Earlier, I sat in my office, a half-block or so away from the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, and read about the modern-day equivalent. Too horrible to contemplate. I'm not sure what can be done, and can only make naive, obvious points about the need for Western companies to check up on the factories they use abroad.
Maybe - and PG, this one's for you - this is a case where raising consumer awareness could be helpful. But not so much in the sense of shopping with one's dollars at off-the-beaten-path, high-end all-ethical clothing stores as, if it's clear that consumers object to this sort of thing, companies that make a point of checking up on their factories will do better than those that do not. Realistically, this is about reforming how clothing gets produced in the countries currently producing it, not switching to all-Made-in-the-West. There's only so much (US-made) Hanky Panky underwear to go around, and I believe that sample sale has ended.
What this doesn't need to be about is a) the specific greed of the American consumer, or b) the unwillingness of said consumer to pay a fair price. Re: the first, it appears that this factory was partially (primarily?) producing clothes for the European market. Yes, that special, artisanal, can't-get-it-at-home sweater you bought on vacation or study-abroad (and boy do I include myself in this) probably just comes from a chain we don't have in the States, but with the same labor conditions, the same quality construction/material, etc. This isn't about where suburban American Walmart shoppers get their clothes. It's where everyone gets their clothes. It's like I said re: food, but more so: it's not as if there's some significant caste of American or Europeans whose clothes - as in, all of 'em - come from ethically-sound sources. Me personally, I have this one super-artisanal (and not even that expensive!) made-in-France handbag, and a few this-and-that made in the States, and some thrift (a ton if you count hand-me-down) but otherwise? Like the bulk of what I own? Who knows.
Re: the second, I know I repeat myself for a change, but we need to be clear how consumer demand works. In the aggregate, we demand $5 tank tops. But as individual consumers, we have, in our minds, from previous shopping experience, a sense of what's normal for which items to cost. As in, that a cheap tank top is $5, an average one $10-20, and anything above $30, say, had better be special for some reason. We don't know what the true cost of a tank top would be, and more to the point, we have no reason to think that if we opt for the $40 one, the difference goes to labor conditions, as opposed to better-quality materials, better designs, snootier store ambiance. We can't just reveal our willingness to generously pay a bit more, and expect conditions in factories to magically improve.
Oh, and we need to get past the idea that all consumers are hyper-fashion-conscious and getting to Zara ASAP so as not to seem so-five-minutes-ago. What happens is, clothing costs less so we don't care for it as well, plus it may be not-as-well-made, so it falls apart more easily... so we buy more of it. I really doubt if trendiness accounts for all that much waste. More likely - and I back this up with no concrete evidence whatsoever - trendy young girls/women make for an obvious scapegoat.
We don't know what the true cost of a tank top would be, and more to the point, we have no reason to think that if we opt for the $40 one, the difference goes to labor conditions, as opposed to better-quality materials, better designs, snootier store ambiance. We can't just reveal our willingness to generously pay a bit more, and expect conditions in factories to magically improve.
ReplyDeleteAgreed on the second point, but I think we actually can estimate what the cost of a tank top made under conditions acceptable to us as Americans (or Europeans) would be: with perhaps a slight discount for labor cost due to the lower cost of living in a developing country, it is the cost of a tank top made under the regulatory regime of the U.S. or EU.
I still think it's politically unfeasible to, say, ban the import of goods that do not meet our local standards of health and safety in the production of said goods. Such a restriction is something that the unions pushed for in NAFTA and other trade agreements in the Americas, and it just doesn't seem to be happening. So you have to have change occur through consumer action. Since we've seen this work to some extent for particular brands (NIKE, Gap), I think it's reasonable to believe it can work for others, with one caveat:
some significant portion of the target audience of that brand has to actually care about the conditions in which its products are made. And I think this is more likely with goods that obviously have a large markup (like NIKE sneakers), so that (a) the target consumer has plenty of disposable income; and (b) the company can't plausibly claim that it is operating on super-thin margins such that the slightest improvement in work conditions would entail a big (relative to the overall cost of the good) price increase.
Basically, I don't believe that most people buying $5 tank tops would be happy to pay more if brands were differentiating themselves on the basis of decent treatment of workers. In particular, if you're not buying those tank tops because of fast-fashion, but because those are the only ones you can afford, I'm not even sure I can be morally condemnatory of your indifference to the welfare of Bangladeshi workers; your status in your own society may be equivalent to theirs in theirs, so why should your heart particularly bleed for them?