Rights Groups Assail Levi Over China

Human rights and labor groups on Thursday assailed Levi Strauss & Co. after the blue jeans manufacturer announced it would end a five-year hiatus and resume clothing production in China. A small group of activists gathered in the rain outside Levi Strausss headquarters here to ask the worlds largest brand-name apparel manufacturer to reconsider the decision it announced on Wednesday. Medea Benjamin, director of the human rights watchdog Global Exchange, criticized Levi Strauss for resuming production in China especially since the company withdrew from China in 1993 because of concern over human rights violations.

Levis came out five years ago and said, We are a company that cares about human rights. We are going to make a very principled stand and not produced in China, Benjamin told reporters outside the companys headquarters.

But what has changed in those five years to make Levis change its decision? Nothing, she said.

Others blasted Levi Strauss for moving U.S. jobs to China five months after announcing that it would lay off 6,400 U.S. workers, or more than a third of its North American workforce.

We think its an interesting coincidence that theyre going back to China at the same time that theyve laid off thousands of workers in the United States, said Miriam Ching Louie, a spokeswoman for a group of laid-off Levi Strauss workers from Texas.

Harry Wu, a U.S. citizen who was arrested in 1995 as he tried to sneak in to China, issued a statement saying Levi Strauss was sending the wrong message to other companies and to Chinese workers by resuming production in China,

Whats improved in China is the business climate. In fact, human rights violations are getting worse, Wu said. Forced labor is still used in the garment industry. There are no independent unions and anyone who tries to organize workers would end up in a re-education camp.

But Clarence Grebey, a spokesman for privately-held Levi Strauss, defended the companys move and said situations had changed since 1993.

Certainly, they have a very legitimate concern over the overall human rights climate in China. But what our decision is based upon is not a reflection of the human rights climate, Grebey told Reuters.

It is a business decision based on our belief that we can now identify business partners in mainland China who will comply with our strict codes of conduct, Grebey said. If thats not the case, we will not do business there.

Peter Jacobi, the companys chief operating officer, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday he expected Levi Strauss products to start coming off Chinese production lines in 1999.

The operations would probably be located as previously in southern China, close to Hong Kong, although new opportunities would be studied in the north with an eye to supplying Japanese and South Korean markets, Jacobi said.

The decision comes two months before President Bill Clinton is expected to visit China for a summit with President Jiang Zemin in a warming of Sino-U.S. relations.