Even a year ago it would have seemed impossible. A Gap store located in downtown San Francisco closing overnight. But we’ve had a lot of businesses pack up and leave town in a hurry recently. Shoe Pavilion. A long-term San Francisco institution and independent store, Stacy’s Bookstore— that brought in authors like Samantha Powers closed its doors in March. When I asked one of the clerks at Stacy’s why they were closing, since they still seemed to be selling books, they said that the owner of the building had refused to lower their rent and they had not sold enough books over Christmas to stay in the black. The building has now been empty for over two full months with no signs of a new tenant moving in.
Yet, most Americans are already familiar with the tragedy of independent bookstores failing. What I wonder, is whether we’re also ready for the shock of large corporate institutions, symbols of both greed and seeming invincibility to falter in the new economy?
Advice from the left and the right on what to do to save the economy have also never been so deeply divided. A couple of months ago I was surprised to read Rich Lowry in the National Review oh so casually mention that the reason that Roosevelt had “failed” was that he had now allowed the market to make it’s natural adjustment and to lower the salaries of workers by about 25%. He predicts that unemployment and prices would have fallen by precisely the same percentages, but this might be a little too convenient to believe. A recent NPR program, on the other hand, discussed the role that the CEO of Circuit City played in the collapse of that company when he decided to layoff the workers who were making the most money and who had the most seniority in order to save the company a few bucks. I don’t have a business degree, but I have to admit I find it hard to understand how an intentional lack of decent customer service is part of a sound business strategy.
But I mention the Gap for a reason.
In 2007 they were caught in one of the worst cases of child labor abuse that I have read about, and I’m a person somewhat (or a lot) since I worked on a cruise ship, obsessed with labor issues. It wasn’t just that they (the “independent contractors” used to produce Gap clothing) were using children in India as laborers, but that they were using children as slave laborers, and these child slaves were working sixteen hours days and being beaten with rubber pipes for not making quotas.
But what is also disturbing about the story is how they were caught. An undercover investigation from the British newspaper, the Guardian, discovered the situation and published the story. But as a recent Wikipedia article about this situation states,
in spite of the documentation of the child labourers working in the high-street fashion and admission by all concerned parties, only the SDM could not recognize these children as working under conditions of slavery and bondage.
In other words, it took individuals from outside the industry to recognize the problem for what it was.
The October 28, 2007 Guardian article states,
The derelict industrial unit in which Amitosh and half a dozen other children are working is smeared in filth, the corridors flowing with excrement from a flooded toilet.
Behind the youngsters huge piles of garments labelled Gap - complete with serial numbers for a new line that Gap concedes it has ordered for sale later in the year - lie completed in polythene sacks, with official packaging labels, all for export to Europe and the United States in time for Christmas.
And yet, here’s the very differently phrased telling of the story on the Gap’s own Wikipedia entry:
On October 28, 2007, BBC footage showed child labour being used in Indian Gap factories[27]. Gap has denied that it was aware of such happenings and that it is against its policy to use child labour. The one piece of clothing in question - a smock blouse - was removed from a British store and will be destroyed. Gap also promised to investigate breaches in its ethical policy.
All of this is what flashed across my mind as I walked past the corner of Post and Kearny in San Francisco recently to find brown paper covering the windows that had recently displayed khaki shorts for $39.95.
There are still several Gap stores in San Francisco, so don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that they’re going out of business. But which companies survive the economic turmoil and which will not gives me some morbid curiosity. I’ll miss Stacy’s Bookstore. But Circuit City and Blockbuster, with their poor customer service and aggressive marketing techniques, I imagine they may become future models of what not to do to succeed in business. As for clothing manufacturers like the Gap, maybe they have a clear opportunity during this sloughing off of demand to reorganize their workforce, and maybe to make absolutely certain that their profit margin is not earned by the sweat and the blood of children.
Is this too much to ask?
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Comments
When any one particular case is discovered and brought into the light, there's always a public outcry and tears and promises, and that one instance of abuse is mitigated or extinguished - only to crop up soon in another location, ad infinitum, until the attitudes at the top change.
The Fisher family - founders and majority shareholders and de facto controllers of the Gap - have been long notorious for caring for little beyond their own wealth and comfort.
Rated for enlightening me on the GAP (and I'm assuming that includes Old Navy?)
