In a recent article in Harper’s Magazine, freelance writer Ken Silverstein investigates Cambodian sweatshops. He uncovers several major American t-shirt distributers that utilize the services of impoverished Cambodian women; two such corporations are Wal-Mart and Aeropostale.
The subtitle of the article, “The human cost of a two-dollar T-shirt,” caught my interest because I had recently bought a slew of two-dollar t-shirts that I had planned to create original designs for and sell on this website. However, I abandoned the concept in favor of outsourcing to a t-shirt design specialist that could produce higher quality t-shirts with my designs on them.
These t-shirts can be found here.
Anyway, I am not surprised that t-shirts are produced in such a way. This was a big issue in the ‘90s with Nike, and to this day, I rarely buy Nike products for that reason. According to Silverstein’s article, however, Nike has since taken measures to improve the working conditions in third-world sweatshops. In all honesty–if you didn’t already know–the damage has already been done, as the co-founder of Nike, Phil Knight, is one of the 50 richest men in the world today.
The other key piece of information that Silverstein’s article unveiled was his estimates of the sheer profits made annually off each employee. Exploiting cheap labor, paying bare-minimum prices for the products produced, and selling those sweatshop products to Americans with ridiculous markups makes major profits for clothing retailers.
Silverstein estimates in his article that each sweatshop employee produces $195,000 in sales per year. Each factory employee’s gross pay is around $750 per year, and his estimate assumes that the retailers will sell each product for roughly $25 per piece.
People who regularly shop in Branson realize that clothes are generally priced less at Aeropostale than Wal-Mart. One reason is Aeropostal’s retail outlet in the Tanger Mall which sells excess inventory from the previous year. Often times you can find t-shirts on sale in Aeropostale for under $10. Such sales keep Aeropostale’s profit margin on sweatshop t-shirts sold in Branson at a reasonable level.
However, Wal-Mart is a different story. Because of Wal-Mart’s “everyday low prices,” one should not expect to find t-shirts below $10. Unlike Aeropostale, Wal-Mart has consistent prices, and often times their supposed “sales” are nothing more than sales promotions. Wal-Mart marks their t-shirts down from the “retail” value of $18-25, but their prices never go below the competitive t-shirt prices of non-sweatshop or American-made t-shirt products. Realistically, Wal-Mart’s prices are not competitive with Aeropostale’s in many cases, so consumers should understand that Wal-Mart is making massive profits from selling such clothing.
Beside that fact that Wal-Mart is pulling the wool over the eyes of its customers, it should also be considered who Wal-Mart’s core clothing customer base is.
Wal-Mart began in Bentonville, Arkansas and quickly expanded all over the world within a few decades. People like Gretchen Wilson, the popular country music singer, have endorsed Wal-Mart as being a cheap place to buy clothing.
In Wilson’s “Redneck Woman,” she states:
Victoria’s Secret,
Well their stuff’s real nice,
Oh but I can buy the same damn thing,
On a Wal-Mart shelf half price.
It seems that people in and around the Bible Belt have long believed Wal-Mart to be a place of low prices in terms of clothing. Such a case is a half-truth at best. Many Christians within the Bible Belt inadvertently endorse clothing sweatshops and the perpetual impoverishment of third-world countries like Cambodia, whose children are often sold into prostitution to put food on the table of their families, by purchasing average-priced clothing from Wal-Mart.
Silverstein’s article also takes note of the abundance of Christian charity groups and underage prostitutes in Cambodia, but his article does not directly suggest that Wal-Mart is responsible for Cambodia’s impoverishment.
My suggestion to those not-so-wealthy Bible Belt citizens, who might believe that they have nothing to give to charity, is that you make a difference by not buying your clothing from Wal-Mart, Target, or JC Penney (all mentioned in Silverstein’s article), and start buying your clothing from outlet stores such as Aeropostale, that do not consistently overcharge for sweatshop goods. Realistically, making an effort to keep your money out of the hands of companies that exploit Cambodians may be the best thing you can do for the poor this season.
