How We Are Part of the Sweatshop Economy

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/5254/how_we_are_part_of_the_sweatshop_economy/

Wednesday December 2 1:55 pm


Abercrombie and Fitch was featured in this year's Sweatshop Hall of Shame, published by the International Labor Rights Forum. (Photo courtesy of Laverrue via Flickr)


By Richard Greenwald

The International Labor Rights Forum has named Abercrombie and Fitch, Gymboree, Hanes, Ikea, Kohl’s, LL Bean, Pier 1 Imports, Propper International, and Wal-Mart to its new "Sweatshop Hall of Shame," as Working ITT recently reported. Let's take this opportunity to remind ourselves that we are part of this problem.

For the past 100 years, reformers and labor activists have been decrying unfair working conditions, forced labor, child labor, and subhuman wages paid some workers. We have developed a word to describe the worst abuses: we call them sweatshops. Since we first named the problem we have struggled with ways to combat this economic ill.

One hundred years ago, that venerable reform group, the Consumers’ League of America, educated consumers to use their purchasing power to punish employers who abused workers and reward those who did not.

Today, the ILRF continues that tradition with the publication of its Sweatshop Hall of Shame. In 2009, sweatshops still exist, even in this country.

One of the reasons is consumers continue to passively allow it through their purchases. We as a consumer society continue to support the sweatshop economy.



FULL story at link.

[C_Lawyer09]

1. No Kidding

And the sweetheart deals that most municipal governments provide giant versus small business act as the nail in the coffin. Now, I'm not a hypocrite, I've shopped at Wal-Mart a few times when I couldn't find an alternative open, but patronizing small business pays in many ways.

[burning rain]

2. Folks in the EU would go even further & say Americans are themselves largely sweatshop workers.

And they'd be right.

[pleah]

3. Yep.

K&R

[JDPriestly]

4. What choice have we?

All the good paying jobs have been transferred to developing countries. That leaves us with tiny paychecks or no paychecks at all. So we buy this awful slave-made junk.

Now, mind you, I'm retired (before I wanted to retire) and I need and buy very little and as often as possible things made in the U.S.A., but I still have to buy a lot of things made by these poor people in the third world. I cannot afford to pay for things made here because I am not earning enough money to pay for them. So we have to revise the trade agreements.

Don't make individuals feel guilty about this. Many of us did not want these trade agreements in the first place.

[jotsy]

5. Interests of the commons can prevail.

Like the less talked about story in Honduras, where Russell Athletics has been the target of United Students Against Sweatshops, a group who successfully lobbied a high profile list of colleges and universities to bar Russell from producing garments bearing their names. Russell had decided to close the only one of eight plants in the area where workers elected union representation, but will now reopen and workers will receive some compensation for the time they've been out.

It may be a small baby step, but it's one in the right direction. Being a global community means being a planetary public, occupying different parts of the same world. As that we are measured, point to point, by the mega moneymakers and categorized as one of two things, labor markets or consumer bases. I don't know what happens when we're not either of those, but I don't think I care much for having who I am boiled down to that, so I try as hard as I can to stop the flow of money up this status chain which is being used to choke the life from us.

[Omaha Steve]

6. Kick