Supportive Blogs on Sweatshops

The blog that I followed had an interesting title. It was “When you think of the face of fashion, is this what comes to mind?” At the bottom of that title was a picture of a young boy making soccer balls in Indonesia. The write wrote about her enlightening of manufacturing slave labor of the company NIKE. She listened to a presentation about sweatshop labor, a man who stayed with educatingforjustice.org co-founder Leslie Kretz in Indonesia on the wages of sweatshop workers. She went on to talk about how she didn’t realize that she was a contributor to the success of companies like Nike, Adidas, Target etc. She found that much of what she owned came from companies that took part in poor treatment of sweatshop workers. Since consumers do not know how products are produced we will keep buying from companies that practice illegal and inhumane labor. She explains that we can-not just stop buying from these companies because the treatment of laborers could worsen but instead we can take do the alternative. She goes on to explain other ways in which we as consumers can stop the success of criminal companies.

· Buy from companies that manufacture in the US

· Fair trade companies she found are nosweatapparel.com and americanapparel.com

o The biggest problem with sweatshops is in sneakers and athletic shoes

o Child labor is very common in the shoe industry, New Balance is a good shoe company because they produce ¼ of its footwear products in the US.

o Starbucks does not practice fair trade. Coffee is the second largest import and many farm workers are forced to live in poverty and debt.

· Write to the companies that do practice abuse of sweatshop workers. Let them hear you and feel bad about what they’re doing to their employees.

Here is the link of the blog that I wrote this commentary on:
http://choubelle.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/when-you-think-of-the-face-of-fashion-is-this-what-comes-to-mind/