Sweat shops, am I bovvered?

re: Sweat shops, am I bovvered?

Martine Addis — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:19:17 GMT

I might have the wrong end of the stick but the original comments seemed to point to the young girls as being "not bovvered" and in some way contributiong to the use of sweatshops. I would like to point out that most young people would happily buy ethically produced goods and clothes made by happy well paid workers, if only they themselves earned enough to do so.

re: Sweat shops, am I bovvered?

Merlin Milner — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 15:29:14 GMT

It is not just at the "cheap end" that uses cheap labour. So called "designer" etc. ranges, up-market brands are using the China outsourcing. My wife was recently give a Kath Kitson bag, now made in China. This made me angry due to the fact that the margins on this will be much greater than you £2 T shirt BUT the wage the same. Also it was bought thinking that one was buying a British product. In may ways goods are far too cheap and these prices are being driven by the retailers and manufacturers and less so by the consumers. If one could only buy a T shirt for £10 people would still buy them, it only takes one retailer to drop the price then you have this spiral culminating in more exploitation and purchaser's unrealsitic demands for future purchases. We live in strange times.

re: Sweat shops, am I bovvered?

Alex Donohue — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:53:14 GMT

Class shouldn't really come into it, no. It's a classless issue in the sense that there's as many Primark shoppers buying clothes for less than a decent square meal (in this or any country), as there are people driving Range Rovers down Kensington High Street/having their artichokes flown in from Peru etc. Retailers do have a responsibility toward their customers and their suppliers. Incidentally, Nike (and many others) conveniently forgo the whole sweat shop issue by not actually manufacturing shoes. Nike employs another company to do that, and how that company pays its workers and respects their working rights is viewed as beyond Nike's control. Handy that. We also get the usual nonsense about "respecting the working practices and customs of the countries in which they operate." I question why, with all the media and technology at our disposal, people can't seem to make an informed choice. It's simple cause and effect. Alex, I doubt there are many people out there who are "willing" to work in sweat shops, as you describe. I'd guess that living in abject poverty and having no other "safe" form on income means the decision is made for them. It's hardly a lifestyle choice...

re: Sweat shops, am I bovvered?

alex parr — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 11:20:06 GMT

wow, clearly a contentious issue. for me the issue is not to do with people recieving low wages by western standards which they will always be. i think we've got to be careful to acknowledge that in the countries where sweatshops are located there are people WILLING to work in them and wages will always be lower than what we would expect, precisely why manufacturing has disappeared from the UK! what the retailers need to realise is that they can retain their margins and still charge higher prices and pay more to their suppliers. it seems a shift is happening amongst consumers in this country where we'd rather pay more for our goods and not feel a guilt pang each time we buy a £2 t-shirt. prices don't have to be 'amazing' for people to buy the products. it's all just got a bit extreme and conditions are clearly very poor. from an economics point of view there is the argument that martin touches upon that these nations are utilising cheap labour to grow their economies. manufacturing can be the start of this, just look at china which is now NOT the main source of asian manufcaturing it once was. it's getting richer and cheap labour is taking hold elsewhere.

re: Sweat shops, am I bovvered?

MARTIN HARRISON — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:55:00 GMT

I'd also recommend "The Undercover Economist" and it's very robust defence of sweatshops. Primark, Gap, Matalan and H&M are hugely succesful retailers, fuelling a huge amount of consumerism, requiring a huge amount of £2 T-Shirts to be made. If those T-Shirts stop being bought, the sweatshops close, and those exploited workers in the third world can go back to scrabbling out an existence on subsistence farming, facing starvation every winter and the prospect of no one in their family ever achieving anything more than not dying under the age of 40. But that's OK in Highbury, as long as they are not being "exploited".

re: Sweat shops, am I bovvered?

Tom Baxter — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:53:08 GMT

I would generally agree with the above comment, and add that 'There was a silent pause. “Third world? Where’s that then?” Priceless' Sounds like a fabricated quote for a cheap laugh. Protecting the environment should not be made into a class issue.

re: Sweat shops, am I bovvered?

J V — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:29:49 GMT

Ethics is, indeed, a very complicated subject. Not least because it covers so many diverse aspects of society. With this in mind I would question whether an 'expert' on ethical marketing should be employing such a derisory and wanton generalisation as 'typical thick as two bricks voice' when referring to young girls. It must be terribly deflating for an expert to acknowledge that these young girls represent our best hope at saving the planet. And lest we forget, the self-righteous Crouch End socialists (they're the ones who preach it from their millions pound ivory towers without committing to doing it) carry a far greater burden of responsibility for third-world poverty than a young girl in Primark.