NEW YORK STATE — With the state’s sweatshop-free purchasing laws set to expire on Monday, the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition is pushing New York to join a national movement that seeks to end the public purchasing of clothing made in sweatshops.

The proposed State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium would enable states, cities and counties to pool their resources and coordinate monitoring and enforcement activities that would be tough to handle on their own. The idea is that members of the consortium would buy from private suppliers who do not manufacture their products in sweatshops, and that by creating a market for such goods, the consortium could spur companies to change the way they do business.

Jordan Wells, of the New York State Labor-Religion Coalition, said that the state’s sweatshop-free purchasing laws have been ineffective, which is why the coalition is pushing New York to join the Sweatfree Consortium. “As of Sept. 1, there will be no sweatshop-free apparel procurement law in New York,” he said. “Hopefully that will light a fire.”

Bjorn Claeson, executive director of the advocacy group SweatFree Communities, said New York has been a leader in the anti-sweatshop movement on both the grassroots and governmental level. “It’s one of seven states that has made a commitment to end purchasing from sweatshops,” he said.

In a July report titled “Subsidizing Sweatshops: How our Tax Dollars Fund the Race to the Bottom, and What Cities and States Can Do,” the advocacy group SweatFree Communities found that widespread human rights and labor violations throughout the apparel industry. These violations included forced and unpaid overtime, child labor, excessively long hours, and verbal, physical and sexual abuse. The report examined 12 factories in nine countries that produce public employee apparel, such as uniforms, for nine major brands.

Claeson said the anti-sweatshop movement is still in its infancy, and that changing the system isn’t easy.

“We’ve got a long way to go,” Claesen said. “We’re dealing with a global industry in over 100 countries and a world where sweatshop abuses are endemic. They are the norm, not the exception. Just about all [apparel] is made in poor conditions. It’s not as easy as saying, ‘We’re going to buy products made in good conditions.’ If it was that easy, we would have solved this problem years ago.”

That’s why the Sweatfree Consortium is such a good idea, Claeson said. “We need a cooperative approach so we can create a high road for companies,” he said. “Right now the way to be profitable is to create the cheapest product possible, and the way to do that is to squeeze workers as hard as possible.”

Set to expire on Monday is the 9/11 Bidders Registry, which was created in the aftermath of Sept. 11 and gives preferred status to bids from apparel shops in the neighborhoods affected by the terrorist attacks. Last year former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer vetoed a bill that would have made the 9/11 Bidders Registry permanent, saying he wanted the state to assess whether the law had had its intended effect. In his veto message, he said he was directing the New York State Department of Labor to evaluate the registry’s impact on the apparel industry in New York. Wells said that report is due to be released soon; the New York State Department of Labor did not return a call for comment.

Also set to expire is a law banning state agencies from entering into contracts with companies unwilling to provide documentation stating that their apparel was manufactured in compliance with labor and occupational safety laws. The problem, Wells said, is that the state has no way of verifying whether these statements are true. “So much apparel production has moved overseas,” he said. But with a consortium, verification would be possible, he said.

Wells and other activists are optimistic that the state will decide to join the SweatFree Consortium.

Last month Gov. David Paterson vetoed a “sweatfree label” bill that passed both the state Assembly and Senate. This bill would have required the Department of Labor to create a label or symbol that manufacturers, contractors and retailers can affix to clothing to show that its production and sale does not result from the mistreatment of workers.

In his veto message, Paterson wrote that “despite the sponsors’ worthy ends” the bill had significant flaws, such as a failure to provide a means by which the Department of Labor could determine whether businesses warranted such a label. “Given that most apparel today is made abroad, DOL could not verify that a particular article met the standards for its label without investigating the working conditions in other states and countries,” Paterson wrote.

Paterson added, “I very much share the sponsors’ desire to find more effective ways to ensure that apparel workers are treated fairly and not subjected to sweatshop conditions, but I do not believe that this bill presents a workable framework in its current form.”

In 2001 and 2002, the state passed legislation that allowed public school districts and colleges to choose to buy clothing from companies that don’t use sweatshop labor. In 2003, the state also passed a law allowing public colleges and school districts to pass over companies that sell sports equipment made in sweatshops even if those companies are the lowest bidder.

So far Pennsylvania, the city of Berkeley, Calif., Lucas County, Ohio and Portland, Ore., have declared their intention to participate in the State and Local Government Sweatfree Consortium. Meanwhile, the states of Maine, New Jersey and Vermont have said they will cooperate with other jurisdictions for sweatfree policy enforcement; the cities of Albany and New York have made similar pledges. Schenectady has adopted a sweatfree purchasing policy.