Brothers in arms

How the Amalean family made MAS Holdings Sri Lanka's biggest garment manufacturer - and one of the industry's best corporate citizens.

Janet Paskin | March 2008 issue

As the program gathered steam, Fernando started talking to MAS' clients, encouraging them to sponsor monetary awards for women who participated. He took executive classes at INSEAD and mentioned his initiative to professors. He talked up the program to officials at the International Labor Organization, the World Trade Organization and the United Nations. "I didn't have a dollar to spend on advertising," he says. "So I identified credible organizations, told them about the program and asked them to pay attention."

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Companies like Nike, Victoria's Secret, Gap and Speedo have given almost $300,000 combined to fund programs and awards. When the United Nations reviewed the success of the Global Compact, an initiative to promote progressive labour practises, the report identified MAS as one of 20 international companies that "truly define corporate citizenship in the spirit of the Global Compact's universal values." The World Bank tagged MAS as a "Market Mover" and began to use Women Go Beyond as an example of sustainable business practises in a developing economy. At INSEAD, Story wrote his case study and produced a short documentary about the company. (Go to odemagazine.com/mas to see it.) "My vision is that one day," Fernando says, "the ‘Go Beyond' logo will be the ‘Intel Inside' in apparel."

MAS' competitors took notice too. Because Sri Lanka has strict child labour laws and a relatively high minimum wage, when it came to working conditions, the garment industry was ahead of suppliers in India, Bangladesh and China. At a trade association meeting in 2005, Fernando suggested an initiative to brand Sri Lanka as a destination for ethical manufacturing. In 2006, the Joint Apparel Association Forum, an umbrella trade group for garment manufacturers, established the Garments without Guilt campaign, which required members to run their plants free of "child labour, forced labour, discrimination on any grounds and sweatshop practises."

The campaign is still too new to judge. While the Sri Lankan garment industry was in good shape to begin with, it's hard to change established business practises. Better labour practises mean garment workers clock fewer hours, which means plants have to be more productive, says Kumar Mirchandani, who heads the Garments without Guilt initiative. And for the industry to change, clients will have to understand that making last-minute alterations or rush orders comes at a price.

"I may not want to work on a Sunday, but what if I get the order on Friday, and the buyer says, ‘I need it by Monday—or else!' I may not have much of a choice," says Mirchandani, whose company, Favourite Group, makes outerwear and children's clothing. To achieve change in the garment industry, Mirchandani believes buyers' expectations have to be reasonable too.

And no matter how good the working conditions get, Garments without Guilt—even MAS' empowerment programs—remain optional. There's no government monitoring, unions are rare and garment workers are still poor, notes Rachel Weeks, a Fulbright scholar studying "ethical fashion" in Sri Lanka. "These initiatives are all really positive," she says. "But at the end of the day, this country needs a living wage more than anything else."

Even so, MAS' programs offer a powerful alternative for the garment industry. While even company executives acknowledge that the Women Go Beyond initiative can't reach everyone, on average, each employee participates in a program between three and four times a year. As part of the initiative, MAS has sent garment workers to the U.S. for leadership training, supported women in starting their own businesses and opened its doors to community members so workers' families can participate in English and computer classes.

In December, thousands of MAS employees went to Colombo for the company's annual ceremony to honour its most empowered women—workers who take their own development seriously. From the cover of programs and a screen onstage, the logo—a woman's face with the words "Women Go Beyond"—smiled at participants. It's a simple, clear image—and if Fernando has his way, someday it will be shrunk to the size of a postage stamp and sewn into the back of your T-shirt.

Janet Paskin is a financial journalist based in New York.

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