Sean Combs Clothing Used 'sweatshop'

[Oria]

Originally posted by tealady@Nov 2nd, 2003 - 5:02 am
Great, I'll be interested to hear your comments. After you read it, why not start a discussion about it?

I just ordered the book online. I'll will definitely start a new topic once I'm done reading it...again thanks!

And glad to hear he was cleared of all charges but its always good to know that people are concerned. I'd be more suprised if no one had an reaction.

 

[toocoolforyah]

Lena, You dont make sense where do i say that i am supporting sweatshops. Besides its important that you study the economy and labour standards of those third countries. That the world does not live in the same standards as in the us United States or Canada, first world countries. I am a realist and a very ethical person and also a humanist. Reality is that those third degree countries do not have jobs at all for the poor human beings. My heart goes out to the poverty. The reality is also that many of those people that are supporting and bad publicing Sean John Label are selfish. They want those companies to leave the third world countries, thus leaving the poverty is worsen situations. Third world countries stop doing statistics of unemployment. Like i said i am a humanist with a big heart for the poor. Do you stop and give money to the homeless, or do you dont even look at them. Well i have traveled the world and also give money to the poor, Never give them cents.

 

[lele]

i did some online research on this subject and there is a lot of literature out there on this.... I dont think in anyway it is right to employ people in these conditions and even if they are being provided a job there should be basic human rights followed and standards upheld....but this is an interesting article...... I believe that this people do not know better and think this is all they have.... rather than pulling the business out I wish they could make it better for them.... either way it is interesting to read a different point of view....


Candida Rosa Lopez, an employee in a Nicaraguan garment factory, works long hours over a sewing machine at less than a dollar an hour. Interviewed recently by a Miami Herald reporter, Ms. Lopez has a message for people in the United States and other wealthy countries who are nervous about buying goods from "sweatshops": "I wish more people would buy the clothes we make."

Contrary to what you have heard, sweatshops in third-world countries are a good deal for the people who work in them. Why? Because work, other than slave labor, is an exchange. A worker chooses a particular job because she thinks herself better off in that job than at her next-best alternative. Most of us would regard a low-paying job in Nicaragua or Honduras as a lousy job. But we're not being asked to take those jobs. Those jobs are the best options those workers have, or else they would quit and work elsewhere. You don't make someone better off by taking away the best of a bunch of bad choices.

Many workers in third-world sweatshops have left even harder, lower-paying jobs in agriculture to move to garment factories. Moreover, sweatshops are a normal step in economic development. Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, and Hong Kong all had sweatshop jobs thirty years ago. They don't now because workers in those countries have acquired skills and employers have accumulated capital. That's what will happen in Honduras, Nicaragua, and other poor countries—if we only let it.

What happens when people persuade companies not to hire children to work long hours? Oxfam, the British charity, reported that when factory owners in Bangladesh were pressured to fire child laborers, thousands of the children became prostitutes or starved.

Yet the National Labor Committee's executive director, Charles Kernaghan, goes around the country attacking sweatshops and trying to put legal barriers in the way of people buying from sweatshops. Robert Reich, former U.S. labor secretary under President Clinton, pressured Reebok International and Sears Roebuck to get ShinWon, their South Korean subcontractor in Honduras, to lay off fifty teenage girls. He apparently did not ask, or care, what happened to them after they lost their jobs. Why are Kernaghan and Reich hurting the people they claim to care about? Simple. The people they really care about are unionized garment workers in the United States; the NLC is funded by U.S. unions. The garment workers lost on NAFTA and lost on GATT. This is their last-ditch effort to prevent foreign competition.

The next time you feel guilty for buying clothes made in a third-world sweatshop, remember this: you're helping the workers who made that clothing. The people who should feel guilty are those who argue against, or use legislation to prevent us, giving a boost up the economic ladder to members of the human race unlucky enough to have been born in a poor country. Someone who intentionally gets you fired is not your friend.

 

[leyla m.]

Originally posted by lele@Nov 6th, 2003 - 5:07 pm
i did some online research on this subject and there is a lot of literature out there on this.... I dont think in anyway it is right to employ people in these conditions and even if they are being provided a job there should be basic human rights followed and standards upheld....but this is an interesting article...... I believe that this people do not know better and think this is all they have.... rather than pulling the business out I wish they could make it better for them.... either way it is interesting to read a different point of view....


Contrary to what you have heard, sweatshops in third-world countries are a good deal for the people who work in them. Why? Because work, other than slave labor, is an exchange. A worker chooses a particular job because she thinks herself better off in that job than at her next-best alternative. Most of us would regard a low-paying job in Nicaragua or Honduras as a lousy job. But we're not being asked to take those jobs. Those jobs are the best options those workers have, or else they would quit and work elsewhere. You don't make someone better off by taking away the best of a bunch of bad choices.

What happens when people persuade companies not to hire children to work long hours? Oxfam, the British charity, reported that when factory owners in Bangladesh were pressured to fire child laborers, thousands of the children became prostitutes or starved.

