Before You Buy That T-Shirt

EDITORIAL | NOTEBOOK

Beawiharta/Reuters

Workers making clothes at a factory in Jakarta, Indonesia.

By VIKAS BAJAJ

Published: May 18, 2013

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The deaths and injuries of thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh raise the question of how American and European consumers might assert their power to change appalling factory conditions half a world away. Stop buying clothes made in Bangladesh? Look for labels from other countries, like Indonesia, where conditions might be a little better? Seek out “sweatshop free” clothes, like “fair trade” coffee?

Unfortunately, there are few good answers. A boycott of goods from Bangladesh would probably be counterproductive. It could deprive some of the poorest workers of jobs and income that provide a step up from farming or manual labor. Recent attempts by groups like Fair Trade USA to provide certification for sweatshop-free clothing have gained little traction with retailers or consumers.

Research shows that some American shoppers would prefer and pay more for clothes from factories that don’t exploit workers. The problem is that most brands and retailers offer very little information about how their products are made.

Large companies have multilayered supply chains that they change all the time to keep costs low. Production is farmed out to contractors and subcontractors with revolving labor pools. Last year, Walmart claimed that it did not know that a supplier had subcontracted orders to a Bangladeshi factory where more than 112 workers died in a fire.

What can a consumer do when a retailer claims to be in the dark? “Quite honestly the most effective things that consumers can do is really educate themselves about how the things we buy every day are made and ask ourselves do we need 20 T-shirts,” said Richard Locke, deputy dean of M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management.

Mr. Locke argues that our insatiable hunger for cheap clothing in constantly changing styles has created a race to the bottom in which brands perpetually push suppliers in Bangladesh, Cambodia and elsewhere for faster delivery and lower prices. He argues that consumers need to break that cycle by, well, buying less of the cheap, fast fashion in the stores.

That may sound hopelessly idealistic and, at least in the short term, would not necessarily help Bangladeshi workers.

Still, outraged shoppers have successfully pressured companies in the past. In 1992, Nike established a code of conduct for factories that forbade forced labor and child labor — a big problem at the time — and required compliance with local overtime and other labor laws. Mr. Locke’s research has found that its efforts have resulted in higher wages and safer working conditions in some factories but not all.

Consumer petitions recently helped persuade several large European companies like H&M to sign a binding agreement with labor groups to improve fire and building safety at Bangladeshi factories. While two American firms, PVH and Abercrombie & Fitch, have also signed on, bigger companies like Walmart and Gap have refused.

The difference in response, said Layna Mosley, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, reflects Europe’s greater support in general for unions and labor rights. “U.S. retailers probably think that this is in the news” for now, she said, but that “the dust will settle and it will go back to normal.” That’s the problem — and it’s why consumer power, while an important force, cannot ever fully make up for government failure to enforce labor and safety laws
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