The Devil's Bargain: Sweatshops and the American Scheme

"They hit you...They hit you in the head...To make you work faster."

--Nicaraguan Factory Worker

The so-called season of giving is officially behind us. Even in these sluggish economic times, Americans still managed to spend more than $50 billion in gift-giving. Now that all the gifts have been opened, all that is left is for us to enjoy them.

Yet I can't help but wonder whether our pleasure would be dimmed were we to truly understand what is involved in bringing these gifts--at the bargain prices Americans love--to our homes?

Writing for the Texas Observer, Josh Rosenblatt notes in "Buy Some Stuff, Enslave Somebody" that "the expanding global economy demands that corporations seek out the cheapest possible labor to maximize profit, and stimulate growth and innovation. With free trade has come an explosion of global inequality that has left more than 2.8 billion people living on less than $2 a day."

This inequality makes it possible for Americans to buy more and more while paying less and less. But as the National Labor Committee (NLC), an organization that investigates and exposes human and labor rights abuses committed by U.S. companies producing goods in the developing world, points out, "The people who stitch together our jeans and assemble our CD-players are mostly young women in Central America, Mexico, Bangladesh, China and other poor nations, many working 12 to 14-hour days for pennies an hour."

Some in the business world insist that the business sector's efforts to tap into the vast pool of willing and cheap labor in poorer countries are all about free market economics. However, critics such as the NLC consider the resulting dehumanization of this new global workforce to be the overwhelming moral crisis of the 21st century.

Unfortunately, this remains a moral crisis largely ignored by the American people--except, of course, for the occasional media blitz when a celebrity is found to be peddling wares manufactured in sweatshop conditions. For instance, who could forget the media circus surrounding talk-show personality Kathie Lee Gifford's tearful 1996 confession that her clothing line, which was being sold in Wal-Mart stores across America, was indeed being produced in Honduran sweatshops that employed young girls and pregnant women to sew garments for 20 hours per day in extreme heat for only 31 cents an hour?

Chain retailers like Wal-Mart that sell low-cost goods manufactured overseas by workers who are allegedly paid less than the minimum wage, forced to work long hours, not given overtime pay and even beaten in order to keep them working grueling shifts have become easy targets for human rights groups. The company that once urged consumers to "Buy American" is currently the largest importer of goods made in China, which is one of the world's worst labor abusers. Yet Wal-Mart was not the first company to take advantage of cheap global labor in order to achieve a bigger bottom line, nor will it be the last to do so. Furthermore, mega-retailers are not solely to blame.

We, the American consumer, have perfected the art of indulgence and avoidance. As Rosenblatt observes, "We in the wealthy West, living and dining off the fruits of their labor, can honestly say we are unaware of the devil's bargain we bought into. Or that if we do know, the problem is simply too great to comprehend and beyond our means to do anything about, save changing our lifestyles entirely. Best, in other words, not to think about it."

However, we must think about it. And in thinking about it, at some point we must realize that there is a moral dimension to our buying habits. As long as we are willing to buy, buy, buy at lower and lower prices without a care for how those goods were produced or where they came from, corporations will continue to seek out cheap labor, which invariably goes hand in hand with inhumane working conditions.

Thus, change must start with you. For starters, you can check out the National Labor Committee's website, www.nlcnet.org, for a list of companies with questionable ties to sweatshops and cheap labor. If you're not willing to stop doing business with those companies, then you can at least urge them to change their practices.

Savitri Durkee and William Talen, leaders of the Church of Stop Shopping, star in a documentary making its way across the country, What Would Jesus Buy? They believe now is a good time to urge companies which have given into pressure on climate concerns by becoming more environmentally friendly to recognize human rights concerns by committing to carry goods manufactured in worker-protected environments.

You should also encourage your local church or synagogue to take a moral stand against sweatshop labor. Christ advocated for the poor and urged his followers to reach out to the less fortunate. Christian organizations that claim to emulate Christ should speak out against slave labor. If only large Christian ministries would take a stand and urge their parishioners to boycott large chains that foster inhumane labor practices and working conditions, it could go a long way toward changing conditions around the world.

Finally, the next time you head out the door in search of another great deal, remember that your bargain could be coming at someone else's expense. For instance, here's what a report on a Korean-owned factory had to say about its working conditions:

Toilets and canteens were unsanitary. Some managers screamed at workers or pressured those who complained to resign. And many women, who comprise 88% of the plant's workers, said they were denied time off for doctors' appointments. One pregnant worker who had a note from her doctor about a high-risk pregnancy was not allowed to leave until five hours after she complained of pain. She lost the baby.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He can be contacted at [e-mail]. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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Comments

[AMolinaro]

I'm sorry, where exactly are these lower prices? In the past decade alone I've seen prices rise continuously for everything I buy, from food, clothing, and housing to cars and consumer electronics (yes, there is a period where new technology becomes cheaper, but it is always replaced by a more expensive newer technology). The reductions in wages paid to workers is not passed along to consumers as savings, but instead pocketed by corporations in the form of increased profits.

I'm not sure if it's just another sign of the MSM being horribly out of touch, but I for one am sick of the lie about low prices being perpetuated constantly.

