“Talk to these families in the dump, and a job in a sweatshop is a cherished dream, an escalator out of poverty, the kind of gauzy if probably unrealistic ambition that parents everywhere often have for their children.” - Nicholas Kristof, on sweatshops, in the New York Times.
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posted by guest
Jan 16, 2009 11:21AM
I'm so glad someone is actually writing that article. It's especially pertinent to child labor. It can be really infuriating to listen to arm-chair activists who have learned that X Store uses child labor, so the solution must be to boycott, when clearly that's not a solution at all because it's not like if they close up shop those children and their parents are going to say oh well! I guess I'll start going to school and playing and doing kid things! They'll just get a job somewhere else, possibly doing something much worse. A real solution, for the time being at least, would be to demand that X Store have a safe working environment, reasonable hours, compensate with fair wages, and possibly have a contract with its child employees that they must go to school, etc. It alarms me how many vocal activists don't seem to have any sort of foresight, and realize that when they boycott a store like that the only thing they're ridding the world of is their own guilt.
Whew! Okay! Got that off my chest then.
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posted by guest
Jan 16, 2009 11:34AM
I'm sorry, how can you even try and justify child labour/sweat shops? The point is not that it's "better than what they are used to", the point is it shoudln't have to be that way, and the 1st world love keeping it that way so they can exploit it. I'm a Zimabwean living in London, so I know both sides, why do you think it is acceptable for you to have one standardof living, and the rest of world to have less?
I agree with No. 3 that we need to start creating solutions to these problems so that everyone has a better (and equal) standard of living!
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posted by guest
Jan 16, 2009 12:57PM
Fashionista, this is repulsive. Are you seriously trying to justify forced sweat shop/child labor because it is "better than they are used to?"
Thanks for reminding me why I hate this site: it is just a place for spoiled upper-middle-class white girls to justify their pointless shopping obsessions by quoting dumb columnists and writing terribly (seriously, do you guys have to end every post with a question? you make Daily Candy look like Proust). No wonder you guys are the laughing stock of New York.
Meanwhile, there is no mention of the brutal attacks that happen on the sweat shop workers (just look at the female workers in mexico along the border), the raping of children by overseers, the holding down to the local economy to keep people employed in these sweat shops and to keep the work force cheap. Not to mention the lack of jobs that could be helping people in the US right now. My parents are immigrants and I have relatives who worked in sweat shops since the time they were 10, just so we can enjoy a $8 t-shirt. Sweat shops are HORRIBLE.
Obviously, not all factories overseas are sweat shops, but even trying to say that sweat shops are OK is dumb.
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posted by guest
Jan 16, 2009 1:18PM
Jeeze get of your high horses people. YEah it sucks that some people are working in these places but things could be worse. What would you rather have that they dont have a job and then die of starvation ??? Come on?
And guest 8 you need to stop with the generalisation: Yes im a girl who loves fashion, no im not spoiled, no im not white. And although I dont agree with it all I can see where they are coming from. And also if you dont like Fashionista DONT COME HERE ! Easy as that and the daily candy dont make me laugh. Fashionisat is 10000x better then that.
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posted by tribalpottery
Jan 16, 2009 1:20PM
You don't get to be pharaoh by working hard on the pyramid.
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posted by guest
Jan 16, 2009 1:23PM
Commenters #5 and #6. I think you are being unfair to this blog (which does, I agree, occasionally move into the realm of the ridiculously out of touch) with regards to this article. I am a huge fan of Nicholas Kristof and this was an interesting and thought-provoking article. I don't think you can just dismiss it. Kristof is distilling an argument that has been made in policy/international development circles for a number of years (I work in international development). There are scholarly arguments on both sides and I am not sure I agree with Kristof. However, this is a complex argument, because rich countries have gone through periods in their own development with looser labor laws, widespread child labor, etc. The industrial revolution brought us to where we are. Have you considered that it may be "elitist" for us to foist our own standards on developing countries, when we are safely past that stage, so that we can feel good about ourselves with our organic Feed bags? There are serious issues at play, and Kristof was not arguing that sweatshops are okay--he was exposing some of the really difficult issues we have to consider when looking at how our clothes are made. The countries in the most desperate circumstances, predominantly in sub-Saharan Africa, do not have sweatshops, because they have no industry whatsoever, and that rural poverty is grinding, and offers no way to generate wealth. I think he pointed out some interesting questions and I hope you will think about it carefully, even if you come to the conclusion that the morality does not outweigh the potential economic/development benefits of sweatshops.
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posted by LauraMilli
Jan 16, 2009 4:57PM
Guest #5: The Fashionista girls probably put up this quote because it was a good conversation/debate starter. Something to think about from a different view. Please notice that they only put up the quote, and not their own opinions of the story (which they didn't write either) one way or the other.
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posted by guccigirl77
Jan 16, 2009 8:52PM
guest #5 if you hate this site so much then why the heck are you on it?? you have no right to judge people when you are doing the same exact thing and you are streotypical! i am not white and so what if we are obbseesed with fashion?? this site lets us get away from the fashion challenged if we don't live in NYC and enter the world of fashion! god people like you erk me to death when you are just some hypocritical person!!! # 7 is right! things can be way worse.
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posted by guest
Jan 16, 2009 8:54PM
agree with #9. It's not in fashion, but when I started outsourcing and hiring people at $5/hour, my very liberal dad thought it was on par with indentured servitude.
$5/hr was all I could afford for my market, but for the people I hired, it was a good wage and there was plenty of competition to get it. I looked at the cost of living in the respective countries, and while I probably wasn't putting any kids through college, I knew I was paying the people working for me fairly and that they could afford a comfortable - even if modest - life from what I was paying.
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posted by southweststyle
Jan 19, 2009 4:28PM
From this quote, the author isn't even qualifying a sweatshop in any way. And Fashionista isn't qualifying it either. The author is just saying, for better or worse, these are what these people think of this work. So maybe read before you judge?
posted by guest
Jan 16, 2009 11:15AM
it's true. my fiance is in the garment business and he owns factories--not sweatshops--in the chinese countryside and it's a plum job for them. much higher wages than they're used to, the chance to sit (indoors!) rather than labor in the fields..