Hey, Ralph Lauren, Sweatshops Aren't Chic
Olympic gear shouldn't come from such factories - ours or theirs.

By Robert J.S. Ross

Los Angeles Times
Op-Ed
July 19, 2012

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ross-olympics-lauren-sweatshops-20120719,0,555166.story

Ralph Lauren, the crown prince of preppy, received more than
$30 million in compensation in 2011 from the corporation he
founded and of which he and his family control about 73%. He
is on the Forbes list of billionaires. The Ralph Lauren firm
physically produces nothing: It is a design, marketing and
licensing operation that hires factories to make its stuff.
The company has had the U.S. Olympic team deal since 2008. A
men's team shirt costs $425 and a woman's skirt $498. The
beret that makes the athletes look like recruits for the U.S.
Special Forces and a T-shirt each cost $55. Perhaps it is the
high unemployment rate or the in-your-face patriotism induced
by an election year, but the news that Lauren's prep-chic
outfits are made in China has produced a rare bipartisan storm
of criticism.

Lost in the wind of words is what should be central to the
question of sourcing: conditions for the workers. If China's
workers were sharing in the full fruits of growth, we would
have a much smaller volume of American clothing made there. As
it is, more than 98% of the dollar value of the Ralph Lauren
clothing line is made abroad, much of it in China.

Without more disclosure from the company as to which firms and
factories make its goods, we can know only that Chinese
apparel workers earn, officially, somewhere between 93 cents
to just over $1 an hour; unofficially, they are often paid
less than the official minimum, which varies by province and
city. Days off are rare, despite laws that entitle them to one
day off a week. A late 2011 investigation by China Labor Watch
of factories producing for major American brands found
employees who said they worked 30 days a month. There is a
reason for this: Because wages fall so far behind rising
living costs, workers need overtime pay to survive.

Many other abuses are common in China's export factories.
Workers are housed in dorms where conditions are often crowded
and the food poor. The first month's wages are often withheld,
so if the workers quit because of bad conditions, they must
forfeit a month's wages. There is no right to form independent
unions in China; only theCommunist Party'sAll-China Federation
of Trade Unions is permitted, and it is usually a part of
management, not responsible (or even known) to the workers.
Exhaustion haunts the factory floors of China's export sector,
and since last year, allegations of suicides caused by
desperation have received worldwide attention.

Ralph Lauren now says it will produce its 2014 Winter Olympics
uniforms in the United States - immediately giving the lie to
those who shrugged off the complaints by saying we can't make
this stuff here. There are 160,000 U.S. apparel industry
workers who would love to have the chance to prove the
naysayers wrong.

In the meantime, Ralph Lauren and the U.S. Olympic Committee
could do some simple things to remove the shadow over their
respective images. The company could disclose the locations
where the Olympic teams' clothing is made. It could invite the
premier workers' rights monitoring institution, the Worker
Rights Consortium, to inspect these factories. It could agree
to abide by the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium's Model Code
of Conduct, which has three states (Maine, New York and
Pennsylvania) and 16 cities (including Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Milwaukee and Seattle) committed to fair
competition through sweatshop-free purchasing. (Full
disclosure: I am an unpaid member of the Sweatfree Purchasing
Consortium board of directors and an unpaid member of the
Advisory Committee to the Worker Rights Consortium.) The U.S.
Olympic Committee, as a quasi-public body, could join one or
both consortiums to make sure its logo gear is sweatshop free,
wherever it is made.

Olympic athletes will wear their gear at the peak of world
attention, clothed by a billionaire's company hired by a
committee of notables. Toiling at the bottom of the pyramid,
for meager pay and under terrible conditions, are those who
cut, sew, press and pack the clothing. "Faster, Higher,
Stronger": The Olympic motto might be a good pledge for
improved labor conditions in the world's sweatshops.

[Robert J.S. Ross, a professor of sociology and director of
the International Studies Stream program at Clark University
in Worcester, Mass., is the author of "Slaves to Fashion:
Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops."]

[Portside thanks the author for sharing this with Portside.]

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