The Ethix Merch Blog is launching what will be a regular feature: interviews with the leading authorities in the fields of ethical business, the labor movement, and the environmental movement.
Our first interview is with Robert J.S. Ross, Ph.D., one of the country's best known scholars on sweatshops in the United States and author of Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops.
In your book Slaves to Fashion you spoke of three pillars of decency that determine working class conditions. In a few sentences, how have each of these pillars evolved since you wrote your book?
Robert Ross: The first pillar is labor unions. Labor unions in the U.S. continue to lose ground in the private sector; BUT have been highly activated during the 2008 election and are now, for the first time in many years, within sight of important labor law reform. The proposal is called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). This is the most strategically important moment for labor in just about thirty years (i.e. since they lost labor law reform during the Carter Administration.) It will be immensely difficult, and I am personally worried that the President’s team is not willing to go all out on it. The opposition has pulled out all stops and is making crazy end-of-the-world claims about its passage.
The second pillar is middle class reformers. At the peak levels (e.g. Washington think tanks and left liberal magazines), the importance of EFCA is recognized. But the communication of this urgency to grass roots, middle class Obama supporters has not yet hit. There thus remains the difference between this era and the turn of the 19-20th century: then the "social question" and the rights of labor were at the forefront for reformers. Now it takes its place lower down on the laundry list. However, health care -- shared concern of many classes -- is consensually at the top. That's good, except that the new administration has accepted the limits of the Beltway Consensus against single payer, and thus is on the brink of muddling through another confusing reform that will not control cost nor simplify access. It will predictably decrease the number of uninsured.
The third pillar is government regulation. We now have a democratic government and open-minded partially liberal President. Already he has agreed to hire more investigators in the Dept of Labor and named a workers' champion for the Department of Labor; that's good. I'm cautiously optimistic.
On an individual level, why should U.S. consumers feel good about supporting Union Made in USA products, if that means taking away business from workers living hand to mouth in developing nations?
RR: In the first instance, our industry is now so small, it supplies only about 10% of demand. So there is surely a lot of upwards room before there is an important dent on worldwide employment.
In addition, this is an ethical matter about which I do have a view, though not a widely articulated one among professors who claim to be globally oriented. I think I owe some allegiance to the society and community from which I have sprung. If American consumers of conscience don't care about American workers, who will? I once sat on a panel between a sewing machine operator working in New York City, from El Salvador, and another woman, same job, in El Salvador. I can't find an ethical standard that would privilege one side or the other; but I can think of a political strategy that has more efficacy where I live than elsewhere.
Finally, what I really want to see is a regulated international trade regime that guarantees workers' rights -- to organize, etc., and to living wages. Let retailers and manufacturers come into the U.S. market with union-made goods from other countries and compete with union-made goods here. That is what Adam Nieman does in his product mix. That would drive labor standards up worldwide. Similarly, the Cambodians are trying to make good labor standards their national brand: and they have lost almost no market share to China in the big Asian surge after the expiration of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) quotas.
So, bottom line: buying union is good for U.S. workers; and if others come into the market competing with union made goods from elsewhere it will be good for those workers too.
Let’s indulge in a fantasy for a moment. If the movement succeeds and U.S. sweatshops are relegated to history, will the price of goods go up? Will corporate profits go down? Will the U.S. garment industry completely disappear?
RR: A union goods dominated market WOULD increase prices. They are too low. They are declining portions of family budgets and have increased MUCH less than the cost of living. Studies show we have more (cheap) clothes (and shoes) in our closets than ever before. In 1933, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins said: "The red silk bargain dress in the shop window is a danger signal. It is a warning of the return of the sweatshop, a challenge to us all to reinforce the gains we have made in our long and difficult progress toward a civilized industrial order." Well, the bargain that is too good to be true is not so good for workers -- and includes fifteen dollar jeans. I have been calculating the cost of imported clothes (now about 90% of all clothing bought.) The price is declining over the last decade for which I have calculations. Mind you, I don’t go out personally trying to pay more in the Department Store. But the fact is we'd probably do better with "fewer but better" clothes in our drawers and closets.
How realistic is a regulated international trade regime? Are you optimistic that it will happen eventually? How soon?
RR: Drastic revision of the WTO or of NAFTA/CAFTA etc. is not likely soon. Requiring Dems in three branches, it still won’t happen in this four-year cycle because this President seems to still be in the "liberal globalist" camp -- not so different from Bill Clinton. However, I could imagine a) a social democratic led EU teaming with labor governments in South America and a few Asian allies b) getting a Democratic president to allow change in WTO. This requires imagining, however, a way of neutralizing China-India or some drastic change in their political dynamics. I don't have a story line that takes me there in an imaginable near term.
Do you think it is possible that President Obama is "biding his time" on labor issues, using less controversial achievements of his initial term to increase Democratic party representation in congress?
RR: "Possible" is a big word. Lots of things are... However, clearly labor forces are making the push for EFCA now -- their calculations are that now is the time. Presidents do not usually gain, and usually lose Congressional seats at mid-term. By 2012 who knows? I might even be a grandfather by then! The imponderables for the conditions of a second term are beyond such calculation. I can think of few of FDR's major legislative accomplishments that were not in the first term. One indeed was the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) -- but this was a replacement for and foreshadowed by the National Industrial Recovery Act (1933) declared unconsituational during the second term. I do not think the President is "biding his time." I think he (and perhaps more importantly, his Beltway imprisoned advisers like Rahm Emmanuel) either thinks he can't win the whole thing or doesn't care to spend the political capital it takes to get it. Our job is to be the wind that pushes the politicians to do the right thing.
