Do US Senators go to special “foot in mouth” school?

On May 16, eight American Democrat Senators urged twelve retailers “to reconsider your decision not to sign the [Bangladesh safety] Accord”. Just two days AFTER three of those retailers had been reported, even in the Washington Post, to have announced they WERE signing.

Worse still: two of those three are Spanish and one Canadian. It’s understandable that publicity-hungry American politicians can’t be bothered checking their facts before shooting their mouths off. And it’s understandable that they haven’t quite twigged that their views are utterly immaterial outside the United States. But doesn’t sticking your nose in where it’s not wanted AND getting your facts wrong to boot imply just the teeniest bit of carelessness?

Harry Reid (a Senator from Nevada), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Tom Harkin (Iowa), Richard  Durbin (Illinois), Carl Levin (Michigan), Patrick Leahy (Vermont), Patty Murray (Washington State) and John Rockefeller (West Virginia) wrote on May 16 to thirteen businesses: Cato Corporation, Walmart, Sears, Kohl’s, Target, Macy’s, JC Penney, Gap, Mango, George Weston (the holding company for Canada’s Loblaws, which sells Joe Fresh clothing) , VF Corporation, The Children’s Place Stores, and Corte Ingles.

They pointed out that the Rana Plaza collapse “underscores the urgent need for retailers to adopt a common, legally binding response that ensures basic workplace safety and fundamental worker rights are guaranteed in your facilities”. They did seem insistent on calling them all retailers, which isn’t what most of us would call VF, the world’s largest garment maker. But US Senators are busy people, especially if they’ve got to find time to lay down the law to six billion non-Americans, so maybe it’s unreasonable to expect too much attention to detail.  

They then went on to praise the Bangladesh Safety Accord which they said would “address longstanding and systemic worker safety issues stemming from a global race-to-the-bottom in standards.” And – on May 16, remember – went on to “urge you to reconsider your decision not to sign the Accord and sign on promptly”

Which is precisely what Mango, Corte Ingles and Loblaw’s had done days before. And, though John Rockefeller might not take Madrid’s El Diario or the Toronto Globe and Star at his West Virginia home every day, stories confirming their signature had been all over the internet –including on the web pages of the Washington Post, which you might have imagined US Senators DO read - since at least May 14. Or if that’s expecting a bit much, at least get their interns to.

More or less the same shower of “say what you like, because no-one’s going to check” headline hounds have now written to President Obama, telling him to withdraw Bangladesh’s minor import duty concessions, so that the US Administration might “establish a roadmap and timeline for reinstatement based upon tangible improvements in worker safety and related labor law reforms”. There is no support in Bangladesh for withdrawing those concessions – and this gang are trying to pretend they think the US somehow knows better than the Bangladeshis what’s good for Bangladesh.

They don’t of course. What they DO know about is what gets campaign contributions, and for Democrats that means money from unions . In the press release accompanying the latest letter, Tom Harkin says that “"It is essential to stop the 'race to the bottom' among clothing brands, hunting for the cheapest place to make clothing without regard to…the cost to American jobs"

Tom Harkin has, by some estimates, received more campaign contributions from unions over the past 20 years than any other US Senator.

And in the battle to retain that flow of cash, who’s possibly got time to check whether they’re writing to the right people?