Lonnie, I didn't know that about the Fisher family. Good to know. wow. and I agree about the tears & redemption cycle. I could never find information on the internet about whether or not Kathie Lee's factories improved after her tears many years ago. But people forget about what cycles through the news so quickly.
gracielou...I hate to think of making thrift store shopping more complicated...that's where I shop too...if it's any consolation (which it probably is not) there are very few clean labels out there, unfortunately. sorry to bum you out on a sunday! I forgot to emphasize this, but also the children were making Gap for kids clothing. I can't really see those stores in the same way since.
lifehalflived--you're talented if you can sew your own clothing. The most I could ever do was crochet when I lived in New England...and I might have forgotten since there's not a lot of urgent demand for handmade scarves in California.
:^)
Roy I have to agree with Lonnie that expanding the power of government would be a terrible idea. Obviously when the industry polices itself (and gives its own ethics awards too) there's no need to quibble over a few children handcuffed to their sewing machines.
crimony!
I agree with KTM though that the sell-out this week of so called moderate Dems on the rights of bankruptcy judges to readjust mortgage rates is unbelievable in the current market. The banks really are waiting I think for this miracle of recovery where all their assets are going to magically reappear on the balance sheets. someone (s) have to take a hit & they don't God forbid want it to be them. so vacant homes are preferable to the banks than "slamdown" mortgage rates in which home owners can avoid eviction.
ugh.
I want this to be a new era, but maybe this is wishful thinking? maybe people will want to live more community-based lives? anyway, I know I do. and thanks for commenting!
Also, and it's kind of a tangent, but sentences like this always take me by surprise: “The one piece of clothing in question - a smock blouse - was removed from a British store and will be destroyed.” I guess that's the right thing to do, but I always find myself stuck thinking: I were a laborer and I had made something, even under bad circumstances, would it make me feel better or worse to think that no one was even using the thing that I had slaved to make...? (This question comes up a lot in the case of things like the fur trade and ivory, where there's the secondary question of whether disposing of the item does nothing for demand and just raises the price that the market will bear for future sales of remaining inventory. Probably that's less likely here. But, as I said, these weirdnesses always nag at me.)
Dolores, your point, “ I wonder, is whether we’re also ready for the shock of large corporate institutions, symbols of both greed and seeming invincibility to falter in the new economy” is a good one. I wonder, too. Of course, it could be a good thing if it were replaced by a million mom&pop things but I fear they'll all be replaced by Taco Bell, figuratively speaking at least. I have another planned post on a related topic. I'll nudge up its priority a little.
thanks for making such a smart comment that I had to do some homework before I could respond. I read the Hobolawstudent interview and that was great.
I agree to a large extent, yet I choose to be optimistic that a crisis can change a way of thinking in one direction or another because we're all outside of our (political and personal) comfort zones. Yes, we do already have the winners of the franchise wars flourishing, but reading Naomi Klein's book No Logo did give me the sense that the era of the brand may be faltering to some degree. Just as a company spends a lot of money establishing this name recognition, that same name recognition can take them down when it comes to something like child labor. (as it should!)
It's astonishing (although it shouldn't be I suppose) how quickly they re-wrote the Wikipedia entry. And yes, I agree with you that destroying the shirt (as if there could possibly only be one) created by a child slave would solve the problem. It won't.
Sometimes I think of that phrase "spend less. Expect more" and I think how it needs to be subverted if we are to move into any sort of better era politically or socially or maybe even deeper than that. The Guardian article went on to say that when you see a shirt in a store that says it is "handmade" and it's only $10 or $12 you should Know What Is Up.
At a consumer level, I also argue that when people have less money, they may be looking for bargains, but I don't know that they are looking for bargains that leave a dirty taste in their mouths. I don't know. I'm not really an optimist about the issue...but I think it's worth discussing with people because I think there is a possibility that how we consume (our model) is changing anyway with less disposable income thanks to the economy...why not have consumers take more of their/our own power by consuming with more consciousness?
It's possible to hope, at least...(hope is still somewhat affordable, despite the inflation or stagflation fears...)
I'll look for your related article coming...
And it reminds me of this 2004 article from Ralph Nader's site, which admittedly is not recent but which I have to imagine is something that is still going on and which will continue to scare me until I see some fairly affirmative protections in place from it happening. The notion of competing economically on a global stage by giving up one's hard-fought benefits and social/legal/medical protections is scary and there's probably a lot of that going on all the time, that article is probably just a blatant example.
