With Concern for the Garment District...

With forethought and hope, I have been continuing my ban on Chinese products but now it looks like I’ll have to include the rest of Asia as well. It’s been tough…I really try hard not to purchase these products, but our economy is such a whore to Asia that nary an American (or European, or South American) product is in sight.

I, maybe somewhat naively, thought all Asian factories were the same. They all get the same orders from the people at Company X and the workers get paid in rice and so on and so forth. There’s not much I can do about that but ban my consumption. I don’t even eat Chinese food.

Continue reading for a list of sweatshop - free companies - because Asians are humans too. In case you were wondering.

Then I learned about Cambodia. I am falling in love with this country. I was listening to This American Life on the radio and heard that Cambodia has amazing labor laws which rival our own out here in the developed world. To quote from FashionIncubator.com :

“Imagine a nation where the sewing industry is characterized by:

Eight hour work days
Seamstresses earn two to three times as much as teachers and policemen.
Child labor is unheard of.
All overtime is paid.
Free medical care on site.
Three months paid maternity leave.
Employers must give breast feeding mothers unimpeded access to their infants
Forty three paid vacation days per year (no, we’re not talking about France, although it once was a French colony).

Does this sound like Shangri la? It’s not. It’s Cambodia; the only poor country in the world to guarantee fair labor practices in the needle trades. Comparatively, their successes far outweigh the standards used in more developed nations. Yes, Cambodia, where one third of the population was killed during the civil war in the 70’s. Today, the needle trade amounts to nearly 100% of the nation’s exports and one third of GDP, thanks to a program instituted under the Clinton Administration. Then, Cambodia agreed to become an unlikely experiment in quality manufacturing and workplace standards, agreeing to random and unsceduled factory monitoring. By all accounts, the experiment was a rousing success. That is until preferential trade practices expired in 2005. Then, it seemed that all could be undone.”

Outsourcing you can feel good about. Though still and underdeveloped country whose teachers and civil servants, etc. are underpaid (hey, not much different than here), their garment industry is leaps and bounds above China’s horror show.

And now, as promised, links to buying super cute, sweat-shop free clothes and other items:

Sweatshop Watch’s Shop With a Conscience

Behind the Label

It won’t keep you up at night to shop at:

American Apparel
Gap Inc. (with 45 factories in Cambodia)
Levi’s (also with large presence in Cambodia)

You’ll have nightmares about:

Nike
Wal-mart (of course)

I’m trying to find more…but these big companies are pretty sneaky.