Child sweatshop shame threatens Gap's ethical image

[OhioChick]

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Top store reacts with horror after Observer investigation reveals children making clothes for Xmas market. Dan McDougall reports from New Delhi.

Sunday October 28, 2007

Amitosh concentrates as he pulls the loops of thread through tiny plastic beads and sequins on the toddler's blouse he is making. Dripping with sweat, his hair is thinly coated in dust. In Hindi his name means 'happiness'. The hand-embroidered garment on which his tiny needle is working bears the distinctive logo of international fashion chain Gap. Amitosh is 10.

The hardships that blight his young life, exposed by an undercover Observer investigation in the back streets of New Delhi, reveal a tragic consequence of the West's demand for cheap clothing. It exposes how, despite Gap's rigorous social audit systems launched in 2004 to weed out child labour in its production processes, the system is being abused by unscrupulous subcontractors. The result is that children, in this case working in conditions close to slavery, appear to still be making some of its clothes.

Gap's own policy is that if it discovers children being used by contractors to make its clothes that contractor must remove the child from the workplace, provide it with access to schooling and a wage, and guarantee the opportunity of work on reaching a legal working age.

Read more: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,2200573,00.html

---

Shame on The Gap.

[billyoc]

1. "We're shocked, SHOCKED, I tell you!"

Fucking liars. :grr:

[saigon68]

31. And if the fucking wholesale cost of a shirt is 18 Cents US

You can BET there was some Exploitation or Child Labor that went into its production.

These low lifes who run this racket are criminals

[billyoc]

33. Notice you still have to pay $35, though. nt

[Sabriel]

2. Another supplier down the tubes

It's getting hard to find ethically made clothing. Any ideas?

[OhioChick]

3. It's Getting Quite Difficult

to find anything made in the US, anymore. I'm finding a surplus of clothing, bedding, etc. made in either China or India.

Beware.....I've noticed many products with a big American flag on them.....only to find "Made in China" in small print hidden on the bottom.

[Critters2]

7. I found some Earth Shoes with an American flag sticker

Under the flag were the words "designed in USA". Inside the shoes the words "Made in China". I'll never buy Earth Shoes again. I don't like people trying to lie to me.

[hedgehog]

24. What are you complaining about? The Earth Shoes people were merely

triangulating between people who want to buy American made goods and stockholder who want bigger profits. After all, the design was American sourced, was it not?

[Tumbulu]

4. gap has always been the worst

I had a textile engineering friend who said he would not wish business from them on his worst enemy. They exploit their mills, their buyers, their designers. Everyone. They started the globalized clothing thing here in the US. They put all the companies that had really good corporate policies out of business or nearly so. What they did to Levi's. Yikes. Levi's had these fabulous policies in the 80's and 90's. Everywhere they made jeans those jeans were made from local cotton, spun in local mills and cut and sewn locally and all mills worldwide had to adopt US environmental standards, which are quite high. This had a huge impact on the environment around textile mills. So, jeans made in Europe came from European cotton- or close (Spain, Greece and Turkey). They were made in Europe and sold to Europeans. The same for Asia and for the US everything came from US. And all mills cleaned up their waste. Then gap came in and offered similar jeans for way less money. Why they were only made with slave labor from mills in places where the dye wastes were dumped directly into rivers- clean up of wastes costs $$$ and then they used the ruinous profits to pay off politicians to get rid of textile tariffs so they could import more and more. Lands End, LL Bean, Levi's and others tried so valiantly to keep their markets, but everyone seems to have been seduced by the lower and lower prices. We used to have the biggest textile industry in our country, and now it is decimated. In a mere 10 years. Lower prices mean exploitation. It is as simple as that. Cheap meat means tortured animals. Cheap clothes mean exploited people. It is that simple. Raw capitalism at it's worst.

They were and still are slime of the earth.

Learn to sew, knit and weave. Make your own clothes, it is much more fun.

[shanti]

12. great post!

welcome to DU! :hi: i do sew and knit, which is in a resurgence.

[Blue_Tires]

36. welcome to the site!

[lynnertic]

10. learn to sew.

[Honeycombe8]

20. No can do. I work mucho hours doing something else, so I can pay living costs.

I need to BUY essentials like clothing and food. I can do mending and have a small garden, though. More than that...I just don't have the time.

[lynnertic]

22. And thus the sweatshops to fill your need for essentials.

good luck on your quest for humane clothing. I suggest avoiding synthetic fibers too, they're manufactured from fossil fuels.

