In the late 90's student activist from around the country stood up to say they will not allow their university's apparel, from team uniforms to collegate sweatshirts, to be made in sweatshops. With victories across the nation many universities now force their apparel licensees, the companies like Nike that make the clothes, to disclose each and every factory university apparel is made in. This was a crucial step that created the independent factory database and monitor, the Workers Rights Consortium, (WRC from here on) which could now visit and inspect factories making apparel, put pressure on retail corporations, and alert student activists of workers struggles that needed support.
Yet, the apparell industry continues its race to the bottom seeking ever lower wages and closing factories at the first sign workers are organizing. These corporations, and the universities who licence them, must be held accountable and respect workers struggling for a better life, not close their factories and move to China, a country where abuses and low wages are the norm.
With much work ahead, a geographic visualization of the university apparel supply chain could be invaluable to activists and independet factory monitors alike. It could show where factories are in the world, which retailers contract those factories and which universities licence those retailers.
The tool could display changes in factory use over time, for which data exists, it would allow activists to educate their community by showing corporate flight from factories where workers have won stronger protections. It could engage people on the need to force universities and retailers to maintain long term contracts with good factories and galvanize actions towards that end.
Students could easily see who makes their clothes and where, allowing for more creative and targeted tactics as they pressure their universities and retailers.
A geographic visualization would also help independent monitors to make decisions about which factories to report on and maintain corporate transparency.
For more information on the cause please visit, United Students Against Sweatshops.
People will interact with a browsable world map displaying the locations of factories making university apparel. The map will also be browsable by entities in the supply chain, which will become visible by mousing a factory icon. Such entities are: the factory, its city, its country, its region, the retailers contracting it, the universities licencing those retailers, and the date the information was submitted. The map will also indicate labor conditions in a given country. A feature will be built that shows the changes over time in the number of factories for a given geographic area. This is extremely important as it would illustrate the race to the bottom.
The data will come from:
the WRC's Factory Disclosure Database and its Historical Search. They are organized and searchable by the entities in a given supply chain and the dates licenced retailers listed their factories.
the International Labor Confederation and the International Trade Union Confederation. Both have good annual reports on labor conditions in many countries.
Though I am not currently working for the Workers Rights Consortium or United Students Against Sweatshops I spent my four undergraduate years dedicated to the Student Labor Alliance and took the lead on the Sweat Free Campus Campaign.
I have spoken to the Workers Rights Consortium and they approve of the project but unfortunatley could not give much time to the project. Hence, I am willing to work hard on this but so far its just me.
Lots. I would need help conferencing with the WRC on how their data is structured. Help on how to get their data into our use, into a kml if that is the best way to go forward, and how customize the map to display the information in useful ways including some design help, and how to create a historical playback to show the changes in factory distrobution over time. Basically I would need help for the whole process or at least direction into what i need to learn.
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Comments
more on data
Hi I didn't have room to include these thoughts on data:
The amount of textile factories making university apparel is massive. In order to limit the number of datapoints and create a feasible mashup we could only use retailers, like Nike, who update the WRC often (many corporations delay on updates). We could also choose only regions or countries that are the most instructive (for example a central america map juxtiposed to a south/east east asia map, this would show flight from the improving central american factories to the unregulated factories of china and vietnam). On this note, no matter what we should have some preset "tours" that show the most instructive visualizations on the mash up.
Additionally the project would make the data of the Factory Disclosure Database more excecible to third parties. I could see how this would be useful if and when CorpWatch decides to scale their mashup of corporate ownership and subsidiaries. They might want to incorporate which retailers contract which factories.
Finally this project could be scalable to include United Students Against Sweatshop feeds on student actions in the united states and worker actions globally. Also news feeds on apparel manufacturing might be incorporable.