E-Mail This Article to a Friend Trying ethics on for size Worker-friendly clothing companies look to break the sweatshop mold BY CAMILLE DODERO

Capitalism comes in many shapes and sizes; it’s positively Whitmanesque in its diversity.

There is the bygone capitalism pictured in PBS specials — the heavy industry captured on black-and-white newsreels, which saw our grandparents and great-grandparents trudge off to the Herbert Hoover Manufacturing Plant to work long, demanding hours making big, clunky things in cavernous, dangerous, smoky, smelly environments.

There is the more recent digital capitalism— which few of us experienced directly — where men and women not much different from ourselves got rich working 26 hours a day, eight days a week, designing software in clean, well-lighted, campus-like complexes while eating cafeteria sushi and getting company-financed back rubs.

And then there is the wacky strain of capitalism, that delightfully oxymoronic collection of disparate efforts that flies under the banner of socially responsible business. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is a case in point — or was until 2000, when the little-company-that-could sold out to a huge conglomerate, Unilever. There is Fair Trade coffee for those who want to slake their thirst for caffeine without irritating their consciences. Profit-making enterprises such as these aim to do well while doing good. It’s a neat trick, and one that two relatively green garment manufacturers — Waltham-based No Sweat and the better-known American Apparel, of Los Angeles — are trying to master.

It’s a man-bites-dog story. As a general rule, garment manufacturers are not known for social consciousness. The industry stereotype tends toward sweatshops and Third World exploitation, which are less than edifying concepts — even in this era of Bushonomics.

Just ask Adam Neiman, the dogged co-founder and principal voice of No Sweat. The primary selling point of Neiman’s clothing isn’t that it’s especially sexy, cheap, or even fashionable. Rather, his garments, in the words of his chief financial officer, John Studer, "don’t hurt people."

Which is more unusual than you might realize. Among all business sectors, the garment industry is especially infamous for exploiting the lowest-level workers by contracting with foreign factories that pay substandard wages, have poor ventilation and rodent infestations, and sometimes even hire children. The garments sold by No Sweat are "sweatshop-free" and "union-made" — manufactured by workers who earn a living wage, have health-care benefits, and belong to labor unions (in fact, Neiman believes, the only way to guarantee that management won’t mistreat its employees is if they’re represented by a union).

Neiman isn’t naive enough to believe he can implant a social conscience in the Gap-shopping American majority; he’s starting with progressive types who keep Fair Trade coffee on the burner. But the Newton resident nurtures high hopes for his two-year-old business, those of a scrawny David trying to smite the sweatshop-reliant practices of the garment-industry Goliaths with one blow. His weapon of choice? The fiscal power of an as-yet-untapped consumer base. If No Sweat can prove there’s a substantial demand for ethical threads, Neiman reasons, the bigger brands will want to capitalize on the niche market, and therefore will change their exploitive ways. By this logic, Neiman’s profit is the worker’s gain. "We’re creating an opportunity for progressive consumers to participate in an experiment," says Neiman. "Call it entrepreneurial activism — [an experiment] to see whether a niche market can be used to reform the larger industry. To me, that’s what makes the gamble worthwhile."

Then there’s Dov Charney, the 35-year-old co-founder of the better-known multi-million-dollar sweatshop-free company American Apparel, which recently opened one of its 28 national retail shops on Newbury Street. In the late 1990s, Charney designed a line of women’s formfitting baby Ts, tagged them with the label Classic Girl, and sold them to wholesalers. They were an instant success.

Since then, Charney’s youthful threads have been publicized everywhere from the New Yorker to CNN to GQ. He runs the largest garment factory in the United States, pays sewing-room employees substantially more than the federal minimum wage of $5.15 (his average sewing-room employee earns $12.50 per hour), and offers health benefits, subsidized lunches, and on-the-job massages.

But while both Neiman and Charney have built businesses around socially conscious practices, their similarities, it seems, end there. Charney may promote American Apparel as a "sweatshop-free" company (and claims to have invented the term), but he doesn’t think guilt sells in the garment industry. "Clothing is all about sex and function. It’s not about protest," he says. "[The other companies] sell sweatshop-free [products] based on charity, and it’s not sustainable: ‘Buy from us because we’re so poor and stupid and we don’t know how to do it better, so buy something from us for charitable reasons.’ It’s like conscience-based selling. American Apparel is more about efficiency. It’s about the fact that the way we manufacture T-shirts is better."

Despite the two companies’ drastically different philosophies about sweatshop-free clothing, one thing is clear: with American Apparel’s seismic success and No Sweat’s 750 percent annual growth, there appears to be a market for it.

No Sweat’s nerve center is nestled in the suburban basement of a brick building off Waltham’s main drag. Rosie the Riveter, the company’s mascot, flexes on the chest of a mannequin in the front window. Inside, Neiman — a medium-size man with fleshy red cheeks and a crowd of teeth — has his feet up on a desk. One of No Sweat’s four full-time employees, 26-year-old CFO John Studer, stares quizzically at a computer screen a few feet away.

Neiman has always had a political-activism streak. At 12, the Georgia-born entrepreneur and his older sister protested President Nixon’s inauguration and ended up in police custody; at 15, he interned for George McGovern. During a stint at Harvard University, Neiman took time off to campaign for Jimmy Carter; his first post-college professional job was as a publicist for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.

In contrast to American Apparel, which makes all its garments in its 8000-square-foot Los Angeles factory, No Sweat follows Neiman’s firm belief that a clothing company must outsource its production to international plants to be successful. "Each factory has to focus on what they do best," Neiman insists. "One company does boxer shorts best. Another company does T-shirts, like American Apparel. Another factory does button-down [shirts]. In order for there to be any efficiency, you’ve got to have specialization." But No Sweat doesn’t view exporting jobs as undercutting US labor unions. "The women in the developing world desperately need these jobs," reads the company’s Web site. No Sweat also promises to keep at least 30 percent of its business in the United States. "We believe the only way to protect workers anywhere is to defend workers’ rights everywhere."