Good morning, dearlings,
I am enjoying my last Mexico morning before returning to Massachusetts, where the snow is as “high as an elephant’s eye, and it looks like it’s climbing clear up to the sky!” Apologies to Rodgers & Hammerstein, but that’s NOT a happy prospect. I mean, it’s great when corn grows that high. It’s not that great when you don’t have anywhere else to put the damned snow and can’t find your car under the stuff. I expect to be returning to very short tempers, aggravated depressions, failed sobriety and abstention from multiple addictions (white flour, sugar, booze, on-line shopping, porn). This is serious pastoral stuff and I’m very glad to have been able to put the oxygen mask over my own face before heading back to work to help those who are suffering with our endless deep freeze.
So, Karen wants to know about a comment I made recently. She writes,
“curious about the “booo!†regarding a cotton shirt made in China. Is all manufacturing in China considered sweatshop? or is manufacturing outside of the continental US considered exploitive?”
Yes, dear Karen, I’m afraid that the garments made in China are very often (almost all?) manufactured under unfair and inhumane conditions, and that’s why they come to us so cheap. Every time we buy an armload of $5 Tshirts from Old Navy, someone else has already paid for what goes on our backs by her own back-breaking, pathetically-compensated labor.
For this reason, many of the BTFM pigeons do pay careful attention to the labels of the clothes they buy and research their country of origin. I try not to buy things made in China, and when I purchase clothing from online discount places I do inquire as to where the garments are made.
It really does pay to ask. I fell totally in love with an adorable line of plus-size clothes that I found on eBay. The pieces were so cute, all cotton, and really original and I felt like I had found the MotherLode of garments for my own style. Everything was so affordable, too! That’s when a little lightbulb of “This is too good to be true” went off in my head, and sure enough, it turned out that the garments were being made in China. That was a deal-breaker for me.
Thanks for asking.
If an item is from a thrift/consignment store, do you relax your made-in-USA rule? [Oh, I think I would. – PB]
If you’re going to apply that rule to things made in China you might as well check also that your garments are not made in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Honduras, Nicaragua…..The sad reality is that there are poor working conditions for garment workers all over the world. And indeed there are some good factories in all those countries as well.
One of the big differentiators for China is that all trade unions have to be part of the government trade union body – so not really ‘free & independent’. But then even in countries where nominally the union movement could legally be free and independent the powers that be generally try to suppress unionisation.
Sorry, clogging up your comments. As you know this is close to my heart. And my work. [Not at all, Clare!! I’m so glad you wrote! Much love – PB]
Really great that you and your readers are concerned about all of this. And there *are* things we can all be doing. Check out Fashion Revolution Day for starters http://www.fashionrevolution.org