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Of Dugouts and Sweatshops
In 1993, as President Clinton's newly sworn-in Secretary of Labor, Robert B. Reich had hoped his first formal public policy decision would be a veritable home run. Instead, he found himself dealing with what appeared to be a no-win situation, as Reich recalled before a large audience of HBS students at the student-organized Leadership and Ethics Forum last March.
Under Reich's review was a labor inspector's ruling that a batboy for the minor-league Savannah Cardinals be removed from his dream job because of laws prohibiting children under 16 from working past certain hours at night. As America's TV networks prepared to broadcast the inspector's decision, Reich met with a roomful of lawyers. They strongly advised Reich that overturning the decision would endanger his nascent relations with the inspectors. Reich recognized that the inspector had been technically correct in barring the boy from his coveted duties, but he reasoned that the case amounted to a violation of public trust and bore no comparison to the sweatshop conditions that originally inspired child labor protections. That evening, the news media reported a happy ending to the drama.
But a real sweatshop did figure in another of Reich's interventions. He recounted the controversy surrounding accusations that clothing promoted by Kathie Lee Gifford had been manufactured in a sweatshop environment. Even though Gifford had no legal liability in the situation, Reich convinced her to speak out against conditions in the New York plant, thus putting pressure on retailers to be more aware of their suppliers' labor conditions.
Emphasizing the need for innovative problem-solving in situations that aren't always clear-cut, Reich drew a connection between his Cabinet decisions and those facing MBA graduates: "You are going to be exercising leadership in a world in which information is much easier to access than it was before," he said. "This changes the implicit rules in terms of what I call public ethics, because public judgments will happen whether you want them to or not."
In the e-age, Reich emphasized, "the lines between public and private leaders are breaking down more and more every day."
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