From Michelle Weinberg's, "For Every Action," Fall '99 From Michelle Weinberg's, "For Every Action," Fall '99How can we tell whether or not the products we buy were produced in a sweatshop? Whether or not the shirt we are wearing today was stitched together by a young girl working 16 hour days without overtime pay in an unsanitary factory? Whether or not the shoes on our feet were once in the hands of a worker who produced them for wages of mere pennies per hour? In recent months, students at schools across the country have launched protests demanding codes of conduct for the various companies licensed to produce university apparel. While these actions are positive, simply following a code of conduct for university apparel should not delude us into believing that we've actually made a major impact in alleviating the problem of sweatshops. Collegiate apparel forms an incredibly small percentage of clothing that is produced in sweatshops. Even if we may someday be able to feel a little more confident that our "University of Pennsylvania" T-shirts were not produced in a sweatshop, the fact remains that a large amount of the clothing we purchase is still produced under oppressive and unacceptable working conditions. The heart of the problem lies with major retailers -- companies ranging from Wal-Mart to the Gap to Liz Claiborne to Nike have all been accused of selling products produced in sweatshops. But the solution is not as simple as demanding that these companies institute codes of conduct. Last Wednesday, Simon Pestridge of Nike's Labor Practices Division came to speak at the Wharton School to discuss his company's policies for dealing with the factories hired to produce Nike products. After leaving this talk, the one impression that stood out in my mind was that negative publicity against Nike and its labor practices was the catalyst for action by Nike officials, not any sense of obligation to their workers. I left the discussion both hopeful and discouraged -- hopeful that Nike would continue their efforts to improve labor conditions and discouraged that such a large corporation by itself had only a small impact. Pestridge pointed out the difficulties in monitoring production in the approximately 350 factories in 32 countries in which Nike goods are manufactured, a relatively small number of factories compared to the thousands which companies like the Gap and Disney use to manufacture their goods. And, according to Pestridge, Nike is more progressive than other corporations, seriously attempting to implement codes of conduct in many of their factories. He claims they have raised minimum age to 16 in most factories and 18 in others, raised their minimum wage in their Indonesian factories and have been monitoring air standards and other health quality issues quarterly. However, one major problem which Pestridge cited as hindering Nike's ability to effectively change conditions is that the company is rarely the only corporation using a given factory. Unless all the companies using a factory demand similar standards, sweatshop conditions will continue to exist. While changes in a few companies' policies can make a small difference, I am still left feeling very confused as to the ultimate solutions. Perhaps it is the job of governments to eradicate the poverty that creates the need and willingness for people to work for such low wages. I can't even comprehend the new set of problems that that brings into the picture. And that is a fact which makes me very uncomfortable.
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