Jim Hightower's New Book Chapter 12

[muchacho]

from Chapter 12
New Clothes? No Sweat!
by Jim Hightower

Is sweatshop labor a necessary evil of the garment industry? If you talk
to some U.S.-based analysts, you might be led to that conclusion. But close
inspection of the economics paints a much different picture: a portrait of
corporate greed, plain and simple. Let's do the numbers.

It takes an efficient worker about two and a half minutes to produce a
t-shirt. Dividing this rate of production into the going wage in various
parts of the world, here¹s the wage-cost of a t-shirt that you might buy at
a Wal-Mart or Talbots or anywhere:

Asia 1¢
Latin America 4¢
Los Angeles sweatshop 16¢
U.S minimum wage 21¢

Let¹s go with the high figure of 21¢. That¹s what a U.S. minimum-wage
worker gets out of a t-shirt that you¹ll pay somewhere between 10 and 20
bucks to buy. Working a year at minimum wage adds up to barely $10,000
gross pay ­ poverty.

So here¹s a question: What if that wage was doubled? Or even more?
What if the workers were paid not 21¢ per shirt, but ­ what the hey, let¹s
go crazy and throw in a whole extra quarter ­ paid 46¢ per shirt. This
would mean the workers would be getting more than $20,000 a year! It¹s not
a fortune, but it gets you out of abject povertyŠ it¹s a liveable level of
pay. And that extra quarter, which would mean so much to the workers and
their families, would have no impact at all on your and my clothing budget.

Thus was born: TeamX. It¹s a new garment factory in Los Angeles,
financed with an initial $1.2 million from the Hot Fudge venture capital
fund of Ben Cohen. But this company is new in ways much more significant
than its air-conditioned building and state-of-the-art equipment. It¹s new
in approach. Its mission statement declares: "TeamX seeks to change the
lives of garment workers, both those that it directly employs, as wll as the
hundreds of thousands of other workers in this global industry
a sustainable model that can be replicated worldwide."

How different is it from your run-of-the-mill garment business?

* It¹s a union shop, organized by UNITE.
* It¹s a co-op, owned by the workers themselves (five of the seven board
seats are reserved for workers).
* It pays a living wage, starting at $8.50 an hour, plus good health
care, a pension, profit-sharing, and vacation days ("I¹ve been working
in clothing for 20 years, and I never had a paid holiday before this,"
says Ana Acevedo, a Salvadoran immigrant and one of the founding co-op
employees).
* It operates on the "solidarity ratio," which means that no executive
can be paid more than eight times the pay of production workers.

There¹s one way, however, in which TeamX is just like any other garment
business: It¹s out to make money. This is no little froufrou exercise in
good works, but a profit-making enterprise that has drawn a small group of
experienced managers and an exceptionally skilled and motivated workforce.
TeamX cranked up its operation in March of 2002 with eight employees, a
vision, a plan, and a prayer: "We aim to put the lie to the myth that it¹s
impossible to produce clothing at a competitive price and have a good
quality of worklife," says Cohen. "Will we succeed? All I can say is,
we¹ll see."

They have. With its snappy "SweatX" brand, the company was generating a
profit by the end of its first year, and it now has 55 production workers
turning out a stylish, top-quality line of everything from t-shirts to
fleece jackets, baseball caps to blankets, sweatshirts to fashion tops.
Yes, but how can it keep up, how can it possibly compete with the morally
bankrupt firms that are still using sweatshop labor? For one thing, TeamX
pays its workers instead of paying celebrity endorsers (Nike is paying Tiger
Woods $20 million a year for five years), for example. That¹s good money
that could go toward fair pay and improved conditions for its sweatshop
workers. This would give Nike¹s swoosh a good scrubbing, put the company in
a newly-positive light with young people, create a global marketing windfall
based on conscience, and eliminate any need to try hiding its corporate
smarminess with costly celebrity masks. If you know anyone who knows Phil
Knight, let the Nike honcho know that I¹ll let him have this marketing idea
for free).

In fact, it¹s this "market of conscience" that TeamX is reaching out to
­ a huge and virtually untapped market of people (meŠ and you?) who¹ll
gladly go for any brand that can assure us, without equivocation, that it
contains no sweat (not to mention blood and tears), even if the no-sweat
brand costs a few pennies more. TeamX doesn¹t have to sink itself with the
huge weight of tv advertising, for a substantial part of the conscience
market comes conveniently organized, reachable through such established
networks as churches, campuses, and groups focused on environmental,
women¹s, racial and other issues.

Plus, unions. Oh, I hear people moan despairingly in my travels, Unions
are so weak, only 13 million or so of the American population. I look at
the moaners in disbelief and say, You¹re whining about that? Only 13
million? Sure it ought to be more, and more people these days are thinking
union, but get real ­ that¹s a lot of folks! It¹s more than most religious
organizations can count as members, way more than the number of corporate
executives and millionaires, and more than the supposedly "powerful number"
of people tuning in today to the gaseous leaf-blower of the airwaves, Rush
Limbaugh. Add in their families, neighbors, and friends, and you have truly
a powerful number.

Also (here¹s the savvy of TeamX marketing), union members buy and wear
far more t-shirts than, say, your average country club member. Go into any
union hall, peek into the storeroom and closets, and you¹ll find boxes upon
boxes filled with T-shirts, knit shirts, sweatshirts, and others. They put
their union logos and slogans on them for rallies, organizing drives,
conventions ­ or just to wear to work or around the house. It¹s a real
market ­ and it¹s loving SweatX.

TeamX is only one company, but a lot of good has been done in this old
world by some one standing up to the B.S. of conventional wisdom and saying:
That can¹t be right, there has to be a better way. As this first factory
succeeds, TeamX will expand to others, including an intention to open
factories abroad, in the face of global garment giants who claim they "must"
treat labor abysmally in order to be competitive. Competitive with whom?

With each other, all of whom are sweatshop bastards. TeamX offers some
real competition.

--

** COMING AUGUST 18!!
"Thieves In High Places -
They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time To Take It Back!"
-- the explosive new book by Jim Hightower

[cprise]

1. I just ordered some clothes

http://www.sweatx.net/index.html

[shirlden]

2. Go take a look

This place is for real. They have great prices and what I like best.....they have t-shirts with all kinds of sleeve, which means I don't have to cut them off. Also, fleece from that great Malden Mills company. All deserve our support.