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  • Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops
  • John T. Cumbler
Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops. By Robert J.S. Ross ( Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. xii plus 396 pp. $19.95 Pb.).

When I was growing up buying clothes often led to the humming of the jingle, "look for the union label." We believed it was the way one shopped responsibly. The jingle and the practice of buying clothing with a union label symbolized the link between one's actions as a consumer and decent working conditions, a living wage, and a fair society. We believed it was natural for people to want to live in a world where people were paid well and the production of goods one consumed did not impoverish and exploit someone else. In buying union made goods one engaged in a fair exchange: you gave money to gain clothes and somewhere else someone was paid wages that they spent paying mortgages, going on vacations and participating in the bounty of post-world war II America. In those patriotic years we believed that was what America stood for, and it was that world we were pledging allegiance to each day in school.

Today "look for the union label," is an anachronism. Finding a union label in a clothing store or Wal-Mart is a search even Diogenes would abandon.

Robert Ross's Slaves to Fashion tells the story of the transformation from an America that had for all practical purposes banished the sweatshop to history books to one where hundreds of thousands labor under sweatshop conditions both abroad and at home. Ross's story is one of both victory and declension. He tell how through a combination of successful worker collective action and unionization, support from upper and middle-class allies, and government action and legislation from the 1910-1941, the U.S. was able to end sweatshop labor in the garment industry. But the substantive part of Ross's work is the story of the reemergence of the sweatshop both here and abroad with its characteristic pattern of child labor, long hours, appalling conditions and miserable pay that continues to grow with expanding globalization. [End Page 255]

Ross defines sweatshops as places that have some or all the following characteristics: they fail to pay minimum wages, have long hours not remunerated with premium pay, employ child labor and lack adequate benefits. Sadly such places are not confined to third world countries, but increasingly are found within the US, although their presence in the U.S. is tied, Ross argues, with their expansion overseas.

Ross points out that although labor productivity in the American garment industry has outpaced productivity in the general economy, America is still hemorrhaging jobs in garments. In 1950 there were over a million garment workers in the U. S. earning approximately 86% of the average manufacturing wage. Today there are less than 350,000 making less than 60% of the average manufacturing wage. Close to 255,000 work in sweatshops. Despite high levels of labor productivity and closeness to the fashion center, the American garment industry is moving away to regions of the world where unions and legislative protections of workers rights and health are at a minimum. These low-wage, union-free-countries pull down wages at home as manufacturers threaten to move if faced with a union drive or even the possibility of paying minimum wage for the hours worked. In a detailed analysis Ross shows how these conditions have emerged and how prevalent they have become in this country. He also demonstrates the link between the emergence of sweatshops in America and the exploitation of workers abroad.

The old pattern of subcontracting that sweated so many garment workers in the nineteenth century has returned with a vengeance. Large wealthy clothing companies and retailers such as Wal-Mart contract out the production of their clothing line to companies that in turn subdivide and subcontract out. Garment production is a low capital-intensive industry. It is easy to rent or buy sewing machines and a floor of a building, set up a company and bid for the contract to...

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