Letters to the Editor
-
AMEN!
Buy American-made and at very least you'll be supporting our domestic underclass.
Better yet, find a good local tailor and have her make you something nice.
-
This is horrible
We are developing an online company to track these sort of abuses. I'm looking forward to the day we'll be able to fully expose bad companies.
-
buy used
Consumers can break the backs of goods producing industries very simply: buy nothing new. An added benefit would be a reversal of economic growth (which is an environmental cancer) and a gradual reduction of stress on resources.
-
why should this Christmas (or mother's day or easter or birthday) be any different from the last 20 years or more?
please .... virtually all clothing is imported (check the #@#$%# label -- there are some pretty exotic countries of origin on display in my closet)
so, yes, buy used whenever possible or close your eyes and think of Jesus and tithe to Unicef ... sheesh ...
born yesterday? no, not quite.
-
Not exactly new but...
Is this surprising? No. But some customers thought The Gap had cleaned up its act after similar problems in the 90s. Perhaps this will clue our consumer culture into the dirty little secret about "cheap products" --there are no such things. When you buy cheap, you're likely buying less-rigorous safety standards and slave labor.
In the words of Krusty the Clown, "And we pass the slavings onto you."
For what it's worth, The Gap's press release: http://www.gapinc.com/public/Media/Press_Releases/med_pr_vendorlabor102807.shtml
-
Guilt overload
If I buy foreign made goods, then they may be made by people working under horrible working conditions. If I buy U.S. goods, they may be made by non-Union labor. If I buy non-local goods, then energy was expended transporting them to me. That leaves... well, not much. I buy locally when I can, but I'm not going to research the origins of every item I buy. Besides... there is a reason that children work in poor countries - the alternative is starving. I'm not saying that child labor is good, but selling children into slavery because you can't feed them is bad, too. This isn't a problem that can be fixed with a boycott of foreign goods. It's much bigger.
-
People want it cheap
We're shouting into a wind tunnel. Go to the heartland and people will say they want "value". Its other people's children, after all. I read the labels and it is to weep. Only American Apparel seems to make clothing here and they just got bought out by some money farm corporation. So, but your AA stuff now and stash it away before they use slave labor like the rest of them.
-
overload is right
The fact that one could have "guilt overload" from their many purchases is precisely the problem. If tracking our consumerism is making us weary, then perhaps the number of items purchased is the problem, not the many instances in which we could be "wrong" or "guilty". Continuing to consciously ignore your consumer impact will only ensure more "overlaods" in the future.
-
RE: "overload is right" plus "People want it cheap"
Sometimes people buy cheap because they simply can't afford these products otherwise (see Barbara Ehrenreich's book Nickle and Dimed--there's a section where she works at Wal-Mart and is desperately waiting for some khaki shorts to go on sale because that, plus her store discount, will allow her to buy them as part of her work uniform).
Othertimes, people buy cheap because it allows them to buy more stuff. Which seems to defeat the idea of buying cheap in order to save money--you're not saving money if you just use that money to buy stuff you wouldn't have purchased otherwise.
So what you often wind up with is people having extensive amounts of cheap crap. When the cheap crap breaks, it isn't cost effective to have it fixed so they replace it by buying more cheap crap.
When you buy so much cheap stuff that you can't keep it all straight, you've got product overload. And if labor standards concern you, you can wind up with guilt overload to boot.
-
That diamond you crave and must have to measure your worth with was probably mined and polished by children and the underclass
Diamonds are a girls best friend.
-
Carol do you have a diamond wedding ring?
Hmm?
-
Complexity
Kudos to the investigative journalists who exposed this stubborn and recalcitrant problem. One solution might be for the Gap and other major retailers to openly invite the media to be part of the solution for this issue.
Manufacturing in places like India, China, and Africa is still overwhelmingly performed by adults, and is a critical foothold for the world's poor. Wages that might seem scandalous to us are often the highest paid in a region, and major factories can be vectors for a host of smaller satellite operations in a local economy (construction, road-building, equipment suppliers, restaurants) that drive development and wealth creation.
If political pressures force the Gap to close its Indian operations and move them elsewhere, thousands of adults will lose their only source of income, and the problem will just move along with the contracts. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous child slave owners in India will continue to sell with even greater impunity, as their customers will not have the profile to attract investigations by major media.
Better for the Gap (and us) to stay and fight.
-
Why has only one person...
brought up the point of: What is the alternative?
These kids aren't literal slaves being made to work in these places, they're working there because their family needs money in order to eat. Close down all the sweatshops and where does that leave them? Sold in to actual slavery, prostitution, or who knows what.
Are you all so naive to actually think that if you boycott The Gap and other companies like them, that will shut down the sweat shops, and then the children will get to go home and play with their toys??
The solution to this problem doesn't involve ruining the country's economy even more by pulling out your support, that will just create more starving people willing to put themselves (and their children) through anything just to eat. I'm not saying there's no need for reform here, there so completely definitely is. In a major way. Sweat shops are absolutely terrible things that should not exist anywhere. I'm just saying that boycotting these companies isn't going to do shit for improving the lives of these (and future) children's lives in these countries. The solution is somewhere else.