[Honeycombe8]

37. I wonder what makes you think sweatshops manufacture what I wear?

Since I haven't told you where I shop, what I buy, or my philosophy...there's no way you could possibly know that. Except, of course, the low-price manufacturers permeate our retail outlets, so it's virtually impossible to buy anything that isn't made in another country. That doesn't mean they're made by sweatshops, though.

In any case, I apologize to no one for working for a living. That's, like, a good thing, dude.

[kentauros]

13. Here's a good place to start

TreeHugger.com: How To Green Your Wardrobe

:)

[Le Taz Hot]

15. I don't see anything about where this stuff is made.

Did I miss it?

And, btw, welcome to DU. :hi:

[Honeycombe8]

21. Great link with tons of info. Thanks. (Oh, BTW....

the post you responded to is not about being green, but about the type of labor used in manufacturing the items, so...that's why you may have gotten a couple of quizzical responses to your post.) But in any case, the links are a great resource of shopping places and general green information, so thanks!

[burrowowl]

26. Thanks and Welocme to DU!

:toast:

[otherlander]

32. Welcome to D.U.

and thanks for the link.

I really like the Swaparamarama idea.

Rage Baby sounds fucking awesome. :thumbsup: Seeing that made me want to post this, even though it has nothing to do with clothing:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FaSinPat
"FaSinPat, formerly known as Zanon, is a worker-controlled ceramic tile factory in the southern Argentine province of Neuquén, and one of the most prominent in the recovered factory movement of Argentina. The name is short for Fábrica Sin Patrones, which means "Factory Without Bosses" in Spanish."

(More info at link)

[arikara]

40. Buy vintage from garage sales, thrift stores and ebay

I have some very nice clothes that I paid anywhere from 25 cents to as much as 5 or 10 dollars for. Clothes that actually were made in the US, Canada and England by union labour.

I never set foot into those horrible predatory stores.

[Oldenuff]

5. The plan plays out the same regardless of country

Whether it's China or Thailand or Bangladesh.These clothing maufacturers all have so-called "Social Audit Systems" (the term changes depending on the company",but it's all called "deniability" and is total BS.

The real prevailing attitude is "Ethics be Damned..We've got a profit to make".These same retailers are also busy using "sub-contactors" to pit one countries work force against the other in a race to the bottom on wages....All Hail WalMart!!!..(Cheney's idea of the perfect corporate model)

Here is a quote that seems appropriate here:

I pity the man who wants a coat so cheap that the man or woman who produces the cloth will starve in the process.
-- Benjamin Harrison

[Le Taz Hot]

16. Great quote!!!

That should be a post all its own.

[Robbien]

6. Not that this is not bad, but why are they going after The Gap?

Isn't just about every single garment coming out of China made in some sweatshop?

[lonestarnot]

17. LOL!

Phillipines, Tiawan, Thialand, Hong Kong etc.

[Mabus]

18. Or the GOP's favorite: The Marianas islands with their "Made in America" labels

Abramoff and DeLay.

Because they were produced in a territory of the United States, garments traveled tariff-free and quota-free to the profitable U.S. market and were entitled to display the coveted "Made in the USA" label.

Among the manufacturers that had profited from the un-free labor market on the island were Tommy Hilfiger USA, Gap, Calvin Klein and Liz Claiborne.

Moved by the sworn testimony of U.S. officials and human-rights advocates that the 91 percent of the workforce who were immigrants -- from China, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh -- were being paid barely half the U.S. minimum hourly wage and were forced to live behind barbed wire in squalid shacks minus plumbing, work 12 hours a day, often seven days a week, without any of the legal protections U.S. workers are guaranteed, Murkowski wrote a bill to extend the protection of U.S. labor and minimum-wage laws to the workers in the U.S. territory of the Northern Marianas.

So compelling was the case for change the Alaska Republican marshaled that in early 2000, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Murkowski worker reform bill.

But one man primarily stopped the U.S. House from even considering that worker-reform bill: then-House Republican Whip Tom DeLay.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/05/09/real.delay/

[lonestarnot]

41. kick

[Peace Patriot]

23. Why go after Gap? Partly because Gap (which also includes Banana Republic and

Old Navy) has fooled so many people. They have an incredible "spin" department, which has created a "progressive" image that is entirely false. Also, because Donald Fisher--scion of the Gap empire--helped write the WTO textile rules that resulted in the proliferation of sweatshops worldwide (Gap is a key political player in the global looting expedition), and furthermore has used their massive fortune--built on the backs of slave labor--to purchase one fifth of the redwood forest land in Mendocino County, California, where the family logging company is now destroying the very last of the old growth, and is extirpating the very last of the endangered species in these already raked over forests (previously owned and logged by Louisiana Pacific), probably as a real estate speculation. They are also clear-cutting and using toxic pesticides, and have greatly undermined California environmental laws and public oversight provisions. See www.gapsucks.org for details.

