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TechnoratiNPR Debate Moderators All Wet on Sweatshop Labor
At the NPR Democratic candidates' debate in Iowa on Tuesday, the topic of global sweatshops finally reared its head. But the way debate moderators framed the issue revealed ignorance about the realities of globalized trade and labor. And despite significant focus on U.S. trade with China throughout the evening, no candidates confronted the moderators' contentions directly.
An Iowa caller asked whether Americans would be willing to pay $600 for TVs instead of $300 for Chinese-made TVs. NPR's Michele Norris accepted the caller's logic and followed up by asking the candidates if they are willing to use their leverage to improve labor standards in China, "even if it means that consumers have to kiss those $300 televisions goodbye?" NPR reporter Steve Inskeep piled on. Referring to "the $300 TVs versus the $600 TVs," he asked, "Are any of you willing to state frankly" that if the U.S. cracks down on Chinese labor standards, "Americans are going to pay more for consumer goods at Wal-Mart. Is anyone willing to state frankly that that is the tradeoff?"
Barack Obama took the bait. He hadn't met a single worker in Iowa, he said, who "wouldn't rather pay a little bit more for sneakers at Wal-Mart and still have a job."
Whether he knew it or not, Obama was right, although he didn't directly challenge the reporters' contention that improving labor standards could double the cost of Chinese-made consumer goods in the U.S.
Improving labor standards would, in fact, only cost American consumers a "little bit" more, but it would dramatically improve the living conditions of Chinese workers.
The reality is that U.S. companies that manufacture sneakers, clothing, toys, and other goods can afford to significantly increase Chinese workers' wages without American consumers feeling any pain.
According to Jeff Ballinger, a labor studies professor at Webster University and an expert on sweatshops, Chinese workers only earn about one percent of the retail price of the clothing they produce. The Chinese workers who produce a Nike sneaker that costs $70 in American stores earn only 60 to 80 cents per sneaker, Ballinger said. He added that doubling that wage would bring Chinese workers up from that subsistence level to a "living wage" by Chinese standards. If Nike passed that wage increase on to U.S. consumers, the retail price of that sneaker would increase from $70 to no more than $71. Just like Obama said, a "little bit" more.
Ballinger calculates that Nike could afford to double the wages of the estimated 160,000 workers who produce its sneakers around the world -- about 40% of them in China -- without raising the consumer price at all. Nike sold about 280 million sneakers, cross-trainers and running shoes last year. Doubling manufacturing workers' wages in China would cost Nike, which last year had revenues of almost $14 billion a year, only $210 million a year.
During the 1970's, most Nike shoes were made in South Korea and Taiwan. When workers there gained new freedom to organize and wages began to rise, Nike moved most of its production to China, Indonesia, and Vietnam-- countries with weak labor laws and where workers are easily abused.
Nike products are made in giant factories owned by contractors, who operate under standards set by Nike management in Oregon. Nike tells its contractors what designs and fabric to use, and how much they'll pay for each sneaker. Nike knows in advance what Chinese workers will earn under that arrangement. Nike sets the rules.
If Chinese workers earn only 60 to 80 cents of a sneaker that sells for $70 in U.S. stores, who gets the rest of the money? The contractor in China pays for the materials, machines, overhead, and earns a profit. The U.S. retailers (dominated by large chains like Wal-Mart) pay for shipping, overhead, and advertising, and take a big slice in profits. Nike, of course, pays for designing the shoes, marketing and publicizing the brand so that every American recognizes the swoosh, and makes a huge profit. The Chinese workers get the scraps.
"Labor costs in the Third World are so small as a percentage of the retail price of products, and as a percentage of the revenues of US corporations, that the wages of overseas sweatshop workers could be doubled or tripled with little or no increase for American consumers," explained Scott Nova, executive director of the Workers Rights Consortium, a nonprofit labor rights group. "The corporations have made it very clear, however, that they will not pay a living wage - unless consumer pressure or public regulation compels them to do so."
For more than a decade, consumer, student and labor activists have held Nike's corporate feet to the fire, protesting its abusive sweatshop practices. In response, Nike has adopted "corporate social responsibility" standards, and made some improvements, but they are too weak and poorly enforced. The U.S. is the China's largest trading partner. Companies like Nike and Wal-Mart, who depend on their public image to generate consumer loyalty, will raise the standards of their Chinese workers if they are required to do so by trade agreements with the U.S. and other countries.
All the Democratic candidates agreed that the U.S. should "get tough" with China on environmental and labor standards. But cracking down on China also means challenging some of America's largest companies that move jobs to China to take advantage of cheap labor. As John Edwards said at Tuesday's NPR debate, U.S. trade policy has "catered to the interests of big corporate America" rather than U.S. workers and consumers.
