AUGUSTA – Maine was right on the slavery question 150 years ago and should be right on the sweatshop question today, according to supporters of LD 1748 who appeared in the Hall of Flags on Tuesday. The bill, expected to come before the House and Senate this week, would require bidders for state contracts to certify that none of their products were produced by sweatshop labor.

As a child of Irish and Greek immigrant parents, Rep. Zachary Matthews, D-Winslow, is very aware of sweatshop labor operations. Matthews sponsored the same legislation three years ago and said, “I will fight for this until I die.”

Similar legislation already has been adopted in Bangor, Orono and numerous other municipalities, but by no states.

A key supporter, Sen. Peggy A. Pendleton, D-Scarborough, admitted the problem in passing the legislation will be in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans are faced with a 17-17 split. “I can’t say if it will pass there, but there is good bipartisan support for the bill,” she said.

Pendleton was a member of the governor’s task force that drafted the bill. Republican Sen. Edward M. Youngblood, R-Brewer, has supported the bill, but no Republican legislator spoke in support of the bill at the Tuesday rally.

The State and Local Government Committee gave its blessing to the bill by a 10-3 vote.

The measure is not just feel good legislation, but an effective way to combat sweatshop labor, according to Bjorn Claeson of the Maine Clean Clothes Alliance, which has endorsed the bill. Maine workers at Cole-Haan in Livermore, Dexter Shoe in Newport, Dexter and Milo, and G. H. Bass in Wilton have experienced job losses to sweatshop businesses around the world, he said. He outlined worker’s rights violations in South America, Bangladesh and Samoa.

Wage standard laws also are being violated by the garment industry in the United States, involving an estimated two-thirds of industry employees in California and New York City. The effort is supported by 50 civil groups and 60 Maine businesses, including L.L. Bean, Hathaway Shirt Co., and the AFL-CIO.

Over the past decade, more than 7,000 Maine workers have lost their jobs with sweatshops causing a large portion of the job losses, according to Jack McKay of MCCA. In Bangor and Brewer alone, more than 1,000 jobs have been lost to sweatshop operations in the Dominican Republic. “One hundred and fifty years ago, Maine was on the right side of the slavery issue. Today they can be on the right side of the sweatshop issue,” McKay said during a noon press conference.

Most of the world’s 27 million garment workers toil in sweatshops and the U.S. Labor Department has estimated that more than 24,000 contract garment shops in the U.S. violate wage and overtime laws, McKay said.

Rep. Patricia A Blanchette, D-Bangor, bragged that Bangor was the first city in Maine to adopt the “common sense bill” and endorsed the bill on the state level because, “this is what America is all about.”

Other Democrats who supported the bill were Sen. Mary R. Cathcart of Orono, Rep. John McDonough of Portland, and Rep. Paul Hatch of Skowhegan.

Customers appreciate businesses that avoid sweatshop goods, according to Ellie Daniels of the Green Store in Belfast, which specializes in ecologically friendly goods.

Legislators were given Hathaway shirts to wear during the rally and were served a “sweatshop lunch” of rice and beans.