An entire class asks: Where are we wearing?

A while back a mother contacted me about her son’s class project where each student was supposed to trace an item of clothing all the way back to the field. Her son Caiman chose his shorts, which were made in Jordan.

She wrote about his research on her blog, Pretty Good Day:

We determined a plausible birth story for his shorts, and it wasn’t pretty:

1. Cotton grown in India, likely harvested by child laborers exposed to deadly pesticides

2. Buttons and zippers from factories in China

3. Stitched in a factory in Jordan by guest workers who’d their passports confiscated upon arrival and been cheated out of promised pay, forced to work 15 hours a day and routinely beaten for slowing down

That’s a pretty cool class project. We could use more teachers and moms like Caimans.

It’s Sunday, what better day is there to ask What Would Jesus Buy?

Joshua Berman recommended this movie to me. I’ll watch it soon and report back. Looks hilarious.

American Apparel, a different kind of brand and a pantless CEO

I mentioned AA in the previous post and I write about them briefly in the book. I stumbled upon an excerpt from Rob Walkers soon-to-be-released book Buying In that features a profile of the company. Here’s some excerpts from the excerpt:

…At a moment when practically every clothes maker was offshoring to cut costs, American Apparel made its wares at a U.S. factory in which the average industrial worker (usually a Latino immigrant) was paid between $12 and $13 an hour and got medical benefits. The company had taken out ads in little arty magazines, noting that it was “sweatshop free.”…

…Another self-consciously ethical clothing brand, the union-friendly SweatX, had just gone out of business. The lesson of SweatX, Charney said, was that building a brand solely around a company’s ethical practices was not a good strategy for reaching masses of consumers…

…”That’s the problem with the anti-sweatshop movement. You’re not going to get customers walking into stores by asking for mercy and gratitude.” If you want to sell something, ethical or otherwise, he said, snapping the book closed, “appeal to people’s self-interest.”…

…The conversation paused when two designers working on men’s underwear appeared. They had just come from the factory floor, carrying several pairs of underwear that had been manufactured about 10 minutes earlier. Charney said they’d already gone through about 30 prototypes. “Imagine if we were outsourcing through China!”

He checked with me, then took off his pants and underwear and started trying on the samples. “I need a thin Sharpie,” he said, taking off one pair and putting on another. He wrote on the removed pair: Good but tighter. There was a great deal of chatter about the legs and the waist, about taking in a half-inch, about the fact that the factory shift was going to end soon. “This is a great pair that I have on right now,” Charney suddenly announced…

…It’s not that he cares less about treating his workers ethically, Charney insisted; it’s that he doesn’t think trumpeting work conditions will help him compete. Sure, he hoped quality or social consciousness or a distaste for logos would each attract some consumers. But he also hoped that selling a sexed-up version of youth culture to young people would attract others, and hopefully in greater numbers. If ethics draws in some consumers, great. But for others who respond to different rationales, he’ll provide those, too…

Walker’s book is released June 3rd. I wish it would have been out sooner because it looks like just the type of book I would have read to help me form ideas to write mine. I’ll still give it a read.

You can read a few chapters of Buying In.

Blood, Sweat, and T-shirts

When I was in Cambodia and China I heard rumblings about a BBC reality show/documentary that followed young Brits as they worked in a sweatshop in India. The first episode of Blood, Sweat, and T-shirts aired last week.

“I don’t understand. Why don’t you just go to night school.”

“There’s like Poo on the floor” in the slums of Mumbai

Cotton: A fashion revelation or “I ain’t carrying that!” or “Do I look like an ork to you!”

For more of Blood, Sweat, and T-shirts GO HERE.

A belated early Happy Labor Day

Labor Day didn’t always end summer. Here’s an excerpt from WAIW? explaining:

Today is May 1st, Labor Day around the world for everyone except a few countries, including the United States. On this day in 1886, some 40,000 workers marched down Michigan Avenue in efforts to bring about an eight-hour work day. A few days later at a labor rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square a riot broke out complete with a bomb and police firing into a crowd. Seven police officers and two protestors were killed and many more were wounded. Four of the “anarchists” were rounded up and later hung. President Grover Cleveland didn’t want to celebrate the “socialist” movement so Labor Day in the United States was moved to the first Monday in September.

Radiohead “All I need”

As part of MTV’s EXIT campaign to end exploitation and trafficking Radiohead has released a powerful new video.

Not that lead singers are any more qualified to talk about human rights and globalization than, say, drummers or butchers, but here’s what Radiohead’s lead singer Thom Yorke has to say on the subjects:

“(It’s) a video of two parallel stories running, one of a little boy in the West and one of a little boy in a sweatshop in the East, and the boy [in the West] ends up buying the shoes from the sweatshop. It’s actually quite powerful. It’s the sort of images I have in my head anyway. Sometimes when you’re walking down High Street and you’re looking at the incredibly cheap [sneakers], you sort of think, ‘Hmmm, well how did they manage to make that so cheaply?’ It sort of reminds me of one of my preoccupations, so I’m touched that the music goes with that. I think it’s great.”

