shoppers in praise of sweatshops

"Well-meaning American university students regularly campaign against sweatshops. But instead, anyone who cares about fighting poverty should campaign in favor of sweatshops . . . . If Africa could establish a clothing export industry, that would fight poverty far more effectively than any foreign aid program. . . . [A] useful step would be for American students to stop trying to ban sweatshops, and instead campaign to bring them to the most desperately poor countries."

~ excerpt from an op-ed article by Nicolas D. Kristof "In Praise of the Maligned Sweatshop" in the New York Times*

So I don't know enough about development to know whether sweatshops are good for development or not. In fact, professors at universities probably have varying opinions about this. Yet even if sweatshops are able to combat poverty, are they necessary the best way to combat poverty? (it is true that there are so many qualifiers for best: effective, efficient, humane, just-- perhaps what is best is a combination of all of them?)

But let's put campaigning and such theoretical questions aside and instead put the question this way, personally:

Would you rather spend 30 bucks buying tshirts from Adidas who probably uses various South Asian sweatshops to lower costs on production and then spends millions of dollars on celebrity endorsements? (and whose eventual profits go to line the pockets of already-rich stockholders and executive managers with yachts and mercedes)

Or would you prefer to spend that money buying a tshirt (or even two) from Nueva Vida, a worker owned cooperative in Nicaragua, one of the poorest countries in Central America? (whose eventual profits go directly to the pockets of the workers to help pay for food, health and education for their families?)

Would you spend 20 bucks on a tshirt from JCrew that manufactures their clothing in various locales in Southeast Asia with workers at the machine 12-16 hours a day, while JCrew earns a ridiculous profit off each shirt and spends its extra money on huge marketing campaigns with chiseled ab models (that also happen to create unreasonable expectations for what the human body should look like, setting a standard of beauty based on superficial qualities instead of the content of one's character and breeding discontent amongst various relationships because outward appearances do not match up to these absurd ideals)?

Or, would you rather spend 20 bucks buying a tshirt from a store like American Apparel who manufactures all its clothing in LA, paying its workers twice the minimum wage while also providing health care benefits?

In today's consumer culture, you send a message with what you buy-- where will you spend your money?

Companies definitely create jobs in developing countries with their involvement there-- but there may be better ways to be involved than others. And spending so little to pay sweatshop workers and paying so much to use celebrity endorsements and models for their advertisements or for building their brand name is not a business model that I feel comfortable supporting.** If consumers are unwilling to buy from companies who follow such a business model, eventually they will have to change it and find better ways to produce. Or on the flip side, if consumers buy from fair trade and worker-friendly clothing labels, then these labels will thrive, allowing them to expand and hire more workers that they can benefit with their high wages.

(It's like recycling-- sometimes you don't want to do it because you feel like it doesn't really make a difference especially if noone else does it. But if everyone does it, it will make a difference.)

I would rather not campaign for sweatshops in third world countries, but rather campaign for and buy from companies who are willing to forgo corporate profits as their only motive for existence in order to run socially responsible businesses in third world countries.***

Why support something questionably good when you can support something undoubtedly better?



*The article is found here but it's only for Times select members. There's a commentary on the article called Something to Cheer at the New York Times written by Gregory Reisman-- the commentary is in support of the Times' article (kind of obvious once you read it).
**On a more personal note, I don't want to hold myself up as some sort of free-trade saint that doesn't buy anything manufactured in a sweatshop. I actually probably own plenty of stuff that have been manufactured in sweatshops. This is a new and recent question that I have been dealing with and struggling with-- and these are some of my thoughts pertaining to it. Still very much in the process of thinking things through.
***If I'm not mistaken, the book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid offers some sweatshop-alternatives to third world development that still allow for corporate profits. It is possible to help the poor and earn a profit without making them work 14 hour days without health care benefits on a wage that barely allows them to survive.