'Good Guy' Labor List Gets a Bad Rap : Workplace: Some garment industry leaders say the roster of firms fighting sweatshop conditions is far too short.

By STUART SILVERSTEIN and GEORGE WHITE

Dec. 6, 1995 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

Good guys are apparently hard to find.

Labor Department officials on Tuesday released their much-anticipated list of “good guy” apparel retailers and manufacturers, but only 31 businesses were named, enraging many industry officials.

The roster, officially known as the Fair Labor Fashions Trendsetter list, was intended to spotlight companies taking extra steps to ensure that their garments are made in law-abiding factories--and not in the rogue sweatshops so common in Southern California and elsewhere across the country. The program was spurred largely by the discovery four months ago of a garment-sewing shop in El Monte where 72 Thai workers labored under what authorities say were slavery-like conditions.

But industry critics jumped all over the Labor Department for naming so few companies. At the same time, industry officials as well as worker advocates blasted the agency for including on the list garment manufacturers whose contractors have run afoul of labor laws in the past.

All told, a program ostensibly having the high-minded goal of enlisting consumers in the war on garment industry sweatshops stirred up an ugly controversy from coast to coast.

Tracy Mullin, president of the National Retail Federation, asked whether Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich “is suggesting that of the 1.4 million retailers out there, these are the only ones operating legally and ethically? That’s impossible for me to believe.”

Critics of the program noted that 14 of the 31 businesses named--nearly half of the total--are divisions of a single company, Columbus, Ohio-based Limited Inc.

Also, another major company on the list, Los Angeles-based Guess Inc., agreed to closely monitor its contractors’ labor practices only after its contractors had already gotten into trouble with the government for suspected sweatshop abuses.

Ventura-based Patagonia Inc., which had a comparatively minor scrape with the Labor Department in 1993, was named a “trendsetter” too.

“It’s pretty pathetic,” said Bernard Lax, president of the Coalition of Apparel Industries in California, an umbrella group that represents manufacturers and contractors. “It leaves out all of the people who chose not to participate or who never were found in violation of anything.”

In addition, critics fault the Labor Department for failing to take into account the practices of U.S. retailers and manufacturers at garment plants overseas, where sweatshop working conditions often are even worse than in this country.

Jessica McClintock, a San Francisco-based women’s clothing manufacturer that is the target of a boycott campaign by Asian Immigrant Women Advocates, was also honored by the Labor Department.

“We’re definitely astounded and extremely disappointed,” said Stacy Kono, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group.

(The company denies the advocacy group’s charges that it relies on contractors who illegally underpay their workers.)

The remaining California company on the trendsetters list was Levi Strauss & Co. of San Francisco.

Labor Department officials backed away from earlier portrayals of the list as a guide that consumers could use in deciding where to shop. “This is purely information,” Reich said in a telephone interview.

“This is not an endorsement,” he added. “This is a recognition that these companies have gone the extra mile. We fully acknowledge there may be other companies doing a good job.”

Over time, he said, “we’re hoping that other manufacturers and retailers will be added to the list.”

Reich said the practices of U.S. firms’ overseas contractors are not being reviewed as part of the program because the agency’s first responsibility is “to clean up what’s going on in our own backyard.”

He said the main criteria for naming companies to the trendsetters list involve whether the firms aggressively monitor their garment contractors. Also considered, Reich said, were retailers and manufacturers’ efforts to educate suppliers about labor law requirements and their degree of cooperation with authorities when violations have been discovered.

Maria Echaveste, the department’s chief enforcement official for minimum wage and overtime pay violations, said putting together the list “was really tough. It was like pulling teeth. There are companies that do good things but are deathly afraid of calling attention to themselves.”

Their concern, Echaveste said, was that news organizations, government regulators or unions would put them under extra scrutiny.

Still, Echaveste said, the roster can play a useful role in encouraging consumers “to go to retailers that aren’t on the list, and ask them, ‘What are you doing to make sure the merchandise you’re selling aren’t made in sweatshops?’ ”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

‘Good Guys’

The Labor Department’s list of apparel retailers and manufacturers that it says are taking extra steps to ensure their merchandise is made in law-abiding factories:

Abercrombie & Fitch*

Baby Superstore

Bath & Body Works*

Bergner’s

Boston Stores

Brylane

Cacique*

Carson Pirie Scott

Dana Buchman

Elisabeth**

Express*

Galyans Trading*