A. The City of Berkeley spends millions of dollars per year in public funds on goods, including garments, uniforms, materials and other equipment, and supplies and services provided by private vendors and manufacturers.

B. The City of Berkeley recognizes a public interest in avoiding payments to vendors who maintain sweatshop working conditions, including below-subsistence wages, excessively long working hours, unhealthy and unsafe working environments, child, indentured, and prison labor, disregard for local and international labor laws and workplace regulations, disregard for fundamental women’s rights, and repression of workers’ rights to assemble and bargain collectively.

C. In its role as a market participant, the City of Berkeley seeks to assure that vendors who engage in sweatshop practices do not undermine the integrity of the procurement process. Vendors who use sweatshop labor are able to underbid responsible vendors who pay fair wages and maintain humane work environments and conditions. Such practices place responsible vendors at a competitive disadvantage, which may dissuade them from participating in the City of Berkeley’s procurement process.

D. The City of Berkeley must be cognizant of the working conditions it may support by its actions as a market participant. Better working conditions assure consistently better quality goods for the City of Berkeley, by assuring fewer disruptions in the workplace due to workers’ grievances, fewer absences due to illnesses, less fatigue and fewer workplace injuries, less turnover of workers, and greater incentive to perform.

E. The City of Berkeley recognizes the rights of its residents to information about working conditions and choice with regard to the expenditure of its tax money.

F. As a participant in the marketplace, the City of Berkeley seeks to protect the interests of local residents, workers, and businesses by exercising its sovereignty to establish a sweatshop-free procurement policy and Code of Conduct that ensures that items of apparel, garments and corresponding accessories procured by the City of Berkeley or its agencies, through contracts or purchase orders, be produced in workplaces free of sweatshop conditions.

G. The City of Berkeley has an interest in providing incentives for responsible vendors.

H. Accordingly, the purposes of this Chapter are to end taxpayer support for sweatshops; protect the basic labor rights and human rights of Workers who produce apparel for the City of Berkeley; level the playing field for ethical vendors; and begin the creation of a sweatshop-free procurement policy consistent with federal law and United States trade obligations. (Ord. 7099-NS § 1 (part), 2009)