Hard to swallow, my flip flops

The people that make our flip flops often work 15-16 hours per day seven days a week. I don’t imagine that this complies with any worker laws, regulations, or compliances anywhere in the world. That’s why I gave the passage below from Deckers Outdoor’s webpage the ol’ “bullshit” sneeze.

Deckers We do not manufacture our footwear. We outsource the manufacturing of our Teva, Simple and UGG footwear to independent manufacturers in China. We also outsource the manufacturing of our UGG footwear to independent manufacturers in New Zealand and Australia. We require our independent contract manufacturers and designated suppliers to adopt our Factory Charter and to comply with all local laws and regulations governing human rights, working conditions and environmental compliance, before we are willing to place business with them. We require our licensees to demand the same from their contract factories and suppliers. We have no long-term contracts with our manufacturers. As we grow, we expect to continue to rely exclusively on independent manufacturers for our
sourcing needs.

I was told that China has stricter labor laws than what we have in the USA so it’s highly unlikely that the factory I visited that makes Tevas meets them. But in China, the law and practice are two very different things. Deckers is probably not any more or less guilty than other shoe manufacturers that source in China, which is pretty much all of them.

Deckers is trying to capitalize on the sustainability movement, but how long before they start trying to capitalize on the social-conscience movement and offer products by workers who don’t spend every waking minute gluing, stitching, and packing?

I found this passage on their website, too. (Again, I’ve highlighted the points that I find hard to swallow):

We do the right thing by assuring that our manufacturers do not employ child, forced, indentured, or convict labor. We openly and proudly comply with guidelines set forth by Amnesty International that recognized these Human Rights standards in the workplace. How can we be sure? Easy. We have full access to our factories, and we grade them several times a year against our standards. This helps us work closely with our manufacturers to ensure that safety measures like adequate lighting, healthy air, access to first aid, set minimum wages and protection against mandatory overtime, and safe workstations are implemented.

I would drive 45 mph in a 35 mph zone if there weren’t police officers that would give me a ticket. Wouldn’t you? Self-policing just doesn’t work.

Here’s more thoughts on my flip flops.

The NLC would like to slap you in the face

This video produced by the National Labor Committee has some pretty powerful images, including young Bangladeshi women sleeping with their faces smooshed against the side of their sewing machines.

I’m all for people knowing where and who make their clothes, but I think this video has some faults. The narration is a bit extreme and completely dismisses the context in which the workers live.

The narrator says that the factories reach 100-degrees in the summertime and that the worker’s clothes are covered in sweat as if the workers have a place to escape the heat. They don’t. If they weren’t at the factory, they would be sitting in 100-degree heat in their home. Granted, workers coloring cloth, using irons, or presses work in areas painfully hot year-round.

Is a woman who is allowed eight seconds to sew on a button, and who does this time and time again, any different than any factory worker anywhere in the world that puts the same widget in the same place day-in and day-out? A factory is a factory. Doing a repetitive job efficiently is factory work. I know people in Ohio who have spent most of their lives doing the same thing.

The narrator also mentions that the workers don’t have pensions or health care plans. Few people do in Bangladesh. To say it as if the workers don’t get it like everybody else in the country is misleading.

The narrator makes broad generalizations as if all of the women workers’ families are falling apart and all the supervisors beat the workers.

Without a doubt the video is shocking – somewhat misleading but shocking. Maybe that’s what people need. Personally, I want the whole story and this video is not the whole story. But maybe I saw a video like this years ago and it planted the idea for this quest. This video could be the that kernel for someone else.

Maybe we need a little slap in the face before we actually think about something.

Where am I wearing? The ultimate slideshow

I raided my photo archive from the WAIW? trip and set it to Gary Jules’ Mad World and U2’s Yahweh. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get either one of them to play for me so I had to do it myself. Don’t worry, I don’t sing. This is more of a beginner guitar player’s shot at spoken word.

This will permanently live in the “About Where am I wearing?” section to the right.

A thousand words

How exciting is this…?