Improving the living and working conditions of manufacturing employees in China -- or Mexico, Bangladesh, or other low-wage countries -- need not be at the expense of American workers or consumers. Using America's leverage to give workers in those nations the right to organize unions, a living wage, and safe workplaces benefits Americans. Wall Street and the WTO would prefer to foster a "race to the bottom," pitting US workers against those in low-wage countries. But if we're going to have a global market for US- made products, we need to help raise the wages and living standards of workers in China, Mexico and elsewhere.
Surveys show that American consumers are willing to pay more for consumer goods if they know they are made under decent conditions. Sweatshops -- or what Sen. Chris Dodd called "slave labor" -- are not inevitable or even necessary, in the U.S. or anywhere else.
The Democratic candidates should commit to supporting legislation that would require companies that manufacture goods for the US market pay its workers a living wage and respect their right to organize and have safe workplaces. The U.S. should put the legal responsibility on American corporations that import goods from China and elsewhere to make sure its suppliers comply with these workers' rights and, as in the recent controversy with Chinese toys, guarantee that these products are safe for consumers.
The candidates should support campaigns and policy proposals by United Students Against Sweatshops, the Worker Rights Consortium, the National Labor Committee, and UNITE HERE, the clothing workers union, to rid the world of sweatshops and allow American consumers to shop with a conscience.
Peter Dreier is E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program, at Occidental College. He is coauthor of Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century and The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City.
Copyright © 2007 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
18 Comments so far
Show AllI started listening to NPR in the '70s. They have come a LONG WAY since then and turned RIGHT. This was confirmed to me after BushCo stole the 2000 election. I wrote to NPR protesting. No response. I wrote to NPR's ombudsman protesting. No response. Finally, I contacted my local NPR station and withdrew my membership. NPR TURNS MY STOMACH. I will have nothing further to do with them!
If it is true that Americans would prefer to save a bit of money on the cost of their TV sets even when those savings come at the cost of immense suffering of the part of other people, then Americans have sold their souls to the devil. If this is true (and I think it is), then American consumerism is a foul Faustian bargain with the devil. Have we no shame? This is what the response to the question should have been. But what else should we have expected from these Presidential candidates? After all, they're appealing to American voters who pay little attention to the suffering of others.
Economies, like corporations and religions are as much about social control as they are about transferring wealth to the richfilth. Workers are always the first enemy.
Anyone who wants to run a feudalistic, top down, authoritarian state run by richfilth & their Overseers wants "their" workers, all workers, exhausted, mal-nourished, living at subsistence levels and religious to a point of superstition - you bet Master wants you to focus on the "next life" or "afterlife" anything but how he's fucking us now. Its much like someone obsessed by fear.
When a person is beaten down by grinding poverty & possessed by religious mania or fear, resistance is greatly diminished & atomized. For a while. Then they figure out that nobody's coming down on a golden cloud to save them and their next life is going to be even worse than this one, e.g. there isn't going to be enough potable water for everyone - not when it goes to the highest bidder.
The fallacy of richfilth is that in every generation they believe they are faster, smarter, quicker, & sharper than all the richfilth generations who came before them. THEY CAN OWN ALL THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD!!!
Then we cut their heads off and we try some different thing . Who knows, maybe next time we'll try participatory democracy.
Stranger things have happened. Let's do it before the planet is too degraded to live on. For anybody, religious or otherwise.
May the Habiru flat-earth genocidal blood god Yahweh bless your kiddie soccer team and bring them glorious Victories, oh, yes, and all your Armies of Conquest too! Xrstians....
Pieces of 8.
It does not take long to undermine the fabric of America.
Losing objectivity on NPR or the FCC is only the beginning of right wing domination of the airwaves.
Just one or two more Republican appointments to the Supreme Court and we move much closer to literal interpretation of the Bible.
"There must be something in books, things we can't imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don't stay for nothing."
Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Does anyone remember that NPR was endowed with about $250 million just a few years ago? Have they become bolder, more independent in the time since? Fewer commercials interrupting things? Fewer corporate "make nice" shadows over everything they do? Bullshit---The reporters are more self-indulgent than ever, shamelessly promoting each other's "new book" full of narcissistic crap; and people nearest the trough are as usual stuffing themselves with nice salaries, offices and all the rest, and the "news" continues to get worse, fit only for people in a nursing home....
If we can't demand a new universal mission statement for all stock market listed companies, one that recognises environmental and humanitarian responsibility, then we are sunk!
We currently accept that every stock market listed company (world wide), recognises only its duty investors/shareholders to make profits.
And so we are where we are.
