C10 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SUNDAY, JUNE 12 , 2022
obituariesBY HARRISON SMITHCharles Kernaghan, a labor
activist who helped revitalize the
anti-sweatshop movement in the
late 20th century, targeting
American companies such as Dis-
ney — as well as a clothing line
backed by Kathie Lee Gifford —
while waging a dogged campaign
to expose mistreatment at over-
seas factories, died June 1 at his
home in Manhattan. He was 74.
His sister, Maryellen Ker-
naghan, confirmed the death but
did not give a cause.
For two decades, Mr. Ker-
naghan spearheaded a string of
highly publicized campaigns
against child labor, corporate
greed and sweatshop conditions,
taking on companies including
Nike, Target and Walmart. Using
video footage and worker testi-
monials, he revealed dismal con-
ditions at factories in Central
America, China, Bangladesh and
Jordan, where workers were sub-
jugated to physical abuse and
often labored for a few cents an
hour.
Apparel industry executives
questioned his facts and branded
him a relentless self-promoter.
But his work was credited with
spurring workplace reforms in-
cluding improved wages, ventila-
tion and access to factory bath-
rooms, and was backed in some
cases by independent human
rights monitors who sought to
ensure safe conditions.
With his wire-rimmed glasses,
carefully trimmed beard and
slicked-back silver hair, Mr. Ker-
naghan could have passed for an
academic — indeed, he had once
pursued a PhD in psychology and
anthropology. But he was also a
gifted athlete, a former boxer and
high school football star who
gave off a fidgety energy while
talking nonstop to audiences at
union halls, college auditoriums
and houses of worship.
Reaching into a bag of clothes
during a speech, he would dis-
play a Walmart shirt made by
Vietnamese women who were
allegedly beaten at a factory in
American Samoa, or would hold
up a Nike jersey that retailed for
$140 in the United States but was
made for 29 cents in El Salvador.
“There is blood on this garment”
he would shout, with an almost
religious intensity.
“Charles Kernaghan is the la-
bor movement’s mouse that
roared,” wrote New York Times
reporter Steven Greenhouse. In a
2003 profile in Mother Jones,
journalist Charles Bowden de-
clared that the activist seemed
“born to make the back pages of
the global economy suddenly
leap onto front pages.”
Mr. Kernaghan spent most of
his advocacy career as the direc-
tor of a small New York City
organization called the National
Labor Committee, later known as
the Institute for Global Labour
and Human Rights. Their investi-
gations were cited by publica-
tions including The Washington
Post and featured on TV shows
like NBC’s “Dateline,” which used
footage that Mr. Kernaghan had
taken inside a Bangladeshi facto-
ry via a hidden camera embed-
ded in his glasses.
He and his group were vaulted
to national prominence in 1996,
after Mr. Kernaghan embar-
rassed Gifford, the cheery co-host
of “Live With Regis and Kathie
Lee,” by revealing at a congres-
sional hearing that her clothing
line was made in part by 13-year-
old girls in Honduras, who
worked 13 hours a day for 31
cents an hour.
Mr. Kernaghan said he found
some of her brand’s clothing at a
sweatshop, although at the timehe had no idea who she was: For
years, he had avoided television
and scorned modern technology,
refusing to use a computer and
relying on his colleagues to type
memos.
During a tearful appearance
on her syndicated talk show,
Gifford denied wrongdoing and
said she knew nothing about the
labor practices behind her cloth-
ing line, which was manufac-
tured by contractors for Wal-
mart. “I started my clothing line
to help children,” she said, con-
demning what she described as
“a vicious attack” by Mr. Ker-
naghan.
Mr. Kernaghan became known
as “the man who made Kathie
Lee cry,” as The Post put it in a
headline. Continuing to press for
labor reforms, he brought one of
the factory’s former employees to
the United States so that she
could share her story. Walmart
canceled its contract with the
plant — Mr. Kernaghan was not
exactly pleased, having tried in-
stead to improve wages and
working conditions — and Gif-
ford became something of an ally,
speaking out against sweatshops
and vowing that independent
monitors would inspect her
clothing line’s plants.
The episode drew attention toa cause that was increasingly
embraced by college students
and President Bill Clinton, who
announced an anti-sweatshop
plan with Gifford by his side.
Noam Chomsky and other activ-
ists credited Mr. Kernaghan as a
primary catalyst for the move-
ment, as did publications like
Women’s Wear Daily, which
wrote that he was “shaking up
the issue of labor abuses in the
apparel industry like nothing
since the Triangle Shirtwaist
Fire.”
