corporations in the mid-nineties as a response to the fact that so much that is powerful today is virtual: currency trades, stock prices, intellectual property, brands, and arcane trade agreements. By latching onto symbols, whether a famous brand like Nike or a prominent meeting of world leaders, the intangible was made temporarily actual, the vastness of the global market more human scale. Yet the dominant iconography of this movement-the culture-jammed logos, the guerrilla-warfare stylings, the choices of brand name and political targets-look distinctly different to eyes changed by the horrors of September 11. Today, campaigns that rely even on a peaceful subversion of powerful capitalist symbols find themselves in an utterly transformed semiotic landscape.
This struck me recently, looking at a slide show I had been pulling together just before the attacks. It is about how anti-corporate imagery is increasingly being absorbed by corporate marketing. One slide shows a group of activists spray-painting the window of a Gap outlet during the protests in Seattle. The next shows Gap's recent window displays featuring its own prefab graffiti-the word "Independence" sprayed in black. And the next is a frame from Sony PlayStation's State Of Emergency game featuring cool-haired anarchists throwing rocks at sinister riot cops protecting the fictitious American Trade Organization. When I first looked at these images beside each other, I was amazed by the speed of corporate co-optation. But looking at them after September 11, the images had all been instantly overshadowed, blown away by the terrorist attacks like so many toy cars and action figures on a disaster movie set.
It could hardly have been other otherwise. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon were acts of real and horrifying terror, but they were also acts of symbolic warfare, and instantly understood as such. As many commentators have put it, the towers were not just tall buildings; they were "symbols of American capitalism." Predictably, many political opponents of the anti-corporate position have begun using the symbolism of the attacks to argue that these acts of terrorism represent an extreme expression of the ideas held by the protesters. Some have put forward the dangerous arguments that the attacks were the far end of a continuum of anti-American and anti-corporate violence: first the Starbucks window in Seattle, then the WTC.