I described my individual items of clothing to Geoff Hassing and he brought them to life. He came up with the idea of doing the the circles that zoomed in on the tags.

Thanks Geoff. You rock!

In the Perry Herald

Travelin’ Light Writer Tours ACO
By Lorraine Sturm (Perry Herald)

Travel writer Kelsey Timmerman of Ohio will feature American Classic Outfitters in his upcoming book, “Where Am I Wearing?” and related articles. ACO was the last stop on a world round tour Timmerman made in search of the people who made some of his favorite articles of clothing. The story idea came to Timmerman, 28, when he looked at a pile of his laundry. He considers himself an All-American boy yet his clothes are made far away.

(more…)

MADE IN AMERICA

“ACO Welcomes Kelsey and Annie Timmerman”

The sign is weird. It’s the first time we’ve seen Annie’s new name.

We’re greeted by a reporter from the local newspaper. Lorraine is excited that we came all the way to Perry, New York, to see where my shorts were made. She doesn’t act like this is a weird thing to be doing at all. She thinks it’s neat. I like Lorraine.

Lorraine describes Perry as such: “I always tell people that the south side of town smells like cookies and the north like manure.”

The cookie smell comes from the Archway factory and the manure smell comes from the surrounding dairy farms. Archway cookies remind me of visiting my grandma Timmerman. I’m not sure if the woman ever baked a single cookie in her life, but she always had a pack of unopened Archway oatmeal cookies and a can of Hawaiian punch at the ready for snack time. The manure reminds me of playing basketball in my buddy Adam’s barn. At times the ball would roll out of the hay mow down to where the cows were. We took turns retrieving the ball. You were unlucky if it landed on a pattie when it was your turn.

Both of us born and raised in rural Ohio, Annie and I can relate to life in Perry. The people are the kind of nice that city slickers don’t know – small-town nice. But like many small towns, Perry has lost jobs to conglomerations, cut backs, and cheaper labor overseas. Champion, who made my shorts, once employed over 850 people in Perry. In 2002, they up and left, a major blow to the town of 7,000.

ACO was born from the ashes of Champion. The company founded by Sam who owns the furniture store on Main Street, started with eleven people working in the factory Champion abandoned. The eleven employees worked in a small lighted corner, leaving tens of thousands of square-feet in darkness.
When Ed the CEO lost his battle with cancer, their future was uncertain. They called Mark, a former Champion manager, who had moved south with the industry.

“That thing about not being able to go home again isn’t true,” Marks tells me. “When I came to visit for the day and saw the same people I worked with in the same office I had worked in…that’s what did it for me. I came back for the people. Definitely, not the weather.”

A year ago ACO employed 30 people. Today, after landing a big contract with Adidas who owns Reebok, ACO has 120 employees and looking for more. They custom make uniforms for half of the NBA teams, 3 NFL teams, and over 70 colleges. During our tour we see a lady sewing Jason Kidd’s name onto his Jersey.

The factory isn’t that different from the factories I’ve seen all over the world, but the work environment is. Employees listen to iPods, they have family photos at their workstations, and they smile at us. This is the biggest difference. At the factories in Asia, I tried not to look at the workers for fear that my tour guide would question my interest in their products and cut the tour short. In Perry, Mark greets each employee by name. In Perry, each employee seems to be an individual piece of something that’s growing, something that’s exciting. In Asia, each worker is a set of hands.

Donna, Maxine, Sue, and many of the other workers at ACO remember my 1992 Dream Team shorts. They tell me about how they were made and what their part in making them was. Many of the employees at ACO worked for Champion. Some of them have 20 to 30 years of experience making apparel, and a few over 40 years.

New sewers start out at $8.50/hour. They make more in one hour than many of the workers I met abroad make in a week.

Lorraine leaves us as we chat with Mark in his office. She has other stories to cover. Apparently a cow gave birth to triplets and a local girl won Grand Champion at the fair. It’s good to know that there are bigger stories in Wyoming County, New York, than newlyweds visiting a factory.

