Lifting the Corporate Veil

When a customer pulls a pair of blue jeans from a store shelf, the garment label offers little more than the size, washing instructions and country of origin. There are no clues as to whether children working for next to nothing stitched the jeans.

That typical lack of information is what makes Gap Inc.’s recent social responsibility report so welcome among shoppers who care about what’s sometimes called the true cost of manufactured goods. The unusually frank report shows what the Bay Area company is doing to prevent abuse of workers in factories that make its clothes. It was a savvy marketing decision by Gap’s chief executive, Paul Pressler, a former Disney executive who understands the value of a powerful brand. He’s positioning Gap as socially responsible, a move likely to appeal to media-aware and higher-income customers.

But the report (available at www.gap .com) goes beyond PR. Gap’s willingness to discuss problems -- including underage laborers and the failure to pay overtime at some of the 136 factories the company dropped in 2003 -- increases pressure on others to explain how products are made.

Gap’s 40-page report uses charts and commentary to detail its findings and includes input from outsiders who track businesses’ records on social responsibility. One such group, the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, credits Gap for breaking new ground by discussing working conditions at independent factories. Everything from T-shirts to DVD players is manufactured in such independently owned overseas plants, where operators face pressure to ignore wage and hour requirements and other workplace standards.

Gap’s report touches on troubling themes explored last year in The Times’ series on how Wal-Mart compels suppliers to fulfill its advertising pledge of “always low prices.” The series used an $8.63 polo shirt to help readers understand how consumer demand for low prices reaches an army of workers in countries where $35 a week is seen as a good wage and a 72-hour workweek is something to strive for.

Gap deserves credit for pulling back the corporate veil to connect consumers’ closets to workers in poor countries. The appeal of “always low prices” can’t be underestimated, and the benefits of cheap goods to low- income consumers are real, but the story of how goods are made ought to be readily available to more consumers so they can make their own decisions.