Printable Dispatch from AnitaRoddick.com

None of us would knowingly purchase a product made by a child, or by an exploited teenager forced to work 14 hours a day under harsh sweatshop conditions for just pennies an hour. Only we do not know it, because the manufacturers of brand-named goods refuse -- and are not legally required -- to release even the names and addresses of the factories they use around the world to make the goods we purchase. It is easier, for them, to abuse children and to exploit teenagers in hidden sweatshops. And harder, for us, to find the information we need to make critical choices about what we buy.

People have the right to know. We need full public disclosure by these companies of all the names and addresses of the factories they use around the world.

Here's something else people generally don't know: the label on your shirt, shoe, sports equipment, or handbag often has more rights and protections than the child who sewed it in. Under current trade rules, the label, the trademark, the logo, and the product are all protected under enforceable intellectual property and copyright laws backed up by sanctions. Every company says they could not operate in the global economy without such rules and regulations. They tell you they need a level playing field.

Yet when you ask these same corporations to extend reasonable protections on the safety, dignity, and survival of those workers who manufacture their exalted products, they respond: "That would be an impediment to free trade." We need to rewrite these rules so that the child has at least the same legal protections the product enjoys.

But boycotts are not the answer. Workers in the developing world desperately need these jobs, and they are willing to work very hard, only they want to be treated as human beings and not animals. We must find a way to hold our corporations accountable, to respect human and worker rights, and pay fair wages. No father, mother or older sister earning anywhere near a subsistence-level wage will send their young daughter or sister into a sweatshop. Families want their children to go to school, and if older family members earn a fair wage, that is where they will be.

Finally, we are not going to get there by sitting on our backsides at conferences. We need to be out on the streets creating a social movement. That is why I am joining a new coalition of labor, religious, student, women's and human-rights organizations and developing world unions to launch, in September, the Campaign for the Abolition of Sweatshops and Child Labor.

Together, we can get there. We have more power than we realize to remake our global economy with a human face. To get involved, go to www.AbolishSweatshops.org and sign up to express your dedication to ending sweatshop and exploitive child labor, and to receive updates on the campaign as its launch draws near.

Join us! Add your voice to the rising chorus of human beings who believe the corporate exploitation of people for profit has gone on long and far enough.

(A version of this article appeared as a letter to the editor in The Guardian (UK).)