Sweatshop opinion ignores implications

I will not waste my time refuting the character attacks Matt Stacionis aimed at anti-sweatshop activists and organizations in order to support his opinion, but instead take issue with his claims. Not everyone benefits from sweatshops. It’s true, some do, especially those who own the companies that engage in sweatshop manufacturing practices. But sweatshops come with several negative implications, including: a deflation of wages in developed countries, job flight and de-industrialization in developed countries, the expropriation of peasant-owned lands in developing countries, a loosening of fair labor regulations in developed countries as well as developing countries, a lowering of environmental regulations in developed and developing countries and unfair child labor practices. This is the tip of the iceberg. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list.

I hardly think that the demands for full public disclosure, living wages, independent monitoring, freedom of association, collective bargaining rights, safe working conditions, non-forced labor and non-child labor are unreasonable. Workers in this country fought for decades for these same liberties. Advocating anything less than this for the entire world is an abomination. If we do not support other countries’ labor-rights struggles, we will be caught up in what is commonly referred to as the race to the bottom. Industry will evacuate from high-wage areas and move into low-wage areas. Meanwhile, the downsized will take low-paying service jobs. This process repeats itself ad infinitum until every section of the world economy has been socially and economically devastated.

Here’s a specific example. My grandfather worked in a textile factory for 22 years, until the workers became unionized. Then the factory closed and manufacturing moved to Arkansas, where many non-unionized workers lived. Once those workers formed a union, the factory moved to Florida, where the company could take advantage of more non-unionized and illegal labor. Thanks to NAFTA, that company’s probably somewhere in Mexico by now, paying lower real wages now than in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s when my grandfather worked for them. But has the price of clothing really changed since then? No. In fact, the price of clothing has gone up. My question for Matt Stacionis is this: How come hats with an NIU logo didn’t cost $375 to purchase when they were being produced in the U.S.? Truth of the matter is that the apparel industry cut its manufacturing costs to raise profits. People are willing to pay $19.99 for a hat regardless of how it’s produced.

The National Coalition for Peace and Justice did make some serious headway into curbing the use and abuse of sweatshop labor. The university is now a member of the Workers Rights Consortium, an independent monitoring organization which seeks to realize the goals that Matt Stacionis scoffs at, minus the Benz for everyone. The WRC is less than a year-and-a-half old. It has not built up sufficient funding to do widespread sweatshop unveiling and monitoring. But it has made some impressive headway. For example, the (WRC member) University of Iowa recently canceled 153 contracts with companies that manufactured Iowa apparel because they did not disclose whether they use sweatshop labor. A recent WRC investigation of the Kukdong apparel factory (manufactures various Nike and Reebok products) in Mexico found them in violation of several ethical guidelines. They are awaiting university action regarding these findings. These successes, with the help of NIU students and DeKalb community members, will ensure a fruitful campaign against sweatshop-manufactured products.

The newly formed Labor Rights Alliance will address this, along with other local, national and international labor rights issues at its next meeting at 9 p.m. Wednesday at DuSable Hall, Room 254. Anyone concerned about the progress of NIU’s anti-sweatshop campaign should attend.

Jason Peckels

Graduate student, counseling

President, Labor Rights Alliance

Another side to sweat shops features the worker

The benefits of sweatshops are, indeed, great (Matt Stacionis’ Feb. 27 column) if one supposes that the purpose of an economy is simply to maximize the enjoyment of consumer goods that only people with lots of surplus money can buy. But if one believes that the purpose of an economy is, first of all, to provide the necessities of life (food, housing, heat, health care, etc.) for all the people of this world, then the benefits of sweatshops are not that great.

Mr. Stacionis uses Mexico as one example to show how that country could never survive were it not for that “strong source of money flowing through their economy” as the result of the presence of multi-national corporations like Nike operating there.

However, political journalist William Greider tells a different story of the impact of multi-national investment on Mexico in his book, “Who Will Tell the People?” He writes, “The city of Ciudad Juarez … starkly refutes so many of the common assumptions surrounding globalization … the justifying and widely accepted rationale of global dispersion of production is the benefit to the poor, struggling masses … The workers in Juarez will become middle-class consumers who can afford to buy other products made in America. Thus, in time, everyone is supposed to benefit. On the streets of Juarez, the workers tell a different story: Their incomes are not rising, not in terms of purchasing power. They have been falling drastically for years. These workers cannot buy American cars or computers. They can barely buy the basic necessities of life.”

Activists such as Sweatshop.org are not advocating that the multi-national corporations pull out of countries like Mexico, thus denying the people their “precious” $10 a day (for the majority of workers who work in sweatshop industries, their pay actually is much lower). What they are advocating is that these companies pay their workers wages that will at least enable them to afford the basic necessities of life, like adequate housing, adequate food, access to medical care and other goods and services that people need to survive, i.e. a living wage.

Fortunately, more and more people are coming to realize that the true test of global economic progress is not whether it adds more to the abundance of those who already have so much. It is whether it provides enough for those who have too little. They realize that the global economy must promote not only economic prosperity, but economic justice as well. May their numbers continue to increase.

Ken Quigley

NIU alumnus, DeKalb