TEXT E When Kathie Gifford’s face was
splashed across the newspapers in 1996 after her lucrative line of Wal mart
clothing was exposed as the work of underpaid laborers in New York City’s
Chinatown, the Department of Labor and the White House teamed up to condemn such
practices. With much fanfare, President Clinton’s administration launched the
"No Sweat" campaign, which pressured retailers and manufacturers to submit to
periodic independent inspection of their workplace conditions.
This campaign urged manufacturers to sign the Workplace Code of Con duct,
a promise to serf-regulate that has since been adopted by a handful of retailers
and many of the nation’s largest manufacturers, including Nike and L.L. Bean.
However, the Department of Defense, which has a $1 billion garment business that
would make it the country’s 14th largest retail apparel outlet, has not signed
the Code of Conduct. In addition, it has not agreed to demand that its
contractors submit to periodic inspections. Because the Department of Defense
has not agreed to adhere to the cede, the job of stopping public sector
sweatshops falls to the Department of Labor. Federal contractors that persist in
violating wage laws or safety and health codes can lose their lucrative taxpayer
financed contracts. But Suzanne Seiden, a deputy administrator at the Department
of Labor, says that to her knowledge, the department has never applied that rule
to government apparel manufacturers. "I just assume that they are adhering to
safety and health requirements," she says. According to records obtained by
Mother Jones, through a Freedom of Information Act request, the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration has cited Lion 32 times for safety and health
violations in the past 12 years. The underlined phrase "to submit to" is closest in meaning to ______ .