Human Rights Group Launches Ad Campaign Against Gap
A San Francisco human rights group has launched a guerrilla campaign against Gap Inc., buying ads and distributing posters meant to embarrass the clothing giant into raising pay for its global work force.
The posters mock the retailer’s own ad campaigns by picturing a young man in cords, a sweatshirt and a fleece vest, noting the price and alleged labor abuses that went into each piece. One example: “The Chinese women who work 12 hours a day making these pants face being fired or beaten if they complain.”
Jason Mark of Global Exchange, which is sponsoring the campaign, said full-page ads will appear next week in campus newspapers at UC Berkeley, Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In addition, the group said activists across the country will place 4,000 of the posters in metropolitan areas from Los Angeles to Boston.
The posters stop short of calling for a boycott, but urge consumers to call or write the company. Mark said Gap was singled out because, unlike several other large retailers, it has refused to open its factories to independent inspectors or discuss global labor issues with the group.
A Gap spokeswoman said the company has spent “millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours” to ensure that workers who make its clothing are treated fairly. Forty full-time monitors inspect factories in 50 countries in an in-house program started three years ago, said Maria Moyer-Angus.
The Gap was among 17 U.S. retailers named in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles by Global Exchange and several other human rights groups on behalf of thousands of garment workers on Saipan, a U.S. territory in the Pacific.
Nine of the retailers, including Nordstrom, J. Crew and Donna Karan, have settled by agreeing to fund an independent monitoring system for their Saipan factories. But the Gap has refused to settle, saying the suit is without merit.
Sales for Gap Inc.--which includes Banana Republic and Old Navy--are up 8% over last year, while at the Gap stores, sales were down slightly over last year.
