yomama1971
The cost of cheap clothing? How about the expensive stuff?
For budget reasons, as a young mom-to-be, I never shopped the likes of Lord & Taylor, etc. My good ol' grandma, rest her soul, took me into L&T for a 'treat shop' just before the birth of my first son. She cited higher prices, but better quality and made in USA, for the most part.
Guess what? We were taken aback! The EXACT same sh*t on the racks as at WM--'made in Korea', made in Pakistan', and, yes, 'made in Bangladesh'...We read tags for nearly an hour in the baby section and found NOT ONE made-in-USA garment!!!
So, does it solve the problem for us westerners to stop buying $10 jeans at WM, and start buying the SAME crap at L&T for $70? No.
Maybe be we should stop buying clothes altogether, and make our own...now, where's that fabric manufactured...retailers want to keep THAT as cheap as possible, too...
Or maybe, we should move all the jobs back home, and FORCE everyone, REGARDLESS of income, to buy 4 or 5 pairs of $70 jeans (IF they could be kept down to $70 a pair being manufactured here...) a season PER CHILD for their schoolkids who outgrow and outblow them in the course of a couple months? PERFECT solution...IF your income is in the top 5 or 10%...
Or maybe, just MAYBE (until the ridiculousness of out-of-control, artificial inflation puts on the brakes and starts making living on and working for a little less a bit easier here in the good ol' US--ha ha) we should let companies hire whom they will to make the clothes they sell...but hold THEM accountable 100% for tragedies such as these.
The US companies, middleguys, and the Bangladeshi building owners should all sit shoulder-to-shoulder on trial.
Let's face it--laws over there won't protect these workers. Not really our issue (though we'd love things to be different). But when US companies sign on to do business with them, those factories BECOME a part of their company--a 'Bangladesh branch'. They are then culpable if things are not run safely there.
They're just as accountable as McD's for their bad eggs and horsemeat hamburgers. They didn't produce these things firsthand, but they signed an AGREEMENT to buy from the guys who did. It is then up to McD's to fix things. Just like it's up to the US co's that buy clothes from countries that don't protect their workers to make sure things are run safely and smoothly. I mean, if all the garments from a factory were shipped over here with gaping holes in them, that business relationship would be history.
Same should go if there are gaping holes in worker safety. These are real, hard-working folk, after all, just like us, with families, friends, loves, and lives that they deserve to live.
I mean, holey garments put up for sale would ruin a US co's rep...but what do you think something like this is gonna do?
Maybe, instead of another trip to Cancun, France, or Hawaii, the CEO's of these US co's should book an annual trip to wherever it is that they get their clothing from...then demand changes if they see that they are needed...and switch suppliers if they are not carried out. Stamped paperwork never really certifies ANYTHING--seeing IS believing.
I mean, these fat-cat top .1%'ers probably LOVE it when the blame shifts to the US population for buying cheaply-manufactured clothes...but they don't stop selling them, do they...at $10 or $70?
We should train our beams onto the ones behind all this in the first place...the ones with the REAL buying power...and the means to get up-close-and-personal with the clowns who own these unsafe factories.
When a multimillion-dollar contract's on the line, 'shape up or ship out' takes on a WHOLE new meaning...
Edited your post. It was a bit much
Edited your post. It was a bit much
It was meant to be. It was in a national newspaper here and it was a lot bigger. They should make it into a poster and put it opposite every stockmarket on the planet so everyoe knows the real price of capitalism and who's paying it.
Edited your post. It was a bit much
It was meant to be. It was in a national newspaper here and it was a lot bigger. They should make it into a poster and put it opposite every stockmarket on the planet so everyoe knows the real price of capitalism and who's paying it.
It's not about whether he has the right to post such a thing. You can convey a point without using pictures of dead bodies.
Bangladesh's government plans to raise the minimum wage for garment workers after the deaths of more than 1,100 people in the collapse of a factory building focused attention on the textile industry's dismal pay and hazardous working conditions.
A new minimum wage board will issue recommendations for pay raises within three months, Textiles Minister Abdul Latif Siddiky said Sunday. The Cabinet will then decide whether to accept those proposals.
...
Working conditions in the US $20 billion industry are grim, a result of government corruption, desperation for jobs, and industry indifference. Minimum wages for garment workers were last raised by 80 per cent to 3,000 takas ($38) a month in 2010 following protests by workers.
On Friday, the search teams received a much-needed morale boost when they found a seamstress who survived under the rubble for 17 days on dried food and bottled and rain water.
More than 2,500 survivors were rescued soon after the collapse, but until 19-year-old Reshma Begum was found the crews had gone nearly two weeks without discovering anyone alive.