BACKGROUND INFO
Bono and Bobby Shriver created project (RED) to engage the private sector to help Africans with HIV/AIDS, as well as to bring much needed jobs to poverty-filled areas of Africa. The idea is this: you purchase any product indicated (RED) from the Gap, and up to half of the profits from that purchase goes directly to the Global Fund (the average percent of profit donated is 40%). The Global Fund, according to their website, is a partnership between governments, civil society, the private sector and affected communities. Their aim is to combat the spread of AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. All together, the Global Fund has raised 11.3 billion dollars for these causes. The money from (RED) goes straight to the Global Fund, eliminating the potential for misuse of funds. According to Product Red's site, the money is used to provide access to education, nutrition, counseling, medical services, and providing antiretroviral drugs to people dying of HIV/AIDS in Rwanda, Swaziland, Ghana and Lesotho. Only a small portion of Gap (RED) products are actually manufactured in Africa. A line of their T-shirts with words like "INSPI(RED)" and "BO(RED)" are made in Lesotho by a Gap contractor called Precious Garments. About 4,500 people, around 85% women, are employed by this contractor. Many of the other (RED) products are made in countries such as Cambodia. In my research, I have discovered a few reasons why Africa has so few manufacturing contractors. In fabric mills, the weaving machines to make thread into fabric are very expensive and most of poverty-stricken Africa cannot afford these machines. Additionally, the infrastructure in many African countries do not support fabric mills. Their unstable governments, lack of roads, lack of power, all make it very difficult to bring factories and jobs to poor countries. Also problematic is the need to ship fabric from Asia to Africa for cutting and sewing, which takes time that retailers often do not want to wait when purchasing directly from Asian countries is faster. Gap is one of several large companies that takes social responsibility seriously. They have a Global Compliance department with a multimillion-dollar budget to monitor the 2,000 plus factories they use around the globe per season. They have 90 full time employees whose job is to monitor that factories comply with their detailed Code of Vendor Conduct. 4,316 inspections were conducted in 2,053 of their garment factories in 2006 alone. They take very seriously allegations of child labor infrigements, and any child that is found to be below minimum working age at their factories is removed from the factory with continued pay, put into school, and promised a job at the factory when they reach a legal age. As far as hourly wage, Gap works hard to ensure that garment workers are paid on par with the legal minimum wage of the country the factory is located within, or local industry benchmarks. Gap (RED) products have been marketed on a huge scale. Celebrities such as Anne Hathaway, Jennifer Garner, Natalie Maines, Penelope Cruz, Don Cheadle, Chris Rock, Christy Turlington, Dakota Fanning, and Steven Spielberg have been photographed in (RED) ads. Additionally, (RED) has the star power of Bono behind it, as well as promotion by Oprah. Gap's launch of it's RED campaign cost about $7.8 million dollars in marketing expenses, though the number has been falsely rumored to be about $100 million. This has been the biggest criticism of (RED) thus far; that it is more about the marketing of Gap than helping Africa. Pros and Cons Pros: 2. Gap strongly opposes the use of child labor and, through the Code of Vendor Conduct, mandates that if a factory has violated child labor laws that the child be removed from the factory immediately, given access to schooling, paid an ongoing wage, and guaranteed a job at the factory as soon as the child meets the legal minimum working age. 3. 4. Gap Inc. has been committed to sourcing apparel from Africa for more than a decade. Currently Gap Inc. sources products from more than 75 garment factories throughout Africa.
5. In May 2006, Gap became the first company to support the Apparel Lesotho Alliance to fight AIDS (ALAFA) by providing seed funding for a pilot industry-wide HIV/AIDS intervention program. The pilot, which provides HIV testing and treatment options to thousands of garment workers, was initiated at Lesotho Precious Garments, an has since been expanded to other factories in Lesotho. Cons 1. Even though Gap does monitor the conditions of factories, the frequency of monitoring could be improved by increasing the amount of employees in the Social Accountability Department. Gap only has 90 full time employees in the department. 2. Despite monitoring, Gap doesn't release the amount of factory inspections they perform. However, in 2006, Gap accomplished 4,316 inspections in 2,053 garment factories around the world. This may seem plentiful, but Gap has also stated that, at any one time, Gap conducts business with about 2,000 factories, thus possibly meaning that many factories go uninspected. 3. Gap's code of Vendor Conduct requires that factory employees get paid minimum wage, however, one critique of Gap is that they don't mandate a higher pay rate. They state within their Code of Vendor Conduct: "Factories pay workers the local legal minimum or prevailing industry wage, whichever is higher." This usually means that either way, the minimum wage is very low and most people feel that paying a living wage rather than minimum would improve the situation. For More Pros and Cons visit the following links
| THE DIRT
A Timeline of past allegations against Gap Inc. 1999- Federal class-action suit in US was filed against Gap and 17 other apparel companies that purchased products from Saipan. The suit accused sweatshop conditions at these factories, and was eventually settled. Gap began work with the plaintiffs to create an independent factory monitoring program in Saipan. 2000- a BBC documentary showed young girls in a Cambodian factory producing Gap garments.