Gap gets its cotton from the extremely poisoned cotton fields of Uzbekistan, then moves cotton and cloth around the globe, seeking the cheapest, most unprotected labor markets. They were using the Bushite sweatshops in Saipan (Tom Delay-connected) as well (and got sued by Global Exchange for putting a 'Made in USA' label on those clothes). (Young women flown in, from the poorest Asian countries, and indentured for their passage--no labor rights; literally indentured slaves.) The final product is then shipped to the U.S. and other high end markets, and marked up at tremendous profit. This global tanker traffic is also highly polluting of the oceans, contributing to global warming (while they clear-cut forests in northern California, which should be left standing as carbon sinks). And why do you think we have a war in the Middle East? Those tankers need lots of oil.

Gap's "progressive" reputation in San Francisco is a lot of hooey. They are MAJOR global corporate predators. And their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

[Robbien]

25. Good answer.

All stuff I didn't know.

I've not stepped a foot inside The GAP/etal, and now that is never going to happen.

[NeoConsSuck]

27. Thanks for the info, PP

I won't do any of my shopping in Gap.

[Earth_First]

8. Gap, Old Navy & Banana Republic

All owned by the same family/corporation.

[JVS]

9. The Gap had an ethical image?

Who'd a thunk it?

[Beerboy]

35. My first thought exactly,

and which PR firm did they pay to confer said image upon them?

[depakid]

42. Have to cut the Guardian a break

They're a bit far away, and don't have much reason to have followed the antics of the Fisher family that runs The Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy.

[XemaSab]

11. Gap Unveils New 'For Kids By Kids' Clothing Line

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/gap_unveils_new_for_kids_by_kids

[panzerfaust]

14. LIFE: 1996 June NIKE

Does anyone remember this Pakistani soccer-ball maker:


The June 1996 issue of Life magazine ran an article which first raised the issue of child-labor for the 'modern generation' (Schanberg, Sydney H. "Six Cents an Hour." Life June 1996. 38-46).

Truly this exploitation (or 'opportunity' as a Compassionate Conservative would put it) is NOT the fault of The GAP or of any retailer. It is the fault of those who choose to buy unbelievably cheap goods.

If someone offers an iPhone for $99 you know that it is either stolen, or counterfeit. Likewise, if you can buy a hand embroidered shirt or blouse for 29.95 you know that it was made by child-labor.

The choice is yours.

[AnotherMother4Peace]

19. Shame on the Gap - & Christmas lights made by Chinese political prisoners

I have no link - I heard testimony on one of the C-SPAN channels this week. It was from a distinguished elderly man who described his many years of incarceration as a political prisoner in China. He told of making Christmas lights and artificial flowers. I won't be buying these items again.

edit for punctuation

[Omaha Steve]

28. Gap Admits Possible Child Labor Problem

Source: ABC

Journalist Videotapes Conditions at Subcontractor Plant; Gap Official Tells ABC News, 'This Is Completely Unacceptable'

By HILARY BROWN From World News with Charles Gibson

The multi-billion dollar global fashion company Gap has admitted that it may have unknowingly used child labor in the production of a line of children's clothing in India.

This followed allegations by an investigative reporter based in Delhi, whose story was splashed across two pages of the British paper The Observer on Sunday.

ABC News obtained some of the video material he used to substantiate his story. It shows children who appeared to be between the ages of 10 and 13, stitching embroidered shirts in a crowded, dimly lit work-room. The video clearly shows a Gap label on the back of each garment.


A vendor that produced clothing for Gap stores is accused of using child labor in India. (ABC News)

The reporter, Dan McDougall, said the children were working without pay as virtual slaves in filthy conditions, with a single, backed-up latrine and bowls of rice covered with flies. They slept on the roof, he said.

Read more: http://www.abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3787304&page=1

[TroubleMan]

29. I guess that's what they mean by "Baby Gap."

Babies are making it.

[MikeNearMcChord]

30. Possible?

That is like the late Ken Lay admitting there was a "possible" problem with the books at Enron.

[Fierce]

34. Well, surprise, surprise!

Not.

[conspirator]

38. And the good thing about our corporate hierarchical society: no one is responsible

:sarcasm:

[Canuckistanian]

39. Wow. Who knew?

Not that The Gap used child laborers, but that they have an 'ethical image'.