Starbucks, one of the most successful companies to launch its brand into the popular culture, has, according to communication material from the Vancouver-based Real Alternatives Information Network (RAIN):

- Resisted efforts to unionize
- Underpaid foreign coffee bean pickers, and used child labor
- Produced excessive paper waste
- Purchased non-organic coffee beans
- Used unfair practices to drive out local coffee shop competitors

In any case, disagreements have not infrequently risen about whose data best typifies overseas workplace conditions. Adding to the confusion, assistant professor Dara O'Rourke of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has monitored health and safety conditions in China, says, "I don't think it is just that the data is different, it is also the framework within which this data is analyzed is widely divergent. There are lots of people who don't let facts get in the way of their arguments -- on all sides of the globalization debates."

But never mind whether the charges are true or not. Should responding to these charges even be the role of brands?

Author and activist Naomi Klein seems to think it is, saying that "The anti-globalization movement is very global, and [that movement] is arguing for another model of internationalism that is less driven by the demands of corporations to have market access, and is more driven by human rights and human need."

According to Klein, brand-based campaigns, such as those targeting Nike, Starbucks, and Gap, were never intended to be ends in themselves. "It's really not a very efficient way to change the world by targeting one company at a time," she says. Still she feels there are some companies that have their "hands in so many pots" that they yield a snapshot of globalization in miniature. "But where does that lead? It leads to a questioning of an economic model," says Klein.

Brands are chosen as the object of our disaffection, suggests Klein, because governance on a global scale has become so "huge, unrooted, and disconnected" from people's lives that they are left grasping at connections, and multinationals are often the easiest connections to make. "In the US," she points out, "that connection for a lot of kids has been their clothes, shoes and toys. In Europe, a lot of it involves the food that they eat... McDonald's is a symbol in France. And it's the entry point and link from the family table and the countryside to an abstract debate."

According to Klein, the role of the brand has been decided by the brands themselves and the fact that many of the most powerful brands in the world have embraced the idea of lifestyle branding and have started to sell extremely powerful ideas instead of products. Whether the idea is democracy (Nike) or community (Starbucks), Klein says companies have raised expectations about what consumers can ask of them.

A counter to her argument can be found in the book Capitalism and Freedom (University of Chicago, 1962), where economist Milton Friedman writes:

The view has been gaining widespread acceptance that corporate officials and labor leaders have a 'social responsibility' that goes beyond serving the interest of their stockholders or their members. This view shows a fundamental misconception of the character and nature of a free economy. In such an economy there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition, without deception or fraud… if businessmen do have a social responsibility other than making maximum profits for their stockholders, how are they to know what it is? Can self-selected private individuals decide what the social interest is? (Capitalism and Freedom, 1962)

If demanding social responsibility posed a threat to personal freedom when Friedman wrote his book in 1962, what about now? Says Friedman (now at Stanford University's Hoover Institution) "It is indeed true that greater social responsibility by corporations, as that term is ordinarily interpreted, would tend to reduce freedom." But he adds, "[T]he arguments of the anti-globalists on this score as on so many others are so incoherent and confused that they do not deserve a serious answer."

Fred McMahon of the Fraser Institute, a Canadian free-market think tank that coordinates the World Economic Freedom Network, is more expansive. Says McMahon, "[I]t is an imposition on freedom for government to impose social considerations on companies and individuals. It is also an imposition of freedom for activists or even company management to impose such considerations on the owners of the firm, the stockholders. Such regulations or restrictions prevent individuals and groups from reaching agreements they might otherwise voluntarily enter into... Companies or individuals can only sell products in a free market if they offer choices that are superior – in quality, price, features, or a mix of these –- from a consumer's perspective. Thus, freedom supports continual increases in, at least, material well-being."

McMahon adds, "From a third world 'sweatshop' perspective, workers will only accept such jobs if they present an improvement on other options. These jobs may not seem pleasant to an affluent first world activist – who lives in a place that has benefited from relatively free markets for generations – but they may mark a significant step up for a third world worker and family. It is ethically wrong for someone in, say, Toronto, to impose their political opinions, and limit the freedom of poor third world workers who see a path to greater opportunity." But he draws the line at economic coercion.

On the flip side, Klein in her book, No Logo, questions whether workers in sweatshop factories really have all that much freedom in their choice of employment. Writing of a trip she made to the Philippines, she says, "Many...workers told me that they would have stayed home if they could, but the choice was made for them..." (No Logo, 1999) In the eyes of many anti-globalists, international branding also poses threats to freedom at home. Arguing that it is not possible to talk back to brands in any real sense, some anti-globalists feel that their freedom of speech and even democracy are threatened by huge multinationals, not a few of which are even larger than many undeveloped countries. There's also a sense among many anti-globalists that their personal space has been invaded by branding advertisements.

Interestingly, nearly all of the groups leveling these charges, including Global Exchange, Oxfam International, and McSpotlight, declined to be interviewed for this article, as did most of the corporations.

Perhaps that is why many of the ongoing anti-corporate debates continue to take place on the Internet, where websites are used to launch charges and responses. But some might argue this doesn’t help either side in the charge being able to “talk back to the brand,” or improving dialogue between both sides.

Sadly the present results appear to be in the direction of less dialogue as attempts at transparency by some brands have backfired, for example in the case of Nike. In the mid-1990s, in response to accusations that Asian workers in its overseas factories were exposed to dangerous chemicals and physical abuse, and paid subsistence wages, the sports brand made public statements that it had improved workplace conditions. A Nike-commissioned Ernst & Young audit in 1997 found that the abuses had not been addressed. Recently the California Supreme Court ruled that an activist named Marc Kasky could bring suit against Nike for violating California's false advertising and unfair business practice laws. Nike has asked the US Supreme Court to review the decision.

According to a Nike spokesperson Carolyn Wu, "Nike's arguments that these statements were part of the public debate about globalization, and therefore are protected by the First Amendment, prevailed in the lower two courts in California but were rejected by the majority in the California Supreme Court. The potential remedies under the California statute are extreme. California allows claims for restitution of money obtained through an unfair business practice where misleading statements are alleged even though the plaintiff has suffered no loss and has not relied on the statements.”

She went on to say “Nike has reluctantly backed away from some of its efforts at transparency to reduce the risk of additional law suits under the Kasky decision based on statements about workplace issues." According to Wu, publications and media productions will be among the first to be hurt by this policy.

While no one would argue that less dialogue will improve the situation, perhaps what is needed is more coherent, solution-oriented dialogue, as opposed to slinging simplistic charges over the faceless Internet. There is overwhelming evidence that when the anti-globalization movement acts as a watchdog, brands do make an effort to clean up their acts. This appears to be a situation where both sides win.     

[2-Dec-2002]