The next time you feel guilty for buying clothes made in a third-world sweatshop, remember this: you're helping the workers who made that clothing. The people who should feel guilty are those who argue against, or use legislation to prevent us, giving a boost up the economic ladder to members of the human race unlucky enough to have been born in a poor country. Someone who intentionally gets you fired is not your friend.

very interesting LELE
i am ANTI SLAVERY but i know someone who has actually set up a company in a country i wont mention (back in the 70s) to protect woman from going on the streets. and if you gotta choose between those 2 (work or prostitution) then i odnt think the work conditions are thought of being any "harsher". we also got this still in someparts of iran, where i come from.
besides this, i think all this issue is relative. we live in a modern, rich world and cannot compare our laws and regulations with those of poorer countries.
just my 2 cents

 

[Lena]

Originally posted by lele@Nov 6th, 2003 - 6:07 pm
The next time you feel guilty for buying clothes made in a third-world sweatshop, remember this: you're helping the workers who made that clothing.

first of all, thanks for looking deeply into this lele

still for me every time i buy something made in sweatshops or manufactured from underpayed workers, i feel that i help a huge -already rich- company get just richer. I also help 'local' factories to close down leaving thousands of people out of work, people that simply face no tomorrow.

There is a huge difference in being hijacked to your job, like those working in sweatshops (yes, they do exist in western societies as well). For every 'happy' slave -like the Nicaraguan lady quoted here- there are hundernds that are angry on being forced to led their child to labour. Exploitation of the poor and weak has no justification, in the long run, it can only create major problems to both parties involved.

I respect everyone's point on 'sweatshop' topic, there has been a lot of 'clever propaganda' in painting pink the red hot blood of those who are forced to accept working under inhuman conditions for their daily bread.

 

[lele]

i agree with you completly lena...
i was just curious about the other side "toocool" presented....
but i dont think it is right, period. i am newly concerend though when they go in and close these places - the people are left then with nothing... can you imagine that life? a dollar an hour or nothing? blows my mind that that sort of stuff goes on......

 

[Lena]

there are rumours that sweatshops exist in the larger LA area.
please note that sweatshop wages are always much under
the 'legal' national wage standard in third world countries.
the worker who is hijacked in a workshop should have been payed
from three to five times less the legal wage.

lets create equal opportunities wages for the poor and still
make money. what gets to me is that sweatshops do not exist
because but to please huge corporate companies which are
pushing and pushing deals, betting on the lowest possible expense.
it's greed, not poverty that creates sweatshops.
some of the now sweatshop personel, used to work under normal
conditions until 'sweatshop factories' came to plague his area.
sweatshops force other local manufacturers to close down,
leading all unemploied personel straight to slavery.
Of course, they have no choice, they need to slave so we will
enjoy amazingly cheap prices in our fun& glam western societies.

more and more companies are experimenting in equal opportunity
manufacturing in third world, which actually helps local communities
without exploiting them. For instance they pay the production for more that
what they are asked for by the local slave chief, by bringing the
manufacturing deal to the 50-70% of western market's manufacturing
standards.

 

[Spacemiu]

I would belive that tehre are sweat shop liek paces in teh LA area, I mean tehre are many amny unemployed latin american illegals.

I agree with what you say totally lena, I doutn udnerstand how people can have so much greed to do this to other people, is money really worth it

this world

 

[Mariposa72]

Originally posted by Lena@Nov 6th, 2003 - 2:05 pm
please note that sweatshop wages are always much under
the 'legal' national wage standard in third world countries.
the worker who is hijacked in a workshop should have been payed from three to five times less the legal wage.

Lena, where have you seen that situation? Because In Latin America I can assure you, there is no way that a formal company can pay salaries below the min legal wage without facing harsh penalties. This subject is interesting; I'll get the books recommended here, and will wait for the next thread to post my comments. If your point is that first world are losing those jobs, I agree; but when you see people building sturdier houses, or children with cleaner, newer clothes, the word 'slave'...I don't know.

 

[Acid]

Lena, in a perfect world it would be possible to give full wages to these people.....but in reality it just doesnt happen

it happens in every possible market in the world.......look at china right now......by 2020......it will be more powerful than the USA.........all because of this cheap labour driving the economy........everything being made in china

slave labour there isnt quite like african places.........as they get housing complex's
however they are made to live within the factory boundries.

with hundreds of millions of POOR people looking for jobs........its hardly suprising they end up with these 'zombie' like jobs

 

[Spacemiu]

Originally posted by Acid@Nov 8th, 2003 - 10:20 am
Lena, in a perfect world it would be possible to give full wages to these people.....but in reality it just doesnt happen

it happens in every possible market in the world.......look at china right now......by 2020......it will be more powerful than the USA.........all because of this cheap labour driving the economy........everything being made in china

slave labour there isnt quite like african places.........as they get housing complex's
however they are made to live within the factory boundries.

with hundreds of millions of POOR people looking for jobs........its hardly suprising they end up with these 'zombie' like jobs

btu shouldnt we try for a perfect worl? there is no excuse for rich corperations to controll workers .

 

[Rodrigo Lorenzo]

this activism against sweatshops, or child labor, affects negatively the ones who were supposed to be protected in the first place.
I do not agree with you because I have visited the Dominican Republic and Jamaica and many of these people would lie to get paid more but are very happy they are employed. Many of them living on $25-40USD a week is a middle class living I have lived in the carribean and I have visited these so call free zones. I would like to get to a point in my life when I no longer need to go to wallmart but we live in a capitalistic society.
Also I have contacted many different factories in the U.S. to produce items for me and found it better to place an ad in the paper for sewing contractors. I have been able to produce small quanities and kept a keen eye over production. But I am very sure my buttons zippers and all of my trims are made in sweat shops sh*t I bought most of them from an indian company at Material World.. Oh Well none of us can excaoe the wrath of the bloody fashion industry....