|
by Kieran Schnabel '03 About a week ago I went to the Mall of America with a few friends. We were all staying around campus for Fall Break, and decided we would go to the Mall for a few hours. I had just learned some depressing statistics recently about sweatshops and such, so when we went into some clothing shops, I naturally starting checking out the tags. I found that a huge number of shirts and other articles of clothing came from many of the poorer countries. My friends were curious what I was doing, so I explained what I was doing and the facts that I knew. They were interested and they told me that they had known some of this already, but the fact is that it's hard to find the companies that actually have good labor policies, because they all say that they have "good" labor policies. The other thing that they said they had trouble with is how much the clothes cost. Companies that produce solely from the U.S. have to charge more for their products because they have to pay their workers more. So when people go to buy clothes, a major criteria is the price, which puts some of the more conscientious companies out of the picture right away. I think that people would really like to do the right thing when it comes to clothes, but are stopped up by the work of finding the right companies and the price of those clothes when they do find the companies. It may be time consuming and even a little costly, but at least you won't be supporting companies that hire teenagers and other young people to work long hours in bad working conditions.
|