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It is nearly a trillion-dollar industry that takes pride in being cutting-edge and socially conscious yet profits from virtual slave labor. It is a global market that exalts beauty yet ignores the ugly conditions that often make it possible. It is an industry that pays endorsers twenty million dollars to sell clothes made by people earning twenty cents an hour. It is the global fashion industry, and it is fraught with injustice. For all these reasons, I have a love-hate relationship with what our bubbies and zeidies called "the shmateh business." I carry a Banana Republic credit card and with each purchase I earn bonus points and a guilt trip for feeding into the sweatshop crisis. I see Gucci and my heart skips a beat. But just last week I found myself leafleting in front of their Beverly Hills outlet, alerting passers-by to the company's alleged labor abuses. I resent some fashion designers for exploiting the workers making their clothing, and at the same time wish I could afford their labels. For years now I've been searching for alternatives to clothing made in sweatshops, for "kosher" clothing, if you will. I haven't gotten very far. There's an old dictum that says "99% kosher is 100% non-kosher." Though a realistic standard for food, when it comes to clothing, one has to settle for kosher-style at best. Even when a garment is assembled under fair labor conditions, the cotton may have been spun and the buttons may have been produced under exploitative ones. And even if a company cleans up one of its subcontracted factories, there is no guarantee that it will do the same to the hundreds of other factories it utilizes. "Kosher" clothing is clothing made under just and humane working conditions, that is, not in sweatshops. The reality is that most of the clothing we buy and wear is made in sweatshops, where workers around the world (including the United States) -- mostly women and children -- are subjected to appalling conditions, including sub-minimum wages, no overtime pay, sexual harassment, restricted bathroom breaks and even threats of job termination for female employees who become pregnant or refuse to have abortions. And in places like U.S. Saipan, an American territory where clothing is tagged "Made in the USA," indentured labor is rampant: thousands of Asian immigrants pay exorbitant "recruitment fees" to work in garment factories, where they work in conditions of virtual slavery in order to pay off debts to their recruiters. Sneaky. The difficulty of finding "kosher" clothing lies in the structure of the global apparel industry, and in the laissez-faire economy in which it thrives. Retailers (sometimes manufacturers themselves producing their own lines of clothing) buy apparel from manufacturers (sometimes themselves retailers selling their own lines) who farm out their brand names to numerous contractors and subcontractors around the world who, in turn, employ millions of workers. The elaborate subcontracting networks make it easy for the "big fish" at the top of the chain -- the retailers and manufacturers -- to shirk responsibility for labor abuses that take place in factories where their clothing is made by claiming that they have no control over a subcontractor's internal affairs. What makes it even easier is the absence of mechanisms, such as legislation, to regulate the abuses. As Jews, we are no strangers to the business. We've been employees, employers, union organizers and victims of factory fires. Our history is replete with examples of slave labor and exploitation, and our tradition, with calls to combat the injustices. We are told never to forget the stranger, the widow and the orphan. We are never to neglect the needy. Right now, billions of people around the world are living below the subsistence line. For some, this is because of natural disaster or disease; for others, it is because of unchecked corporate greed. It is critical to understand that sweatshops are a human-made problem, and that as humans we have the power to correct it. But it is no simple task. It is important first to recognize your power as a consumer. As big as the apparel titans may be, they are still beholden to the consumer and stockholder with purchasing power. Become a more engaged consumer. Check labels to see where garments are made. And if it's a country with a particularly egregious history of human rights abuses, you might want to reconsider your purchase. Become a more engaged citizen. Make sure your tax dollars don't pay for city uniforms made in sweatshops. And instead of checking your Hotmail inbox now, go to sweatshopwatch.org, behindthelabel.org, or the hundreds of other Web sites dedicated to erasing sweatshops off the face of the earth. For information from the UAHC on Sweatshops and what your congregation can do, check out: Sweatshops: Raising Awareness in Congregations This might not change the world. But it's a start. Anat Tamir is the Program and Administrative Associate at Progressive Jewish Alliance (PJA), chief coordinator of PJA's economic justice work, and author of "Sweatshop Lexicon: All You Need to Know in Sweatshop Terms" (available at www.pjalliance.org), as well as PJA's anti-sweatshop educational materials, to be released in December 2002.
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