Last week, the Daily Bruin published an article advocating the existence of sweatshops. In “Sweatshops should be seen as helpful for providing jobs” (Feb. 23), the author, Asad Ramzanali, blindly misses the role of corporations and belittles the kind of positive impact we can make as conscious consumers.
This past December, a Bangladeshi clothing factory reported 27 deaths and more than 100 injuries after a fire broke out on its ninth floor. For the second time in 2010, that nation saw the fatal consequences of substandard labor measures and negligent assessments of safety regulations.
The garment workers had been working tirelessly to manufacture products for familiar names such as Target, Abercrombie & Fitch and Gap, Inc. What is more shocking than such disastrous events tied to big corporations like these, is that the Bangladeshi case is merely a microcosm for a phenomenon that has spread like the plague through developing nations: the sweatshop.
It comes to no surprise to us all that sweatshops exist ““ there is a demand for cheap labor and an ample supply of it in developed nations that are eager to alleviate skyrocketing unemployment rates.
While the author correctly identifies that the word “sweatshop” carries a negative connotation, he fails to explain that this taboo has been more than justified. Most factories are afflicted with not only safety violations, low wages and overall unfair working conditions, but also different kinds of abuse and limitations, such as the inability to form unions. It is this kind of despicable abuse that cannot be downplayed and ignored, under any circumstance.
I do not object to the jobs the manufacturing sector creates, but I disapprove of the treatment these workers face, including exploitation, violation of child labor laws and wages incapable of supporting individuals and their families.
In fact, sweatshops do not offer the “escape” from poverty that the author emphasizes but instead trap workers in a vicious cycle unwilling to let go of its most profitable subjects. Workers spend up to 75 percent of their measly income on just food, leaving close to nothing for other basic necessities, such as health care and education. But at billions of dollars in profits, why do companies such as Nike insist that workers who manufacture their athletic apparel live on less than $2 a day?
Corporations could afford to double wages abroad without hurting consumer demand in Western nations, but they are far too driven by increasing profit margins to make the appropriate changes.
Economists Robert Pollin, Justine Burns and James Heintz investigated this relation between workers’ wages and retail prices in the U.S. (yes, sweatshops exist here, too) and Mexico. Their findings suggest that if wages were doubled, it would result in a mere 2 to 6 percent increase in retail price.
To put this into perspective, a $32 men’s shirt would now cost between $32.64 and $33.92. This miniscule increase in cost is definitely in the range U.S. consumers claimed they would pay for goods made in good conditions as opposed to sweatshops in a recent survey.
It seems, then, it is very much a possibility to offer living wages without sacrificing consumer demand.
Additionally, the author’s line of reasoning behind offering the better “alternative” is flawed at its core ““ sure, it seems that minimal income is an improvement from no income, but it is precisely this mentality that allows for so much exploitation to go unnoticed. In fact, it proves to be not an improvement at all, but simply a race to the bottom.
According to John Miller, a professor of economics at Wheaton College and leader of the group Scholars Against Sweatshop Labor, sweatshop conditions are the result of desperation and epitomize oppression at the hands of the world’s market economy.
Contrary to Ramzanali’s argument that boycotts, in fact, hurt workers, consumer pressure on large corporations can be incredibly effective in demanding accountability and better conditions.
In fact, it was the thousands of petitions at change.org that compelled companies such as Target and Gap to offer compensation to victims of the fire and establish stricter regulation for factory audits. As the large buyer that UCLA is, we have the purchasing power as consumers to do what thousands of individuals have already done ““ collectively demand accountability from big corporations in their factories abroad and insist on safer and better working conditions.
We must take a stand as conscious consumers like others have done to ensure that these indignities cease to exist. Otherwise, it will be our conformist silence that signs the paycheck for injustices everywhere.
At the end of the day, is your shirt worth the price of human dignity?
Milagros Villalobos
Fourth-year, political science and Spanish