Founded: 1969
Primary industry/service
: Garment retail
Net sales (1998):
$9,054,462,000
Net earnings (1998):
$ 824,539,000
Chairman and Founder:
Donald G. Fisher
Current CEO
: Millard S. Drexler
CEO salary (FY
1999): $12.6 million (pay plus stock options exercised)
Philanthropy
: not available (unofficial est. $2 million annually)
The Good
[ ] one of top 50 best companies for minorities
[ ] one of top 100 companies for working
mothers
[X] Has a non-discrimination policy that includes
sexual orientation
To Be Improved
[X] - sites in non-democratic nations
[ ?] - child labor violations in last five years
[X] - environmental violations in last five years
Environment
The Fisher family investment group is called the Pisces Group. John Fisher, son of Gap chair and CEO Don Fisher, is one of three partners in Sansome Forest Partners, a subsidiary of the Pisces Group. Sansome, in turn, owns Mendocino Redwood Company (MRC).
In July of 1998, MRC bought 235,000 acres of depleted Louisiana Pacific (L-P) timberland -- nearly a quarter of Mendocino County, including Mendocino's last unprotected old-growth redwoods. The company also took over L-P's logging plans, which included clear-cutting, logging old-growth trees, and spraying the toxic herbicide Garlon, and against which a citizen suit had previously been filed. MRC has since submitted new Timber Harvest Plans, but environmentalists contend that these plans will still lead to clearcutting, loss of old growth, damage to residents health, and loss of populations of the endangered coho salmon.
Local and national environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Redwood Coast Watersheds Alliance, the Kaisen Gulch Group, and others, have mounted an extensive public campaign against the Gap for its actions in Mendocino. Several forest activists have recently begun tree-sits on Mendocino redwoods, similar to the recently-completed, successful tree-sit by Julia Butterfly Hill in the Headwaters Forest. A judge recently ruled against MRC in an environmental lawsuit, forcing MRC to withdraw three Timber Harvest Plans; MRC also withdrew a fourth plan that a second, related lawsuit had challenged. At an early meeting with concerned residents and activists who asked for conservation measures on the land, John Fishers response was, "Who's going to pay for it?"
Gap, Inc, publicly states that it is not associated with Mendocino Redwood Company, since the logging company is a private Fisher family investment. However, Bob Fisher, president of the Gap division of Gap, Inc., has discussed his family's plans regarding their investment in MRC (see letter from Bob Fisher, ref. below). MRC, for its part, claims that it has reached several environmental milestones since purchasing the L-P land and that it is committed to sustainable harvest rates and environmental stewardship.
In accordance with their expressed goal of being a leader in environmental responsibility, Gap., Inc. has developed two basic environmental tenets:
2. We will encourage our employees to take individual steps to protect and restore the environment, and empower them to ensure that company activity is consistent with our environmental policies.
Although Gap states concern for the environmental impact of their suppliers, no real solutions are proposed. According to a public statement on their website about the environment
"To date, we have not talked much to the public about our environmental efforts. That's because we've been busy figuring out what an effective environmental practice looks like. We have a long way to go, but we are making progress."For more information from Gap about their environmental practices, write to Gap Inc. Environmental Affairs at One Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA 94105; or call 1-800-333-7899, extension 45550.
There are serious questions about the working conditions under which Gap, Inc. clothing is produced. They have been accused by several human rights groups (see links below) of maintaining factories where workers are under sweatshop-like conditions, are paid low wages, are subject to draconian restrictions (such as contracts which workers say forbid them to quit, join unions, attend religious services, or marry), face unhealthy and unsafe working conditions (Saipan factories have garnered over 1000 OSHA citations), and allegedly have been fired for trying to complain.
Gap, along with 17 other U.S. clothing retailers, is currently the subject of three lawsuits filed in Jan 1999 challenging the unlawful sweatshop conditions in the Saipan, CNMI garment industry. Saipan is an island in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), which has US territorial status, similar to Puerto Rico. Saipan factories are not subject to many U.S. labor laws, including the federal minimum wage, yet U.S. manufacturers with factories in Saipan are able to bypass duties and quotas imposed on imported goods. According to the lawsuit, the wholesale value of the garments produced for Gap in Saipan and shipped to the U.S. during the 4 years prior to the suit was $237.3 million, more than twice as much as any of the other retailers sued.
Additionally, in June 1999 the federal government filed two civil-rights lawsuits against a Gap vendor in Saipan, charging discrimination against pregnant women and attempt firing of a worker for trying to organize a union, and the National Labor Relations Board has filed two complaints about labor abuses in Saipan.
According to Global Exchange :
The sweatshop problem undoubtedly extends beyond Saipan. In Russia we were notified that Gap pays factory workers just 11 cents/hour and keeps them in slave-like conditions. Workers from Macao contacted the Asia Monitor Resource Center in Hong Kong complaining of abusive treatment by factory managers, who forced them to work excessive overtime and cheated them out of their pay.
A delegation from the National Labor Committee in June 1999 reported that Honduran Gap factory workers are subjected to forced pregnancy tests, forced overtime, exceedingly high production goals, locked bathrooms, and wages of $4/day, which only meet 1/3 of their basic needs. The workers said that if they tried to organize a union or even become more informed of their rights, they would be fired. They had never heard of Gap's code of conduct. In Indonesia, 700 workers went on strike in July, 1997 protesting miserable wages and the factory management's refusal to recognize their independent union.
Although nine retailers have agreed in principle to settle the Saipan class action lawsuits, Gap, Inc. is not among them. Gap states:
The Fisher family, particularly Donald Fisher, have been extremely influential in local, state, and national politics. In an article calling Don Fisher "the most influential power broker in town", the San Francisco Bay Guardian reports on Fisher's part in successful efforts to privitize Presidio National Park, provide taxpayer funding for for-profit corporations to run elementary schools, giving donor corporations more control over programming decisions on National Public Radio, negotiate free-trade agreements such as NAFTA and GATT, elect pro-business candidates to San Francisco government offices, and other activities.
In the past five years, Donald Fisher has given at least $278,450 in political contributions. Doris, Robert, and William Fisher have together contributed approx. $55,300, while Milliard Drexler has donated $30,750. (Source: Center for Responsive Politics.).
The Gap Foundation, the charitable arm of Gap, Inc, provides donations (estimated at $2 million/year, according to the San Francisco Bay Guardian) to a few charities, including Communities In Schools (CIS), a dropout prevention and business training program, and several HIV/AIDS prevention and education organizations. Gap also encourages and coordinates employee volunteer efforts.
Doris Fisher (Don Fisher's wife), who sits on Gap, Inc.'s Board of directors, is on Stanford's Board of Trustees.
For more information
Labor
General/Other