2003- an undercover investigation finds 10-13 young children in a Shahpur Jat, India garment factories producing Gap clothing illegally. Gap immediately ordered a recall and an investigation.
2006- Gap stopped using 23 factories due to code violations regarding child labor.
2007- another undercover investigation found illegal child labor in New Delhi. in one case, a ten year old boy had been sold into slavery and was found working 16 hour days in sweatshop conditions. when the children failed to do their work, they were beaten with pipes. Gap immediately stopped the work order in the busy Christmas season, called an investigation on their vendors, and convened a meeting of their suppliers to reiterate their zero-tolerance for child labor. THE GLOBAL FUND Gap donates 50% of the profits on (RED) items directly to the Global Fund. The global fund is a Non-profit organization that distributes funding across hundreds of programs throughout the third world. The Global Fund has accumulated 4.7 billion dollars since 2001. This money is distributed in grant funding rounds. The money is awarded to the best written grants with need determining how much money goes to whom. The global fund defines need by assessing how much funding is currently available to the organization and how many people are affected by disease in the area. Well known for fighting AIDS in Africa, the Global fund also provides financing for efforts surrounding Malaria and TB. Funding goes to countries in South Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, East Asia and the Pacific, North Africa and the Middle East. Nearly half of all the funding provided goes to purchasing anti-retroviral medicines, combination therapies and insecticide treated nets, the last two being for the treatment and prevention of Malaria. WHAT YOU CAN DO
If you don't want to shop at Gap, here are a few ways you can contribute:
You can get involved with the ONE campaign here: http://www.one.org/ You can sign their declaration, become a volunteer, or purchase merchandise to support their cause of overcoming AIDS and poverty.
You can read about UNAIDS efforts to treat and prevent AIDS globally here: http://www.unaids.org/en/
Bono and Bobby Shriver created DATA to focus on pressuring wealthy nations to alleviate the debt owed to them by small, impoverished nations. They even have internships available! http://www.data.org/
There's something else you can do... and I bet you're already doing it.
MARKETING
"Gap has come under criticism for spending 50mil on the ad campaign for RED, which is about the amount it has raised for the Global Fund. Bobby Shriver responds by saying...."The basic idea is we never spent a penny. The money they spent is the money they spend in the ordinary course of advertising. Our job isn't to tell them how to spend their marketing money. Our job is to give them an idea that will distinguish them from their competitors. Our job is to make (Product) Red known to people in the same way Paul Newman's salad dressing is. Endowing the logo with the same integrity as Paul Newman's face is a tall order."
For more information on the criticisms of (RED) marketing as well as an interview regarding the effectiveness of Gap's advertising click below:
WORD ON THE STREET Phone Interviews: Jordan, Alex, Mel and Crystal all called local Gap stores to find out how informed their employees were about the RED campaign. In total, we called 9 stores. 1 did not carry RED products. The other 8 all carried RED but the salespeople had varying degrees of understanding as to the details of the RED campaign. All the salespeople knew RED had something to do with AIDS. Only two stores seemed to really understand the point of the RED campaign and were able to explain a little bit about how customers can be sure the money reaches Africa. Only one saleswoman knew anything about the Global Fund distributing the money, and that was because she put Alex on hold to find out. We feel that, with as much emphasis and marketing Gap does for RED, their employees should be better educated about the entire process and the point of the RED campaign. A couple of salespeople said they had been trained in the details of RED (they were the ones who seemed to know the most), but a couple that did not seem to understand anything admitted their stores do not put them through any formal training about RED. It seems that if Gap wants RED to really succeed, the people that should know the most about Gap - their employees - should at least have a basic knowledge about it. Click Here for the full interview.
Crystal's Sweatshop Interview: Crystal interviewed sociology Professor of 30 years, Paul Olsen. Olsen is also a cultural anthropologist who specializes in sweatshop labor. Olsen has interviewed workers all over Latin America. He is an activist for the end of sweatshop labor and uses a large section of his social problems class to educate students on the effects of their consumerism. During this interview the gender issues of the garment industry were disscussed. What role does male dominance in a culture play within the worker dynamics of a sweatshop? How do sweatshops affect the gender structure they rely on for dominance over the worker? What ther issues are at hand when considering sweatshops? For all this and more...
Click Here for the full interview. Jordan's Marketing Interview: Jordan interviewed two college students with no prior gender training. She asked questions to see how perceptive non "gender people" were to picking up themes of gender-roles, masculine domination, and submissiveness of women in Gap RED advertisements. What she found was that even without ever being informed of these ideas, some college students may have a pretty good idea of the inequity that takes place. However, in the case of these two students, whether the ads confirmed or denied traditional gender roles had little affect on the students' likelihood to buy the product. What mattered most to the students was the celebrity modeling the clothing. Additionally, we believe that Gap has done a good job of reaching out to a diverse customer market. Featuring images of family, women in traditional roles of mother and sex object as well as women who appeared strong and independent, also powerful men and sensitive men, Gap has highlighted more than the hegemonic binaries. |
