Would you buy cheap child-sweatshop made clothes? Poll results/discussion

weegie.geek

D_Dickenson wrote: »

Just to put in perspective what Primarks profits are. They recently made £100m on £1billion turnover. Increasing prices 10% would generate an extra £100m profit. That is enough to give every Indian just 10p each. The poverty problem is much bigger than you think.

Who said anything about every Indian? The extra revenue/saving should go to bettering the Indians who're working directly or indirectly for Primark, and the families of these indians. If every company who exploits this cheap labour did the same, it'd make a significant impact.

If they're to be allowed to exploit cheap labour, they should be socially responsible with it. Is that too much to ask?

The difference between someone paying £10 and paying £11 for a pair of cheap jeans. The difference between a 12-year old sewing sequins to a tshirt and going to school.
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D_Dickenson

If you just want to help the relatively few people directly involved in producing Primark garments then you are ignoring over 300million Indians living in poverty (see Wikipedia - poverty). If you are willing for prices to increase on everything produced by all companies then it will mean making the massive sacrifices mentioned above. A 10% increase on the cost of all basic goods would mean the amount of money left over for luxury goods (TV's, holidays, etc) drops by far more than 10%.

The sad fact of life in India is that working in a sweatshop in the city slums provides for a far better life than most rural Indians have which is why they flood into the cities so they can send money home to their families in the villages. The BBC series 'blood, sweat and t-shirts' a previous poster mentioned is quite an eye opener.

JuliaJolie

Saucepot wrote: »

Buy them?

I own my own sweat shop, employing and exploiting indian kids, so why buy? I get 'em for free. Perks.

It didn't work. I'm not outraged, even though that was a pretty pointless post trying feebly to incite.

Epic FAIL!

DJFearRoss

To be honest this is the goverments fault and responsibility. I know ethics start with the individual but if the goverment stepped in and banned any 'sweatshop' imports from entering the UK, this would create an even playing field for businesses. Yes, the price would be slightly more, but at least it would be 'ethically' competitive, rather than exploitingly competitive.

And let's remember, the only reason why these clothes are made abroad in the first place is to pay someone a lot less.

weegie.geek

D_Dickenson wrote: »

If you just want to help the relatively few people directly involved in producing Primark garments then you are ignoring over 300million Indians living in poverty (see Wikipedia - poverty). If you are willing for prices to increase on everything produced by all companies then it will mean making the massive sacrifices mentioned above. A 10% increase on the cost of all basic goods would mean the amount of money left over for luxury goods (TV's, holidays, etc) drops by far more than 10%.

The sad fact of life in India is that working in a sweatshop in the city slums provides for a far better life than most rural Indians have which is why they flood into the cities so they can send money home to their families in the villages. The BBC series 'blood, sweat and t-shirts' a previous poster mentioned is quite an eye opener.

Where did I say I only want to help the ones who work (indirectly) for Primark?

I said it should be Primark's responsibility that the cheap foreign labour working for them is treated ethically, and given wages sufficient that their children can afford to go to school instead of working.

Any company exploiting cheap foreign labour should be responsible for increasing the standards of living of its workforce.

As was seen in the documentary, there's also an environmental impact because of the waste byproduct of the industry, which the company should be held responsible for. It's bad enough that Primark were (indirectly) employing children, but they (indirectly) ruined the water supply for the entire area. It's not too much to ask that companies show responsibility for the wellbeing of its employees, especially vulnerable ones, and it's definitely not too much to ask that it ensure it doesn't adversely affect the lives and health of people who don't benefit from its presence in and around its bases of operation.

It would be nice to have a solution to help the poor who're not employed by the company, but it's not the company's direct responsibility.

Beenie

This is a fashion industry worlwide reality. Not just Primark, as you all know....look in anyone's labels and it will say Made in Phillipines/Bangladesh/China/Turkey wherever.

When profit is involved, no-one is policing properly and as someone else pointed out, the sad fact is that prostitution or pornography are often the only alternatives to sewing.

Which would you rather do? Sit in the company of other kids having a chat and sewing pretty things, or be the plaything of a daily stream of child abusers?

I don't shop at Primark myself, but child labour is similar in many ways to the organic/free-range meat argument, everyone says thay want cruelty free conditions for animals, but when it comes to putting their hands in their pockets, the battery/factory farm foods win every time.

JimmyTheWig

D_Dickenson wrote: »

The only solution is for us in the West to have a lot less and reduce the inequality. This goes far beyond paying a little extra for a t-shirt or Tradefair coffee. What is needed is us to have much much less - instead of 2 car families it needs to be one car for 10 families - instead a TV in every bedroom maybe one per house - holidays abroad are a ridiculous luxury when you consider the poverty others face.

But are we prepared to make the sacrifices needed to solve this problem? I think the answer is almost certainly no.

You are treating everyone in the West as being equal in this argument.
It isn't the working Western families struggling to afford a holiday who need to consume less. It is the richest section of our society who hold the key to the wealth.

JimmyTheWig

DavidMiles wrote: »

I've been back in this country for 3 years after spending 5 in Colombia, and about to move to Bangladesh. One of the things I've found hardest to do in the UK is buy clothing, shoes, anything of that sort. I can only afford the cheap stuff and I know most of it is cheap labour, meaning I simply can't stomach it.

The implication here is that if you could afford Nike or Gap then you would fell ok.
Do you believe that these companies have better human rights records than the likes of Primark?
Or do you think they just have a higher mark-up on each item they sell?

Cloudane

DJFearRoss wrote: »

To be honest this is the goverments fault and responsibility. I know ethics start with the individual but if the goverment stepped in and banned any 'sweatshop' imports from entering the UK, this would create an even playing field for businesses.

Agreed, and in a sense it's still our fault for not voting for a government who would do so. Ironically, our Labour government actually leans a fair way to the Right these days, so it's unlikely they'd impose such restrictions on business. Besides, they make their own tidy little profit through the import duty...

As I've said I don't think it's necessarily bad to give those countries business, and if they insist on making their kids work then the least we can do is give them a half decent deal. But regulation is required to make it happen.

pepsicola_2

i wonder how much investigation has been done into our own bad practises concerning fruit pickers and cockle pickers just how much exploitation is done by the UK gang bosses.

M&S can claim how good they are selling a few tradefair garments but where do the rest of all their garments come from and how about the food producers they have put out of business by dropping them once they have demanded that they only deal with M&S and at the lowest price possible.