The Socially Responsible Santa

Socially responsible Santas will have lots of choices this year for giving gifts that are not made by young women making pennies in sweat shops or drenched in toxic pesticides or bought at dirt-cheap prices from farmers in Third World Countries.

Socially responsible, organic, union-made and fair trade products have become increasingly popular with consumers over the past few years, and the holiday season, when even anti-capitalist types give in to the urge to splurge on gifts, is one of the prime times for this movement.

Plenty of stores, ranging from mainstream chains like Starbucks and Urban Outfitters to local boutiques and co-ops offer fair trade, union-made and organic alternatives. As the anti-sweat shop movement has gained increasingly visibility in the past few years, there are plenty of internet-based distributors that offer certified union-made, sweat-free casual clothing -- a number of them are compiled on the site Union Mall (www.NoSweatShop.com).

Unfortunately union-made clothing can't quite compete with the cheap prices of mass-produced textiles available at Wal-Mart and other super discount outlets that use sweatshop labor. Stacey Harrington, founder of the sweat-free, union-made company UnionThreads, learned this the hard way when her Boston area shop was forced to close its doors on Dec. 5. Harrington started her business two years ago out of the back of her truck, after being laid off from her own union job, and opened a store a year later. Now the web site includes only a plea for shoppers not to patronize Wal-Mart.

"The Union Mall confronts individual consumers with the same ethical dilemma that the management of major corporations face," notes the Union Mall web site in regards to UnionThreads' fate. "Pay a fair price for labor or pay the lowest price possible. The choice is yours. If you support us now there will be many more choices next year."

Numerous web sites also list different companies that are guilty of using sweatshop labor. The biggest offender is Wal-Mart, which has been awarded the Maquila Solidarity Network's Sweatshop "People's Choice" prize for the third time in four years (Disney won in 2001). Another Web site, www.sendcoaltowalmart.com, lets people send "coal" and a holiday message to the company's CEO about their labor practices.

Though sweat-free retailers do need to charge slightly higher prices, many of the options are completely reasonably priced, competitive with higher-end sweatshop offenders like The Gap. For instance the company Sweat X, which sells goods made by a co-operative of former maquila workers in L.A., offers an organic tote bag for $14.95 and an organic peach or powder blue tank top for $13.95. Meanwhile The Union Jean & Apparel Co. offers stone-washed relaxed fit jeans for $27.99 and a hooded fleece for $37.86.

"This is a growing trend," said Union Jean co-founder Lawson Nickol, who along with two friends started the company in Arcanum, Ohio this August after becoming disenchanted with the global garment industry where he had worked for some years. "The people have been out there wanting to buy American and buy union for a while, but now they're finding out where we are."

Maggie's Functional Organics, an Ypsilanti, Michigan-based company that sells over the Internet and at stores around the country, offers its socks, bedding, camisoles, mittens and other products at what manager Vernon Rowe described as "high-end" prices. A three-pack of socks will go for $19, compared to about $6 for Hanes or the like. But Maggie's customers know they are getting 100-percent organic materials made by people making living wages. One of the company's projects is working with a women's co-operative in Nicaragua called Maquilador Mujeres, where they buy their camisoles at fair trade prices.