The International Labor Rights Forum is hosting a webinar on December 7th at 1:00pm U.S. Eastern for activists in the U.S. about how you can take action locally for responsible government procurement.

Since the Tazreen Fashions fire and the Rana Plaza building collapse, ILRF has urged apparel companies to compensate victims and make garment factories safer for workers. At the same time, we have advocated for responsible government procurement as a lever for systemic change in the apparel industry: government contracts that ensure transparent supply chains, enforceable worker rights, and worker access to remedy.¹ As our Dangerous Silence report shows, government supply chains are just as rife with sweatshop conditions as the rest of the apparel industry.

Our efforts for responsible procurement build on over a decade of actions by SweatFree Communities activists around the country who have advocated for and achieved sweatshop-free procurement policies in dozens of cities as well as in several counties and states. Now, a new path-breaking cooperative “sweatfree” contract by the City of Madison, Wisconsin, provides an exciting opportunity for local action to ensure that procurement by your local government – your city, county or state – is sweatfree without any new legislation. The request of your local government agency will be: “Use Madison’s contract to buy uniforms.” When they do, the contractor will return 3% of the purchase value to the city to fund independent monitoring of the supplier factories.

Learn more and find out how you can take action to get your community to be part of this initiative for responsible government. Join our webinar on Monday, December 7th – click here to RSVP!

If you’re interested to learn more but the webinar time doesn’t work for you, just fill out this form and we’ll send you a resource packet for contacting your city.
 

[1] For example, in May 2015, we submitted comments for the US National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights, titled “Protecting Human Rights through Government Procurement: Recommendations for Responsible Supply Chain Management, Corporate Accountability, and Worker Access to Remedy in US Government Procurement.”