When you were ten years old, you probably spent a good amount of your time watching TV, playing kickball, and getting beat up by your older sister. The only thing you knew about work was that Daddy and Mommy went there from breakfast until dinner. Unfortunately, for many children, getting beat up by siblings would be the high point of their day, since the rest of it is spent producing cheap goods to be exported to richer nations and sold at drastically marked-up prices. And the problem of child labor is just a wisp of the dark gray cloud that hangs over our marketplace: the exploitation of workers around the globe.
The situation that made sweatshops a household topic sounds more like a storyline for The Simpsons than an actual occurrence. In December of last year, it was discovered that perky television star Kathie Lee Gifford's clothing line was manufactured under conditions that New York's Attorney General Dennis Vacco described as "resembling something out of a Charles Dickens novel." (Presumably he was referring to Dickens' realistic depictions of 19th-century industry, not his use of page-long sentences and character names such as "Pip.")
But Gifford was hardly the first to exploit the proletariat in the name of fashion. The garment industry at large is known for its use of cheap foreign labor, since it's more profitable to have clothes made where workers earn less than a dollar an hour than to make them in America, where even the people who screw up your fast food order earn six times that. Therefore, corporations buy their clothes for low prices from contractors who run sweatshops in countries like Indonesia, Guatemala, Haiti and Bangladesh.
However, the problem doesn't end on the other side of the globe. Last year, as reported in the Sweatshop Watch Newsletter, workers were found crammed into a Los Angeles apartment, working under illegal conditions, manufacturing clothes for GUESS?. Yes, the very same GUESS? which claims on the back of recent issues of that other campus newspaper (no, not Leviathan) to be "Guaranteed 100% Free of Sweatshop Labor." This isn't the sort of ad a company runs if nobody is complaining about their ethics. Last year, GUESS? was kicked off the National Labor Council's Trendsetter list after being caught with its hand in the cookie jar one too many times.
Working conditions in a sweatshop are as bad as you could possibly imagine. The laborers are forced to work 10 to 12 hour days, the National Labor Council says, with permission required to use the bathroom and to talk. If workers make mistakes, they are fined or fired. The workers complain about being cursed at, hit and having garments thrown in their faces. Female workers are sexually harassed and even forced to sleep with their supervisors to keep their jobs. For years, workers in a Disney-subsidized factory in Haiti earned six cents for every $19.99 101 Dalmatians outfit they made, according to the National Labor Council. A $20 T-shirt from the Gap, says Jobs with Justice, is produced for 12 cents in El Salvador.
The usual response that it costs less to live in these countries just doesn't hold water. Milk, eggs, cereal and gasoline are all more expensive in Haiti than in New York City, according to Newsday. And while the minimum wage is $2.36 per day in Indonesia, the government admits that it costs at least $4 a day in Jakarta and other urban centers just to fill basic needs. If Nike would cut its $280 million advertising budget by just one percent, by the estimate of Global Exchange, a San Francisco activist group, it could raise the salaries of all of its Indonesian workers to a livable wage.
There are two events on the horizon for those interested in taking a stand against these violations of human rights. On Tuesday, February 24, at 7 p.m., a group of students tentatively called "S.W.E.A.T." (Students Working towards Equality, Accountability, and Truth) will be having a forum on sweatshops at Kresge Town Hall. Events planned include films, speakers, and a "sweatshop fashion show." The group hopes to start a wave of student activism by boosting awareness of working conditions. To help out, they'll distribute a checklist of questions to ask retailers, so students can get their political-correctness groove on and find out if the clothes they buy are produced under fair working conditions.
On Wednesday, February 25, there will be a faculty-sponsored teach-in at the Oakes Leaning Center about sweatshops. The forum will run from 10:00 a.m. until evening and will cover three subjects: abuses, analysis, and activism. The speakers include Medea Benjamin, the founder and co-director of Global Exchange; Silant Chung, from the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees (UNITE!); and Nikki Bas and Lora Jo Foo, from San Francisco's Sweatshop Watch. UCSC faculty involved include Mary Beth Pudup, Patricia Zavella, Dana Frank and Susanne Jonas. Time will be provided for personal interaction with the speakers. Pudup, who teaches a course that addresses labor issues, says, "We are lucky, being in Santa Cruz, because so much of this movement is based out here on the West Coast." Organizers hope that the two back-to-back events will do a great deal to raise awareness among students and to make them consider how they feel about child labor and sweatshops.
So the next time you see Kathie Lee on TV strutting around with Regis or on her cruise ship, and you're thinking, "Damn, she's obnoxious, but her fashion sense is keen!", remember that it was impoverished people working in unhealthy and unsanitary conditions who made her wardrobe oh-so-fly. And when you realize your lame shoes are the only thing holding back your kick-ass basketball game, you might keep in mind that the shoes worn by the marvelous Michael Jordan may have been crafted in not-so-marvelous factories where the workers' wages can scarcely buy them dinner.
To get involved with the student forum, email mob_@cats, and for more information about the faculty-sponsored event, call Pudup at 459-3516.
Source:
http://prtr-13.ucsc.edu/fishrap/volume8/8.8/sweatshop.html