The Bangor City Council is expected Monday to consider a policy that would have the city establish an ethical criteria to guide purchases of such items as fire and police uniforms, footwear and textiles. The criteria, based on a resolution crafted with the help of the Bangor Clean Clothes Campaign, would direct Bangor to buy goods from contractors who follow international codes of corporate behavior regarding wages, working conditions and child labor, among other things.

Councilors should adopt the measure as Bangor’s new Golden Rule: If you want the city’s gold, you will treat others as you expect to be treated.

The problem, felt indirectly in Maine, is the renewed growth of sweatshop labor worldwide as international trade has increased at a dizzying rate. Traditional industries like shoes and textiles have left Maine for far less expensive places, sometimes sweatshops, with the effect of fewer good jobs here, higher profits for larger and larger corporations and an abundance of low-paying jobs in dangerous working conditions. In some cases, of course, a lousy job is better than no job at all, but, as the Bangor resolution suggests, this is a false choice.

Labor costs in Third World sweatshops usually make up a very small percentage of the total cost of the product. Doubling the salaries of workers might add only a dollar or two the price of a pair of shoes or it might eat into profits. The Bangor resolution — and others like it in, for instance, Biddeford or, nationally, cities in Pennsylvania, Ohio and elsewhere — tries to rearrange this incentive for low wages or poor working conditions.

Instead of mutely accepting conditions that would be clearly unacceptable if practiced here, Bangor purchasing agents would reward employers who offer decent wages and workplaces. The city agents would ask five questions of a bidder of city business. They are simple questions and would not add appreciably to the paperwork burden: Where are the goods made? Is child or forced labor used there? Has the manufacturing facility been determined to have violated international labor standards? Are unions allowed? What are the wages like? Compliance in answering these questions is voluntary and they are but one factor the city would use in determining who wins a bid, but the very fact that these questions would be asked is a positive sign.

Positive too has been the council’s willingness to examine this difficult ethical issue raised by the Clean Clothes Campaign. Officials from a small city in a small state could easily conclude that their actions don’t much matter. To their credit, councilors have recognized that their voices count in this issue because relatively few officials are talking about it in a serious way at all. They could help make a new Golden Rule as popular as the old one.