“The Kathie Lee Gifford thing
literally changed the way people
do business,” Mr. Kernaghan told
The Post in 2005. Kevin Burke,
the head of the American Appar-
el & Footwear Association,
seemed to agree, saying the epi-
sode spurred a reckoning in the
industry. “We remember that ev-
ery day,” he told The Post, “and
that’s a lesson to us, the fact that
we don’t want that to happen
again.”
Even as he sought out high-
profile targets for his campaigns,
Mr. Kernaghan said he was often
uncomfortable in the spotlight.
He had spent years bouncing
among jobs before turning to
advocacy, and struggled with
shyness while trying to network
on behalf of his cause. “It wastorture in the beginning,” he told
Mother Jones. “I had to dress up;
I had no clothes. A friend in my
building had a suit I’d borrow, a
size 42. I’d look like a clown. I was
all right sitting down but when I
stood up, it was like I was in a
bag.
“I feel better around working
people,” he continued. “I don’t
feel comfortable around profes-
sional people — I have no small
talk.”
The second of three children,
Charles Patrick Kernaghan was
born in Brooklyn on April 2, 1948,
and grew up in the borough’s
Williamsburg section and in the
Long Island community of Valley
Stream. His Scottish-born father
worked in construction, special-
izing in acoustical tiles; his moth-
er was a homemaker from a
Czech-Austrian family and later
volunteered for the New York
Foundling, a child welfare agen-
cy.
Mr. Kernaghan attributed his
interest in social justice to his
parents, who helped raise more
than 20 foster children. He had
their backing when he went
against the wishes of their parish
priest, starting a petition to op-
pose the installation of a church
air conditioner. How could the
church justify the cost, he ar-
gued, when the sick and poor
needed help?
Mr. Kernaghan considered
joining the priesthood but in-
stead studied psychology, receiv-
ing a bachelor’s degree in 1970
from Loyola University Chicago
and a master’s in 1975 from the
New School for Social Research
in New York. He taught at
Duquesne University in Pitts-
burgh before leaving the school
to read and wander, traveling
around Europe and the Middle
East in between stints as a taxi
driver, furniture mover, union
steward and carpenter.
Photography became an abid-
ing interest. He took pictures of
street scenes in Manhattan and
landscapes in Maine, and
brought his camera along when
he was invited to join a religious
peace march through Central
America in 1985. The marchers
were rallying behind labor lead-
ers in the region who had been
threatened, murdered or disap-
peared.
Mr. Kernaghan spent three
days with impoverished workers
occupying a cathedral in El Salva-dor and, although he spoke no
Spanish, began to learn about the
plight of laborers in the region.
The experience “opened his eyes,”
his sister said in a phone inter-
view, “and they could never be
closed again.”
When he returned home to
Manhattan, he began organizing
a one-man labor campaign with
financing from his parents’ So-
cial Security checks. He connect-
ed with the National Labor Com-
mittee and became a protege of
one of the group’s original lead-
ers, the Rev. David Dyson, who
helped shape his early cam-
paigns.
Those efforts included a 1995
protest targeting Gap, which
agreed to independent monitor-
ing at its contractors’ Central
American factories. Labor Secre-
tary Robert Reich later described
the agreement as a “watershed.”
Mr. Kernaghan became the
committee’s director in 1990, and
ran the organization with help
from Barbara Briggs, who for
many years was his personal and
professional partner. To promote
their campaigns, they often used
guerrilla tactics: During the
Academy Awards in 1997, the
group rented an airplane to fly a
banner reading, “Disney Uses
Sweatshops.”
They also turned to schoolchil-
dren and religious groups for
help. “The companies really, real-
ly hate it when the nuns get
involved and start writing let-
ters,” Mr. Kernaghan told the
Times. “I mean, what are they
going to say against nuns, right?”
Mr. Kernaghan eventually
moved the organization to Pitts-
burgh. The group disbanded af-
ter he retired in his mid-60s and
returned to New York, where he
went on long walks across Man-
hattan with his Tibetan terrier.
He also frequented the opera and
symphony, which his sister de-
scribed as “the one indulgence
that he allowed himself” during
his activist years.
She is his only immediate sur-
vivor.
“Not to sound Pollyannish, but
I believe there is a basic decency
in the American people that
these companies don’t under-
stand,” Mr. Kernaghan told the
Times in 1996, looking back on
his early campaigns. “We have to
try to tap this decency. When we
do that, we get a tremendous
response.”CHARLES KERNAGHAN, 74
Labor activist targeted giants in anti-sweatshop crusade
STAN HONDA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New
York in 2007. Kernaghan utilized video footage and testimonials to reveal dismal factory conditions.FUNERAL SERVICES
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