I don't think walmart has changed much since then, that I know of at least. I saw the movie about walmart (that walmart blocked distribution of) and it was pretty horrific. I will always remember the chinese couple in their twenties who were in love but could never see eachother because they worked such long hours and in dirty, small dormitories...
http://www.walmartmovie.com/
If I start thinking about this stuff too much I get depressed. I wonder if there could be a new standard, other than cheap, when Americans go shopping? I wonder...
it still strikes me as bizarrly ironic that a company that sells itself as the casual fun khaki look should have anyone suffering and crying over making such ordinary looking clothing. I'm not saying that it would be any better if it were haute couture...but...
This is the importance of the middle class, who can afford to buy enough product so that companies aren't forced to get ruthless in their manufacturing and other business practice. Only in real estate, people who can't afford property simply fall out of the market, causing a conspicuous crisis. In retail and other manufacture based corps, ruthless business practice can be cleverly hidden from the public. Like Lonnie Lazar said, ugly and unlawful schemes periodically get exposed by watch groups, but it just flips from one to the other with cover ups cleaning the trail.
The key, is the public. You can blame the top down business practice, but that's just the surface of the problem. Blaming the top doesn't ever change anything, because you're blaming businessmen who are well aware of their misdoings, and well equipped to cover their tracks, even legally.
If you reach further into the economic mess, what you find is the consumer, the true culprit of all this ugly and dangerous capitalism. It's the SHOPPER WITHOUT A CONSCIENCE that corporations depend on to continue to purchase their goods, which have been manufactured by ruthless business practices. If shoppers cared about who suffered in order to make their product, they wouldn't buy those products and businesses would be forced to change their practices. Do shoppers care? That is the most important question at hand.
I believe that most shoppers don't care. Especially people who are buying from stores who are so obviously full of crap. I'm no genius, but I can feel the hustle when I go into Wal-Mart and Target. I can feel the hustle when I go into the Gap. It's so pretentiously overpriced, for god's sake. I think, who would want to buy this crap at these prices?
The answer, is greedy people, addicted to shopping. People addicted to the idea that they are getting a deal, when in fact they are hurting other human beings in order to get that deal. When it comes right down to it, especially in the fashionably over-priced stores like upscale Gap and other, larger department chains (Macy's, Bullocks etc.) these shoppers are actually people who are addicted to HAVING SOMETHING THAT OTHERS CANNOT HAVE. This is akin to people who live in "exclusive" housing developments, that don't allow certain ethnicity to live there. Really, it's straight out of the film "Auntie Mame." It's that kind of greed. It's EVIL.
Then, if you continue to think this through, you get to the gist of all of it. That is, if many Americans could vote for slavery, they would. But if you want an ample dose of that very real story, authored by an excellent observer of this, what we might call the true crisis of American consciousness, then you need only read the following EXTREMELY GOOD, IMPORTANT NOVEL :
"Nickle & Dimed."
In that book, the author, like Thoreau did over a century ago with regards to the environment, pretends to be a very poor woman and takes jobs at Denny's, Wal-Mart, Merry-Maid etc. and literally documents the experience.
In one scene, a woman has employed the maid service. A pregnant women who has no choice but to work for shit wages in shit conditions at this company, is scrubbing this woman's floor. The homeowner woman comes in as the pregnant woman is scrubbing her floor, offers no relief, beverage, nothing, not even a kind word, only complains that she has "missed a spot." These are the kind of people I'm talking about, a common American type of person, who would, indeed vote for slavery if they could get away with it.
FIGHTING BACK --- When my wife once hired a maid, I made it clear to her that if I heard her say one critical thing to this maid, that she would never hear the end of it from me. I told her that I would make a stink and embarrass the crap out of her (I can get very, annoyingly noisy, everyone in the family is aware of cranky daddy when he starts raving and they avoid it like poison).
I told her that she will be giving this maid an exceptionally large tip, or if she doesn't, I will steal money out of our bank account and give it to this maid.
Then, I proceeded to help the maid every step of the way, during her cleaning procedures. Every area that she had to scrub, I scrubbed the equivalent, including the most awful of things that people take for granted from cleaning services, SCRUBBING THE FUCKING SHIT OUT OF OUR TOILETS.
It astounds me that people will pay a minimum amount of money to a cleaning person for SCRUBBING THE SHIT OUT YOUR OWN TOILET, and then consider large sums for other, supposedly more "professional" business that people do. There is nothing more disgusting than having to clean the shit out of a toilet.
If I was the president, sewer workers and maids who clean toilets would be paid CEO salaries by law. Sorry, that's how I see it, according to John Stuart Mill economics : "Those who sacrifice the most deserve the biggest economic rewards."