From the NYT:
It was one of the worst sweatshops that state inspectors have visited in years, they said, sometimes requiring its 100 employees to work seven days a week, sometimes for months in a row.
The factory, in Queens — which made women’s apparel for Banana Republic, the Gap, Macy’s, Urban Apparel and Victoria’s Secret — handed out instructions to its workers telling them to give false answers about working conditions when government inspectors visited.
Wage violations were so widespread, state labor officials said at a news conference on Wednesday, that the factory, Jin Shun, cheated its workers of $5.3 million. The case made by the State Labor Department against Jin Shun is one of the biggest involving back pay that it has ever brought.
According to state officials, most employees, virtually all of them Chinese immigrants, were paid just $250 when they worked their typical 66-hour, six-day weeks, amounting to $3.79 an hour, far below the state’s $7.15-an-hour minimum wage. They received more when they were required to work seven-day weeks.
I’ve heard a lot of response to conversations as it relates to sweatshops, which might be summed up nicely in this comment on the story:
Hey man, if those workers were silly/desperate enough to accept the job, more… err, less power to them.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m all for supporting sweatshops. People in China need jobs, too, and I love paying the same price for goods that were cheaply made.
Let me try and address these briefly, one at a time…
- “silly/desperate enough to accept the job” – This argument comes from the perspective that we all have complete freedom and an abundance of options in this country. Therefore, if we decide to work in deplorable conditions, then it’s our own fault.
Besides being cold-hearted, this is a ridiculous argument when you try to apply it consistently. Would you say the same thing to an abused spouse who stays in the relationship? To a molested child? For a number of reasons: injustice, mistreatment, desperation, psychological trauma, lack of access to resource and more, many people do not have complete autonomy. - “People in China need jobs too” – This statement is made with the presumption that if sweatshops where not available to provide work things would be far worse in China and other countries then with sweatshops. Besides the fact that that is not necessarily the case, it miss the point. Simply because the hypothetical alternative is even more grime, that does not excuse unjust and unethical treatment in the current situation. (by the way the above story is about a sweatshop in Queens NY)
- “goods that were cheaply made” – I’m not quite sure of the original commenters intent, but the argument is made on a pure economics level that this is no more then financial transactions, which is how we tend to think of our purchasing. We simply look at price tags and make decisions accordingly. In turn this affects the whole economic system as supply and demand align to provide us with the price we would pay for Gap jeans or VS bra. Where economics falls short is in it’s ability to account for and consider human rights and the implications sweatshops and unethical work conditions have on our society as a whole.
My goal isn’t to try and provide a definitive argument against sweatshops, but to simply encourage you to think and reflect on the impact situations like this sweatshop in the USA have on us. In the USA we have standards for working conditions, ethical standards that must be legally followed (one reason I’m extremely grateful to live in the USA). We as a society have made decision about what is fair and what isn’t, what is humane and what is unjust, and we’ve agreed to follow those regardless of what might be suggested otherwise. A situation of mistreatment in factories in our country should alarm us, because it is a reflection of our ability to uphold the standards, freedoms and liberties we believe in. That’s why stories like this are important, and why we should be conscience of where we shop and what we support with our dollars.
Ariah –
I get it and agree that bad working conditions and situations can exist anywhere in the world, including in the US. I wonder though, what percentage of US workers work in what could be termed “sweatshop” conditions? I’m pretty sure the Queens example is far and away the exception to the rule here. Not that it is even reasonably doable these days, but don’t you think it is fair to say that “buying American” as a rule is more likely to be buying from a more justly managed product stream than buying other-than-American. Sure, buying American is not a guarantee that you are not buying sweatshop produced goods. Driving (or riding your bike) on the right side of the street is not a guarantee that you won’t be in a head-on collision either, but most of us do it anyway because it seems safer than driving on the wrong side of the road.
Aaron,
Thanks for your comment, and I certainly agree. By and large, in the USA we do a fabulous job of upholding and maintaining ethical working conditions. I think the reason I chose that title and commented on this story is because it is ‘on our turf’ and allows as all the more to be involved in responding to it.
I also think it challenges us to think critically about these issues and do our part to find a way to investigate our consumer choices. I don’t encourage anyone to simply buy ‘green’ products without learning why it’s ‘green’.
And a final note on the ‘Made in the USA’ label, it’s not as foolproof as we sometimes think:
http://www.msmagazine.com/spring2006/paradise.asp
I personally was shocked at the people’s responses you listed, especially about the “silly, desperate” comment and the one who was only worried about how much the goods cost them. I can’t say that I am the best in the world at researching which goods to purchase. However, the callous attitude in these comments is heart-breaking. Would you say a starving man is silly and desperate for eating something that makes him sick every day if the alternative is dying of starvation? It reflects a desire to not have to feel any responsibility to these people…which is human nature. If we blame them, we don’t have to feel guilty. The other comment from the person who was really only worried about the cost of the goods they needed to purchase, reflects simple selfishness. “If your suffering makes life more convenient/easier for me, then why would I intervene or make decisions that may inconvenience me in order to make a statement?” The bottom line is that any arguments such as these show that we do not view the individual as importantly as God does. I don’t know if the people raising these points were Christians or not, but if so, it is even more disturbing. We are called to love others as we love ourselves. If I lived under the conditions that people in sweat shop situations do, I would be indignant, angry and hurt. Based on what God says, we are to feel all of those same things for OTHERS. It is not easy. It requires things of you, choices that may mean you have to spend a little more on groceries, or spend a little less across the board, deny yourself some things you might want. And in a smaller sense, it would change the way you view every human you come in contact with. Anyway, that’s my soap box. Thanks, Ariah, for calling us all to responsibility towards other humans. I pray that God continues working in ME to get me to a point that my life fully mirrors God’s love for all of us.
Ariah,
thanks so much for bringing this issue home. We have a huge problem in our today around a fair wage. We all want to buy a bunch of stuff, but we don’t want to pay the real price for that stuff, so the people that suffer are the workers.
We have been doing some gardening this year and in the process started to realize just how much goes into bring food to our table. We all need to be more connected to the process of brining goods to our homes and learn that much of this stuff is not as cheap as we think it is.
I come from a farming/ construction family so this issue of a fair wage is very important to me. I beleive everyond who puts in a hard days work should earn a living that allows them to live on, and any other way of looking at this issues is crazy to me.
Yikes, that comment was something else. I can’t believe people honestly think that way sometimes.
I agree that the US by-and-large has decent labor standards. Not great, but not the level of the Third World factories we associate with “sweatshops.” Like you said the reason this is notable is partially because this is on our soil instead of “over there.”
I think the way we can combat sweatshop is to create a market for fair trade garments. I don’t believe companies like Nike, Adidas, GAP, etc. will listen to anything besides economic incentives.
Recently I joined this campaign: http://tinyurl.com/58eaky
In my opinion I think this the most effective and immediate way to fight sweatshop labor. Governments can set regulations all they want but with the free market corporations will find ways around it and keep racing to the bottom of human and environmental standards. On the other hand, if we use the market to our advantage we can seriously make a difference.
Vadim, I think adbusters has the shoes your looking for.
http://www.adbusters.org/cultureshop/blackspot/sneaker_red