2006 All Star Organizing Enters Home Streach - Sweatshop Accountability Between Pirates Fans and Our Team

 

We must first explain that the vast majority of Pirates’ logo apparel is produced in sweatshop conditions.  We know this because the vast majority of the global apparel industry is a sweatshop and the sampling of testimony that we have been able to accumulate from places like Haiti, Bangladesh, and China, where the Pirates’ logo is sewn, confirms this for Pirates’ logo apparel, too.  We know that Pirates’ logo apparel is sewn in the same factories where other Major League Baseball (MLB) team apparel is sewn and that most arrangements for production of Pirates’ logo apparel is made by MLBP, the legal owner of the Pirates’ logo, and that MLBP distributes revenue via a licensing revenue sharing agreement back to the teams. 

Workers’ testimony that we have to share with you demonstrates working conditions far below the minimum standards of any Pittsburgher.  Many of these workers describe their situation as “abject misery” – oftentimes women working in sweatshops are forced to take pregnancy tests, and if the factory owners discover they are pregnant, the women are fired.  These workers often work 15-20 hour shifts and are denied overtime pay.  And just two months ago, there was yet another sweatshop factory fire in which workers died because of locked fire exits.  These are just a few of the many deplorable conditions in which workers sew apparel – and our Pirates’ logo.  Please understand that this is not a matter of workers in other countries having lower expectations or simply being lucky to have jobs at all.  The testimony we have to report includes fundamental violations of human rights, women’s rights, and labor union organizing rights.   We would like to meet with you at the earliest possible opportunity to review the testimony we do have.

While we would like to share with you in this letter some of the formal worker testimony we have received, we are unable to do so because of the egregious “cut-and-run” policies that pervade the global apparel industry.  Unfortunately, the precedent that has been set by major corporations, Major League Baseball included, is that when a factory is officially labeled a sweatshop, the corporations that contract to these factories pull their contracts.  What happens next is terrible: the factories close and the workers lose their jobs.  A case in point is the Gildan Activewear factory in Honduras.  While we are pleased that MLBP did not want to be associated with the sweatshop conditions reported in this factory, we do not condone pulling contracts from the factory.  All of these workers lost their jobs when this happened.  This is unacceptable!  We expect the Pittsburgh Pirates to set a new precedent and announce that they support freezing the labor in the factories that have confirmed sweatshop conditions and that these conditions be changed to meet

the standards of human dignity. 

 

Please note that we received a letter from Ethan G. Orlinsky of Major League Baseball Properties on April 21, 2006; it is enclosed in this mailing for your convenience.  Mr. Orlinsky references the fact that on-field playing apparel worn by the players is American-Made, and he is correct about this.  Indeed, members of PASCA have been in discussions with Majestic workers in Bangor, PA and New Era workers in Derby, NY.  We support these workers and their jobs 100% – in just the same way we support workers in Haiti, Bangladesh, and China.  Their unions, UNITE HERE and CWA respectively, are committed to a global union organizing drive throughout the apparel industry and are partly responsible for the “academic standard” of sweatshop accountability we are asking you to advocate for within the league. 
However, to present factory conditions at these two plants as being in any way typical of the apparel industry where the majority of Pirates’ logo apparel is sewn is disingenuous. Using these workers to obscure the reality of the apparel industry is an attempt to divide workers and make workers in America increasingly fearful for their jobs.  We know that the money paid in labor costs has no bearing on the retail prices asked for these products.  We suspect that MLBP has prohibited workers and employers from bargaining union labels as a condition of its awarding of licensing agreements.  We expect that the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club will have no part of presenting the New Era and Majestic US factories as being typical of apparel industry conditions and to disassociate from MLBP’s attempts to do so. 
Pittsburghers have every reason to expect our baseball team to lead the way in the major league struggle against sweatshop exploitation.  We identify with the Pittsburgh Pirates’ logo.  This logo clearly represents our city.  Regardless of the legal ownership of the Pirates logo, it is our team who we hold responsible for protecting the dignity of workers who sew it.  We are telling workers all over the world that when they sew the Pirates’ logo, we are bottom-lining their testimony here in Pittsburgh.  It is for the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club to represent Pittsburghers, and great Pittsburgh Pirates like Roberto Clemente, wherever the testimony of workers sewing the Pirates logo leads us.  In fact, 170 colleges and universities, including Pittsburgh’s Duquesne University and Carnegie Mellon, have signed onto an “academic standard” for sweatshop accountability that begins with Full Public Disclosure of factory locations, a code of conduct, independent monitoring, and support for workers in the factories with violations of workers’ rights.  We are asking that the Pittsburgh Pirates Baseball Club support this kind of academic standard in baseball and express this to attendees at the 2006 All Star Game.  What better place to showcase our high standards and send a clear message to the League!  What better place to show that we are truly a City of Champions!