Monitoring Sweatshops offers the first comprehensive assessment of efforts to address and improve conditions in garment factories. Jill Esbenshade describes the government's efforts to persuade retailers and clothing companies to participate in private monitoring programs. She shows the different approaches to monitoring that firms have taken, and the variety of private monitors employed, from large accounting companies to local non-profits. Esbenshade also shows how the efforts of the anti-sweatshop movement have forced companies to employ monitors overseas as well. When monitoring is understood as the result of the withdrawal of governments from enforcing labor standards as well as the weakening of labor unions, it becomes clear that the United States is experiencing a shift from a social contract between workers, businesses, and government to one that Jill Esbenshade calls the social responsibility contract. She illustrates this by presenting the recent history of monitoring, with considerable attention to the most thorough of the Department of Labor's programs, the one in Los Angeles. Esbenshade also explains the maze of alternative approaches being employed worldwide to decide the questions of what should be monitored and by whom.

"A important and timely study that demonstrates that voluntary, corporate-sponsored monitoring is no substitute for independent accountability through government regulation and a free labor movement. Especially in an era of globalization and outsourcing of jobs, it is more imperative than ever that monitoring be credible and that consumers be attuned to the conditions under which products are manufactured if the social contract and economic justice are to be preserved. Oversight, whether by concerned industries or benevolent government, will not achieve sustained improvements in working conditions in the absence of free unions organized by employees to safeguard their own rights."—U.S. Congressman George Miller, Senior Democrat, Committee on Education & the Workforce

"When clothing companies tried to shed the 'sweatshop' moniker by writing a Code of Conduct and hiring their own monitors to check factory conditions, few were better placed than academic/activist Jill Esbenshade to provide a critique. Monitoring Sweatshops is a fascinating look at companies' attempts to silence their critics, workers' efforts to improve their conditions, activists' campaigns to pressure the companies, and the public's desire to be responsible consumers. Monitoring Sweatshops is the best analysis to date of monitoring that is designed to placate consumers and maintain the status quo. Anyone concerned about the conditions under which our clothes are made should read this book."—Medea Benjamin, Founding Director, Global Exchange

"This book is a richly detailed, first-hand account of the rise of private monitoring in the global apparel industry. Esbenshade dissects the power relationships and conflicts of interest within the monitoring paradigm, and presents the challenging conclusion that without greater involvement by workers themselves, international monitoring cannot effectively address the sweatshop problem. Monitoring Sweatshops is a must read for anyone who hopes to understand and change the contemporary global production system."—Gary Gereffi, Duke University