It's harder to maintain slave-labor camps in your own neighborhood - just ask the people who lived through the fascist years of Nazi Germany. Concentration camps were placed in locations were they wouldn't attract much attention - and in an occupied country, who would dare object and risk getting sent to one anyway? It's always easier to enslave people who are far away and out of sight - that's the way it's been done for thousands of years. That's why corporations (fascists) do business that way.
The issue seems to miss the whole environmental aspect of shipping cheap goods all the way from Asia, etc. I think it's time we learned to shop locally, for our health and the health of the planet. If not locally, as close to home as possible. There are a lot of things advertised that we don't really need.What we DO need is a different economic system that isn't cancerous.
NPR = National Pasteurized Radio
Well, at least NPR was able to talk about something other than Israel, Iraq or Iran for a minute or two. I largely quit listening to it due to its increasing irrelevance to my life.
I don't think it "revealed ignorance" about the issues, though. On the contrary, NPR may be falling from grace. At this rate it may look like Voice of America in a few years, more interested in propaganda than hardcore analysis. With some human interest stories tossed in. Americans never were able to rise to the BBC (not without its own faults).
NPR = Nazi Propagand Radio
I didn't see the debate, but something tells me that Kucinich had the best response.
Hersey's Chocolate recently announced that they are closing their huge factory in Oakdale, CA and moving their operations to Mexico. One reason they gave was that they would save $190 million a year in labor costs.
Dennis Kucinich will cancel NAFTA his first day in office. If we had a bilateral trade relationship with Mexico we could then put an import duty on chocolate. In this case, it looks like it should be $190 million, per year.
It's funny--the author blames NPR for reframing the question as an acceptance that raising wages in China would double the price. He, himself, is reframing the question by assuming that the questioner meant for the job to remain in China. I think what they are asking is if we are willing to pay more to have items made in the U.S. again by Americans making a fair wage.
And let's not forget that low labor prices aren't the only reason for going to China--it's also about the lack of environmental controls. We need a tough president who will demand that all imports are made to the same tough standards set for manufacturers in the States.
AdeleTheCzech hits this one right on the head.
Also, there is the whole notion that we should appeal to the employers' sense of "corporate responsibility" by urging them to improve wages and standards, etc.
That notion is absurd. The reasons that these manufacturers went offshore in the first place is that they were able to find repressive governments that will brutally enforce slave labor conditions, holding wages to about 1% of the final price.
The only things that will change this situation are powerful labor unions and progressive politcal parties who demand full workers' rights and living standards in the host nations.
We should also discard the myth that we are somehow able to help these workers by cutting deals with their employers to have "labor rights" inspectors come in and certify that they are not running sweatshops.
If the labor unions and the political parties in the US were able to do that here, they would have. But they are so bought into the system under the ideology of business unionism that they are impotent to the point of embarrasment. It would be funny if so many lives weren't being deformed and destroyed.
It is not isolationist to demand that US unions and political parties in the focus at home to figure out how to dismantle the fascisct government that has taken over this nation and stand up to the employers that are driving the vast majority of US citizens and immigrant workers alike into poverty and debased lives.
Only then we can join our sisters and brothers abroad as co-equals in the fight to save humanity from itself and capitalist/corporate domination.
The emphasis in this article is entirely on the plight of OVERSEAS workers, while the U.S. economy has been hemorrhaging good union manufacturing jobs since the 1990s. This has turned millions of American families into two-worker households who can barely stay in the middle class, have inadequate medical insurance or none at all, and whose latchkey kids are at risk from lack of supervision.
China and India have enormous internal markets for all kind of goods and services. Why are their workers making goods for export instead of attending to their own needs? Who makes these decisions, when allocating huge amounts of capital to put up yet another factory?
Peter Dreier asserts, "Improving the living and working conditions of manufacturing employees in China — or Mexico, Bangladesh, or other low-wage countries — need not be at the expense of American workers or consumers." If he's thinking of 50 years from now, maybe so. But in the meantime that policy will relegate a whole generation of Americans without college degrees to permanent poverty -- unless we pass laws that mandate "Made in the U.S.A." on all new alternative energy products coming on line in the next decade. Don't hold your breath, though. They'll demonize it as "Protectionism." (I call it being self-sufficient!)
For more campaigns and policy ideas on international labor issues, check out the International Labor Rights Forum at http://www.LaborRights.org (or their blog at http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com).
So even NPR reporters have become corporate stooges.
I was one who lost my dog last year to poisoned dog food. I thought I was feeding him high quality food. I think the US companies who bought ingredients on the cheap should be hit with lawsuits for poisoning our pets, our children, and even our toothpaste. Now I don't want to touch anything made in China. And if you think we have it bad, be glad you don't live in China. I read horror stories about their own food, their pharmaceuticals. They need to sort it out. It's capitalism run amok over there. Of course we're not far behind over here either.