A big thanks to the kind people of Perry. I look forward to writing about their town and ACO. It should be a nice upbeat last chapter, a great way to wrap up my quest, and hopefully, a great way to end a book.

One Wedding, One Honeymoon, One pair of shorts

Saturday Annie and I tie the knot in my parents’ backyard in front of 300 family and friends.

On Sunday the quest/honeymoon continues. It’s kind of like the two threads of my life will be pulled together. There’s the travel-around-the-globe-chasing-my-clothes thread and there’s the Annie-girlfriend-fiance-wife thread.

First we’re heading to Put-in-Bay, the Key West of the North, and then we’re off to Perry, New York, home of the Grand Canyon of the East. (You always have to question the legitimacy of a destination when the locals sell it as a more accessible, less touristy version of an actual destination.) And then were off to Niagara Falls, which I like to refer to as the Victoria Falls of North America.

Perry is where my all-time favorite item of clothing, 1992 Dream Team basketball shorts, was made. I’ve been in touch with a factory that custom makes sports uniforms. Many of its employees worked for Champion back in the day when there was an American Apparel industry and I hope to meet some that may have made my shorts. Everyone I’ve talked to in Perry seems nice and very small townish, which means they’re our kind of people. The local newspaper even wants to do a story on us.

Yeah, this doesn’t sound terribly romantic, but I hope to dedicate only part of one day to tracking down my shorts and the people who made them. Annie is cool with it. Plus, how many people get to write-off their honeymoons? Granted, if I spend much more than part of one day, Annie might start thumping on me.

I’m really looking forward to the trip – a chance to decompress following all of the wedding madness. We don’t have much of a plan, only to go with the flow of our road trip and get used to being the Timmermans.

I won’t be posting daily (because the whole Annie thumping me thing), but I’m sure I’ll still get in a post here and there when she’s not looking or when she’s in the shower. I might even get a pic or two up from the wedding.

Hands of Labor

These are the hands that make our blue jeans, underwear, flip flops, and about everything else we wear or use. I suppose today is a good day to thank them for their work.

Where am I wearing? highlights

Here are all of the audio slideshows and “Made In” summaries in order:

The Quest

——————————————————-

Made in Bangladesh - My underwear

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Made in Cambodia - My all-American Cambodian blue jeans

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Made in China - because going barefoot sucks

My shorts, made in the USA

“I don’ feel real comfortable with this,” said Linda from Champion USA.

I have that effect on people.

I was asking Linda about my 1992 Dream Team shorts. They were made way back in the early 1990’s. So long ago, in fact, that they were actually Made in the USA. I told her that I was pretty sure that factory was not open any more given how the industry has changed, but I would like to know where it was anyhow.

“Perry, New York.”

That’s all I could get out of Linda. I tried to explain to her my quest, but I think it just makes my request to know where my shorts came from look crazier. In Linda’s defense, if some quack called me up and mentioned Bangladesh, underwear, and Tattoo from Fantasy Island in one breath, I would probably hang up.

Perry, New York, is located just south of Rochester. I hear that it’s lovely in early September.

Some would say that it would be a perfect place for a honeymoon.

Others wouldn’t. They might refer to the lack of anything romantic in the photo the city selected for the frontpage of their website (WOW! Cars and a street). Or they could point to Perry’s description of itself in which there is so much exciting stuff going on that they mention, “Municipal services include a police department, volunteer fire department and 24-hour emergency ambulance.”

Perry is pretty close to Niagara Falls, which is a favorite of generations of honeymoon goers. But still, it would be a tough one to sell to Annie:

“Want to go to Niagara Falls? It will be great. We’ll take a side trip to Perry. They’ve got a volunteer fire department and, you are going to love this, a 24-hour emergency ambulance! Woohoo! Can you imagine the time we’ll have there? We’ll even take a day or two and interview people who used to work at the Champion factory that closed leaving them jobless. It will be so romantic. I love you.”

Look out Perry! Here we come!