Activists can’t be trusted either…

Activist organisations attacking the garment industry are forever claiming buyers should publish lists of their suppliers. But why can’t the activists?

It can’t be that difficult surely?  Looking at a couple of recent attempts, it looks as if it is. And the explanation has to lie in the laziness, self-absorption and dash for cheap headlines of the activists claiming they’re creating lists.

The Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR), for example, published a list on June 30 it claims provides a list of Cambodian garment factories that provides “where available, the specific brands supplied.”

Yet it ignores information freely available in the supplier lists published over the past few months by H&M, Nike and Adidas, as well as older information published by Timberland, Patagonia and Varner Gruppen. The CCHR list claims H&M, for example, uses just three Cambodian factories: H&M have recently published details of thirty-three Cambodian factories it uses. Missing 90% of suppliers to the world’s second largest garment specialist does imply just the teeniest amount of carelessness

If the compilers are too idle to go to those buyers’ websites, fine. But why insult people by accompanying this publication with the usual activist guff about “While more work needs to be done to trace the supply chains for specific factories where human rights abuses are most prevalent”?

There may well be a case for activist groups to add to the information many buyers are already supplying. But if those activists can’t make use of freely available information, it does rather pose the question of what other claims they’re making are based on zero homework.

The School of Data at least managed get contributors to dig out some of the published supplier lists when it tried crowdsourcing garment brands’ supply chains. But its contributors couldn’t be bothered getting Adidas’ either. I mean, it’s not as if Adidas keeps its lists a secret: it even updates them twice a year. But, beyond those off the shelf lists every sourcing manager in the industry keeps on his hard drive, there is scarcely a single piece of original research in the School of Data’s work.

The sloppiness of its contributors didn’t stop it pontificating for the planet on a subject it clearly doesn’t understand. It berates businesses who’ve produced lists for using so many factories in Bangladesh that haven’t been accredited by WRAP, a US-based accreditation programme: “That these certified factories constitute a mere 3% of all factories in Bangladesh gives us an insight into how far the industry has to go as far as certification is concerned. Interestingly, 22 of the Wal-Mart blacklisted factories feature on this list.”

Interesting indeed. The School of Data’s daylong seminar teaching people to download bits of the Nike website  was sparked off by a series of tragedies in Bangladesh based on unsafe buildings. But WRAP doesn’t inspect buildings independently: its “accreditation” merely assumes national building certificates are worth the paper they’re printed on. In Bangladesh they weren’t: and part of the reason Walmart blacklisted 22 “WRAP certified” Bangladeshi factories is because WRAP accreditation in Bangladesh is no guarantee of worker safety.

To paraphrase the School of Data’s gullible commentator. That 10% of Walmart’s blacklist was WRAP certified gives us an insight into how deficient current accreditation systems are in Bangladesh. A point most activists usually grasp – which is why most activists who understand factory safety mistrust WRAP, ETI and the rest just as much as they mistrust Gap or Walmart.

Using crowdsourcing to help improve working conditions around the world has immense potential. It’s such a pity that its advocates are more interested in jumping to sloppy conclusions based on ignorance of the industry than in helping save lives and improve the quality of garment workers’ lives