“…if you are in the West, it’s a luxury to be able to talk about the importance of human rights for everybody, but yet in the East, or the poorer countries where slave labor is going on, if you talk to certain companies, it seems that it’s much more important that they’re on some sort of economic ladder, and somehow the rights of the workers are secondary to economic growth. And that I find a very peculiar logic, and I think that’s as much about the power of the companies and the profits they’re making as it is of any moral stance. So it would be useful when the West talks about human rights, they actually consider countries where, for a lot of workers, it’s not really on the agenda yet.”

Here’s the video:

Confessions of a sweatshop inspector

The Washington Monthly has a great piece by editor and former social compliance inspector, T.A. Frank, titled Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector (first seen on CloneSix). Frank covers a lot of the issues surrounding international sourcing. Here’s a few excerpts:

On the job…

Unfortunately, we missed stuff. All inspections do. And sometimes it was embarrassing. At one follow-up inspection of a factory in Bangkok at which I’d noted some serious but common wage violations, the auditors who followed me found pregnant employees hiding on the roof and Burmese import workers earning criminally low wages. Whoops.

On ignorance is bliss sourcing…

Now, anyone in the business knows that when inspections uncover safety violations or wage underpayment more than once or twice—let alone five times—it’s a sign that bigger problems are lurking beneath. Companies rarely get bamboozled about this sort of thing unless they want to.

And many prefer to be bamboozled, because it’s cheaper.

On WalMart…

I noticed that Wal-Mart claimed to require factories to maintain decent labor standards—but why did it seem to think it could find them among the lowest bidders?

On being an engaged consumer…

Now, I know about good and bad actors mostly because I saw them directly. But ordinary consumers searching on company Web sites—Walmart.com, Nike.com, etc.—can find out almost everything they need to know just sitting at their desks. For instance, just now I learned from Wal-Mart’s latest report on sourcing that only 26 percent of its audits are unannounced. By contrast, of the inspections Target conducts, 100 percent are unannounced. That’s a revealing difference. And companies that do what Nike does—prescreen, build long-term relationships, disclose producers—make a point of emphasizing that fact, and are relatively transparent. Companies that don’t are more guarded. (When in doubt, doubt.)

On child labor…

You may rightly hate the idea of child labor, but firing a fourteen-year-old in Indonesia from a factory job because she is fourteen does nothing but deprive her of income she is understandably desperate to keep. (She’ll find worse work elsewhere, most likely, or simply go hungry.)

On the Challenge…

But when a Chinese factory saves money by making its employees breathe hazardous fumes and, by doing so, closes down a U.S. factory that spends money on proper ventilation and masks, that’s wrong. It’s wrong by any measure. And that’s what we can do something about if we try. It’s the challenge we face as the walls come down, the dolls, pajamas, and televisions come in, and, increasingly, the future of our workers here is tied to that of workers who are oceans away.

Cleaning out my news story files

Prada – Made in Italy by imported Chinese workers (LA Times)

Excerpt:

Thousands of Tuscan factories that produce the region’s fabled leather goods are now operated and staffed by Chinese. Though located in one of Italy’s most picturesque and tourist-frequented regions, many of the factories are nothing more than sweatshops with deplorable conditions and virtually indentured workers.

Chinese laborers have become such an integral cog in the high-fashion wheel that large Chinatowns have sprung up here and in Florence. Signs in Chinese, Italian and sometimes English advertise prontomoda (ready-to-wear). At the main public hospital in Prato, the maternity ward on a recent morning was a cacophony of 40 squalling babies, 15 of them Chinese. “Mi chiamo Zhong Ti,” one of the crib tags said — “My name is Zhong Ti.”

My thoughts: Made in USA doesn’t always mean what it says either. Sometimes it means made in Saipan or by imported workers in LA.

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Sweatshop Shrimp Made in Thailand/Bangladesh

Excerpt:

Interviews with workers showed arduous conditions including “long hours, low pay, abusive employers, informal work, unsafe and unhealthy working conditions, and the vulnerability of migrant workers.” (Bangkok Post)

My thoughts: Like the garment industry, but with unpredictable seas.

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Big denim factory opens in Nicaragua

Excerpt:

Certain statements contained in this press release may constitute “forward looking statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements may relate to, among other things, ITG’s future plans, revenue, earnings, outlook, expectations and strategies, and are based on management’s current beliefs. Forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including changes to the facts or assumptions underlying these statements (from Joshua Berman).

My thoughts: The above excerpt concludes the press release. I would prefer the include their “we made most of this crap up” statement at the beginning so I can not waste my time.

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Happiness author writes about servant

Excerpt:

One spring, puberty arrived, and suddenly I was the “father” of a hormonal Indian teenager. Once, while I was out of town, Kailash and a few friends rented porn movies and a VCR. I was appalled but also secretly pleased by his initiative. Whenever I asked Kailash about his aspirations, he demurred. “Whatever you want me to do, sir,” he would say. “As you wish.” (NY TIMES)

My thoughts: I’ve been falling asleep to Eric Weiner’s Geography of Bliss for a few months now. To be fair, it keeps me up on occasion. It’s a worldwide quest to find the happiest place on Earth. It’s worth a read.

A Flat World and a pie in the face

The site was down this weekend, which is a convenient excuse for me not posting anything.

Anyhow, Tom Friedman, author of the World is Flat, recently got a pie in the face while talking about globalization and the environment.

Which leads me to ask this question: Is there a better way to promote your book than a pie in the face?