 American
business leader Adam Neiman, founder of Bienestar International,
which produces union-made, sweatshop-free apparel under the No
Sweat label, has started a fair trade clothing business in
Bethlehem with Palestinian Christians and Muslims. He was
interviewed by Sojourners associate editor Rose Marie
Berger in November 2006.
Sojourners: What
got you started on this project?
Adam Neiman:
Well, it was really serendipity. This young man, Joe Turner,
wanted to import fair trade T-shirts into England. He heard
there was a union factory in Bethlehem, and he called me up for
advice. I said, "My God! We just answered the question 'What
would Jesus wear?'" I arranged to meet him and the factory owner
[Elias Ibrahim Alarja, the Palestinian-Christian owner of Arja
Textile Co.] in Bethlehem to see if we could do business.
Sojourners: How
did Alarja respond to your offer to work with them on producing
fair trade organic cotton T-shirts for export?
Neiman: I
arrive. We talk. He wants to do business. But he's confused. He
doesn't get how I can turn his problem into an opportunity. He's
sitting on a gold mine. But also everyone over there is severely
traumatized.
Sojourners: How
many people are employed in the factory, and what does
"unionized" mean in the Palestinian context?
Neiman: There
are about 70 people working there. First of all, they don't have
collective bargaining yet, so they have an individual contract.
All the workers are members of the Palestine General Federation
of Trade Unions. While I was there Shaher Saed, the PGFTU
general secretary, came to meet with us. He drove through six
hours of roadblocks from Nablus to Bethlehem.
It took a little
while to explain to Saed exactly what it was that we were doing.
I don't think anybody in the entire history of the "rag trade"
has ever insisted that the workers have the right to collective
bargaining. But they agreed. After we get production rolling,
then we'll get started organizing the elections.
Sojourners: What
about wages?
Neiman: The
workers earn above minimum wage. Occasionally, very skilled
workers are making 200 percent of minimum wage. There's health
care that covers workers and their families. There's something
like 14 paid holidays and a 48-hour work week. That meets our
standard. Socialist workers' paradise it ain't—but it's a decent
job.
Sojourners:
Where do you get the organic cotton for the clothes?
Neiman: In
Turkey. There's a cotton industry, and there's a mill. Nothing
very complicated. We do not guarantee our standards all the way
up the supply chain at this point, and we're very clear about
that. We expect, as we grow and prosper, to work our way up the
supply chain.
Sojourners: Do
you see this business as promoting scriptural values?
Neiman: Yes. I
was thinking, "How do I project these values even though it's a
fashion business? How do we do that without insulting any one
religion?" Suddenly I look up, and on the side of the bank is a
great big advertisement saying, "We protect everyone." Its
symbol was the number one that's on a dollar bill. Our design
incorporates that symbol. The one also is a reference to one God
or the one thing we all agree on.
But it's also
the dollar. What we're doing is "dollar diplomacy." Plus, one of
the tricks that we're going to do with our "One" T-shirt line is
to co-brand and co-fund-raise with people. For instance, we can
link online with any group with a decent e-mail list. They send
people to buy our "One" T-shirt, and we'll send a dollar to the
Parents Circle project [a grassroots organization of bereaved
Palestinian and Israeli parents] and a dollar back to the group
for every T-shirt sold.
Sojourners: Is
there a paradox in making money while promoting peace?
Neiman: For me,
as a Jew, the greatest fallacy of Christianity is portraying
"evil" as rich and sexy. To me, that's like advertising evil.
The Jewish mentality is that evil is stupidity and ignorance. In
our history, the prophet Job is the exception to the rule, not
the rule. And someone prospering by doing the right thing was
the rule. The real problem with people's corporate thinking is
they put up a firewall in their mind. They think that doing the
right thing is going to cost them. In fact, it's quite the
contrary.
Sojourners: As a
small business owner, how do changes in trade agreements affect
you?
Neiman: I'm an
internationalist. I don't believe protectionism, over the long
haul, is the right strategy. I think that the more trade we
have, then the more interaction we have with more people around
the world, and the closer we get to the one world that we all
want and need.
With "free
trade" it's not surprising that the benefits have gone to the
elites of both trading partners first, because they are the
people who are communicating with each other. They are putting
the deal together. Of course they make sure the deal is stacked
in their favor.
But now, as the
people who are not the elites—the workers and the
consumers—start to interact with each other on a more direct
level, we're going to see the workers and consumers and their
interests become part of the deal.
Sojourners: How
does the labor movement fit into this?
Neiman: The most
important part of making sure that working peoples' interest is
secured is a strong labor movement. There is no substitute. This
is something that the fair trade movement hasn't really dealt
with, and it's incredibly important that they do. Otherwise,
fair trade becomes just a niche that will satisfy a handful of
guilt-ridden, upper-middle-class consumers in the West. But it
will be only a drop in the bucket as far as dealing with the
core causes of world poverty.
Fair trade needs
to move from guilt to solidarity. Guilt is a demeaning emotion.
It's another way of exerting one's superiority. And it's
repulsive to the recipients. Pity doesn't recognize the
humanity, the equality, of working people. They don't want pity.
They don't want a special break—they want an even break. The way
you get an even break in economic democracy is for the workers
to have a place at the table.
Sojourners: Do
you see a strong labor movement as part of the democratization
process?
Neiman: In order
to maintain democracy, you need a labor movement. There's not a
true democracy in the world that has achieved democratic
capitalism and a thriving middle class without also having a
strong labor movement.
It's insane that
we are sending our young men and women to "defend democracy"
with their bodies while sending our business dollars to tyrants.
If you keep all your dollars for democracy, then you won't see a
tyrant left in the world in a generation's time. The easiest way
to do that is to shop union labor, because anywhere there's a
union functioning, then there's at least an incipient democracy.
Sojourners:
What's your "big picture" on this first project in Palestine?
Neiman: I see an
opportunity to turn Palestine into the first full-scale
experiment in fair trade development. If there's one thing that
we can't afford there, it's another "free trade" fiasco. We
can't wait however many generations it will take for the
benefits to trickle down. It's got to be immediate.
Sojourners: What
would a fair trade economy in Palestine look like?
Neiman: I can
see a center for fair trade cotton. Engineering it. Growing it.
Milling it. Then dye, knit, cut, sew, package, and embellish it
all in-house. In the early stages everything has to be
nonperishable. You can't have an industry based on something
that can be shut down. So you want to look at olive oil. You
want to look at garments. I think a lot of areas there would be
great for hemp cultivation.
Sojourners: This
project seems to bring together a lot of your hopes and dreams.
Neiman: What's
so incredible is that we have all the basics. The cotton is
organic so it protects the environment. The factory is a union
shop, so it safeguards the rights of workers. The product is
made in Palestine, so it promotes peace, prosperity, and
democratic institutions in the heart of the Middle East. And
it's from Bethlehem, which allows us to project all of these
values in scriptural terms and really reach mainstream America
on a level nobody has in a long time.
I know my
American history. There's never been a successful progressive
movement in this country that didn't strike those scriptural
themes. Nobody's done it since Martin Luther King.
For more information, visit
www.nosweatapparel.com.
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