Oak Harbor proposed raising many retirees' health premiums by $400
to $700 per month. Even though its workers' pension plan is already
substantially below industry standards, Oak Harbor also proposed
freezing contributions for five years. It sought to deny workers
overtime pay for weekend work on GAP business. It also insisted on
prohibiting union representatives from access to workers at their
workplaces.

Instead of negotiating with striking workers in good faith, Oak
Harbor, based in Aurora, Washington, has imported teams of professional
strikebreakers to coerce and scare loyal long-time employees.

Several organizations, including, Sweatfree Communities, the
International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation, the
International Transport Workers' Federation, and Students &
Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, have called on The GAP -- which
last year had $15.8 billion in revenues and owns four of the most
recognized apparel brands in the world (GAP, Banana Republic, Old Navy
and Piperlime) - to suspend its relationship with Oak Harbor.

To draw attention to their situation, the workers took their protest
to the GAP's world headquarters in San Francisco. They draped a 35-foot
banner - "GAP: Don't Harbor Oak Harbor's Retiree Abuses" - from a huge
billboard next to the company's headquarters.

During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama and John McCain have
expressed big differences over their concern for workers' rights. Obama
supports the Employee Free Choice Act, which would reform the nation's
archaic labor regulations and make it harder for corporations and
union-busting consultants to block workers' right to union
representation.

But the strike against Oak Harbor - a key link in GAP's global
supply chain -- reveals that many workers who are already unionized
face threats from businesses to their on-the-job protections. The
workers' protest demonstrates how powerful big-brand companies like the
GAP have developed ways to hide their own complicity in worker abuses.

Are companies responsible for the abusive practices of their
subcontractors? Because the GAP subcontracts its transportation
services, its executives claim it shares no responsibility for Oak
Harbor's abusive demands: the loss of healthcare coverage for retires,
the loss of paid sick leave for employees, the reduction of pension
benefits, the right to prohibit union representatives from talking to
workers at the workplace, and a special "GAP" rule that would deny
overtime pay for weekend work on GAP business.

When Oak Harbor hires the notorious strike-breaking security firm,
Modern Staffing and Security, and Seattle's leading union avoidance law
firm, Davis Grimm Payne and Marra, GAP denies any collusion. And when
Oak Harbor, to break worker solidarity, lures African-American striker
replacements from the South with promises of permanent jobs and high
wages, and then fires them when local white replacement workers become
available, can GAP really claim that it is not complicit in this
cynical form of racial discrimination?

After decades of dogged confrontation, anti-sweatshop consumer
groups and international workers rights advocates have effectively
forced companies such as the GAP to take responsibility for abuses in
overseas factories that manufacture its merchandise, even though they
subcontract the work. They now acknowledge, however reluctantly, that
there is a clear legal and moral link between the retailer and the
subcontractor that makes the clothing and sews the GAP's label on the
apparel.

When journalists and labor rights groups exposed "slave-like" child
labor conditions earlier this year at GAP clothing contractors in
India, GAP officials moved with haste to remedy the problem to the
satisfaction of human rights watchdog groups. When some of these same
groups protested the Oak Harbor abuses, however, GAP defended its
position.

Other major retailers such as REI and Urban Outfitters have dropped
Oak Harbor in response to the labor dispute. But GAP has refused to
switch transport services, claiming that it does not want to disrupt
business right before the Christmas shopping season. Had this been a
human rights campaign in support of workers in an overseas
manufacturing facility, one suspects The GAP would have been more
concerned about being this Christmas' poster child for a sweatshop
brand than about getting a break on transportation costs.

GAP's two-faced approach is remarkable because the company
acknowledges responsibility for labor violations on the manufacturing
side of its global supply chain while shirking responsibility from the
transportation side here in its home market.

What is remarkable in the Oak Harbor situation is that American
workers now find it necessary to use the same tactics - and make
similar demands seeking adherence to basic international labor rights
-- as did sweatshop workers in developing countries.

It is time for GAP to realize that it has a moral responsibility to
Jeff the truck driver, who moves its merchandise, takes pride in his
job, and deserves a decent wage, affordable health care, and a pension
when he retires. And after November 4, Jeff - and millions of other
employees who lose their basic rights when they go to work - should
become the symbol for a new wave of grassroots organizing to reform the
nation's labor laws.

Peter Dreier teaches politics and directs the Urban &
Environmental Policy program at Occidental College in Los Angeles. For
more information about the Oak Harbor strike, go to the union's website.