No sweat

This is good news:

"Now is the time to put our principles where our spending is," Newsom said in a rally at San Francisco's City Hall, pledging that the measure would get results. "Often we're good at passing resolutions asking someone else to do something about a problem. This is an ordinance with real teeth and real enforcement."

The measure calls for the city to refuse to buy goods that were made by domestic or foreign contractors that use child labor or slave labor or that violate local or international labor laws. For the first year, the measure is limited to city uniforms and other clothing, which account for $6 million of the city's annual $600 million in purchasing. The ordinance creates an advisory committee, made up largely of local anti-sweatshop activists, that would be able to widen the scope to other products.

This is the kind of thing that really pisses off the center-right, "pro-business" CNBC types. They tend to go on about how we should leave it to The Market to convince companies to do the right thing, not taking into account that since SF is a customer of these clothing companies, this is, essentially, the market working.

The article closes with what is (to me) an incomprehensible defense of something. Possibly sweatshops, possibly the garment industry, possibly the right to be drunk on the job:

"Promoting legislation that paints an industry with a tar brush may make noise in the media and further political agendas," said Randy Harris, executive director of San Francisco Fashion Industries, an industry lobbying group that includes firms such as Levi Strauss & Co., Byer California and Gymboree Corp. "But the mayor and Supervisor Ammiano should have done their homework before slapping our industry across the face. Rather than promote legislation of this type, if they truly cared, they should be meeting with industry leaders and learning about our industry, its history and challenges and the good work that we have done for decades."

Because nothing encourages good behavior from an industry like learning about its challenges.