I will consider buying stuff at The Gap and Old Navy
I don't buy Nike shoes, by the way. Reebok is it. Since there's no fundamental difference between the two I get to pick my own standards of choice between them.
Gap Seeks Better Conditions at Global Garment Factories
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
May 13, 2004
Gap Inc. reported Wednesday that many overseas workers making the retailer's clothes are mistreated and vowed to improve conditions by cracking down on unrepentant manufacturers.
The San Francisco-based owner of the Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic stores made the comments in its first ever "social responsibility" report — a 40-page document that mixed contrition about the past with promises to do better in the future.
"We feel strongly that commerce and social responsibility don't have to be at odds," Gap Chief Executive Paul Pressler told a small gathering of shareholders Wednesday at the company's annual meeting.
Gap's report comes after nearly a decade of wrangling with labor rights groups and other organizations over the company's alleged mistreatment of workers around the world. Although labor activists praised the company for making its findings public, others noted that Gap's efforts come much later than — and, in some cases, fall short of — other apparel companies such as Reebok International Ltd.
"It's positive that they're coming out with a report that moves this issue of social responsibility forward, but the reality is that the Gap produces in countries where workers don't have basic rights and they leave countries where workers do have basic rights," said Medea Benjamin, the founding director of Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights organization that organized protests and boycotts of Gap in the 1990s over what it said was Gap's use of "sweatshop" labor. "They're coming late to it, definitely, and they came kicking and screaming."