[thepainter57]

Globalization

Corporatism

Capitalism

the new slavery, soon coming to the USA

[Poised]

Years ago, I visited a furniture-making sweatshop in the Philippines, where the "boys" lived in makeshift tents they'd strung up in the factory. They were probably paid next to nothing. But there were thousands outside the gates who had far less and would have appreciated the furniture jobs. What a quandry.

P.S. That rattan furniture is now made in China.

[Pippilin]

OMG--talk about mental telepathy. This is the content of an e-mail I sent my daughter on 1/5/2008:
" about the e-mail you sent about slavery. It seems to me that there is a kind of relationship between the slavery that the U.S. practiced in the 1700s-1800s and the outsourcing of jobs practiced by multinational (read that mainly American) corporations today.
Classical slavery was an 'insourcing', physically, of nearly free labor. Today's outsourcing consists of
sending jobs, not people, to 3rd world countries where the poor earn very little, and the new slave owners
get rich on that nearly free labor.
Question: is or will outsourcing become as evil a practice as actual slavery?
Love, Mom "

[iamthere]

Most Huff Post readers and contributors oppose oil drilling. nuclear power, and coal production in the US on the ground that such activities are too damaging to our environment to be expanded,and in fact should be curtailed. These folks argue that we should not suffer the impact of what they consider environmentally dangerous activities in the U.S.. The result is that we permit these dangers, in effect, to be exported to the less developed world. Unwillingness to produce our own energy on the ground that such production damages our micro environment and allowing others to suffer such damage is as morally reprehensible as exporting dangerous and degrading working conditions.

[The Collinbrandt]

No one cares about the children in this country. Everyone wants to be "me".

[The Collinbrandt]

"Oliver Twiste" and, "The Grapes of Wrath," should be required reading but, I guess the bible wins out. Our current government states that god is in charge of everthing except that, modern jesus types should do what ever they can to destroy all life.

[breakfast]

Global trade

Global sweatshop

Impeach

[Binckeslaw]

Lincoln suggested that the Civil War was a form of Divine retribution imposed on the nation for the system of slavery on which it relied. Perhaps America will suffer another form of Divine retribution for the willful indifference to the plight of the modern day slaves who serve the interests of the multinational corporations that satisfy our desires.

[realitytrumpsbull]

Automated production is the antidote for sweatshops. People can operate the equipment,
handle the finished goods, quality control and so forth, ensure proper flow of materials for the process, labeling and shipping and all that.
It's not your dad's assembly line, anymore.

[inkabinkaboo182]

Thank you! Thank you for bringing up this problem!

For those of you concerned with this and other corporate responsibility issues, a good place to start is www.knowmore.org.

Another place to start - buy Cambodian. Cambodian factories have, by far, the best working conditions in all of the developing world. While a lot of their factories aren't ideal, it's a step in the right direction.

Another place - buy made in the USA. This is better for the environment, better for our economy, and better for workers.

I have been trying to avoid sweatshop-made goods for a while now. It's hard. I try to buy from socially responsible companies and organic, because they usually lead to one another, and it's just difficult.

I can give you an idea of what it's like - a clothing company called No Sweat, based on the premise of sweatshop free clothing, was caught using sweatshops.

[outnow]

John,

Thanks for your article.

There is a dialectical dynamic between labor and capital. There is also a dialectical dynamic or tension between Christian values as they appear in the Bible and as they appear in practice.

Democracy was not founded on capitalism. Nor was Christianity

Stalin did serious damage to the socialist movement of Lenin.

NAFTA outsources slavery, in effect. So does the use of undocumented workers in this country.

The Southerners used the Bible as the moral authority for slavery. I just saw the movie, "Amazing Grace." Englaand outlawed slavery but adopted free trade as their new slavery. As a result, England lost their empire as the division between rich and poor deepened.

It is strange how the Christians have allowed themselves to be used by the Republicans. Didn't Jesus upend the tables of the money changers in the temple. Didn't he preach justice and charity and condemn the greedy.

Tax breaks and power for the preachers is all it took to buy their loyalty, and the "wedge" issues on guns, gays, and God keep them in the fold of the slave drivers and slave traders.

In Europe, you can't go around preaching Christianity because they have seen the damage over the centuries and have actually read the Bible.

[adamsmith]

Sweatshops are good. Something the left never understands. "Close them down, how dare they only pay a dollar a day. How can they hire eight year olds?" Look at the big picture. Close down the sweatshop and they go back to making 25cents a day instead of a dollar. Children working in developing areas help lift the family out of poverty. We had our own sweatshops a 100years ago. It's part of an economy lifting itself out of poverty....

[mouselion]

"Jesus, take pity on me! I"m going to die of exhaustion."
--Chinese worker after 19-hour shift
(From the National Labor Committee's website, www.nlcnet.org, sited above).

So, now we're getting to the heart of Pat Robertson's prediction about China being the largest nation for Jesus.

"God is Greed, amen."

[Kungfublood]

I am still waiting for that guy who was stupidly spouting his tripe about a level playing field and a global economy to tell me he did indeed send his lap top satellite dish and diploma to a woman in Somalia so she could enjoy some of that levelness of the field he was talking about...