Open letter to Gap employees

From: Jonah Zern <jzern1@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2000

There were many issues that were brought to the table at last week's meeting.  Here are some questions that I have for GAP employees to begin conversation.  Please try to answer them yourselves or forward them to the appropriate people for response ideally before Wednesday.  Also, feel free to respond with your own questions, either about our statistics or our campaign to change the GAP:

Sweatshops:

  1. How many GAP monitors are there?
  2. How do these monitors operate?
  3. Does GAP or how could GAP include assurance that their quotas being established were not causing workers to work excessive hours or under poor conditions to meet these quotas?
  4. Does GAP or how could GAP assure that the amount of money being provided to these factories is sufficient to pay these workers a living wage?
  5. How does GAP assure that the right to organize is being upheld?
  6. Would GAP be willing to explore outside monitors, and work with us to find potential funding sources for these monitors?
  7. Will GAP disclose its factory locations?
I repeatedly heard a concern that GAP is only 7% of the garment industry.  What are methods that we could bring the rest of the garment industry into this dialog to creating solutions to the sweatshop problem so that GAP does not feel it is being singled out?

Redwoods:

  1. What percent of the Fisher land is old growth?
  2. What is the response to the allegations that while there is no clear-cutting involved here that anything under 90% is not considered a clearcut?
  3. What land has been preserved?
  4. What is the Fisher family's response to the request that instead of using their immense amount of personal wealth to make more money through this investment, that instead they use this land and work with others to conserve and restore the redwood forests?
  5. What does the Fisher family feel about using their money and with others to provide jobs in conservation and restoration rather than deforestation?
It is a pleasure to begin working with you all to build solutions, and I hope our process will create a long term possitive relation between GAP Inc. and the Bay Area community.

Sincerely,
Jonah Zern
Founding Member, Student Alliance to Reform Corporations