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Tuesday, January 11, 2005
The
resurgence of sweatshops
Exploring abuses in America’s garment
industry
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Robert J. S. Ross stands
beside a poster that was used for the cover of his book,
“Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New
Sweatshops.”
(T&G Staff/JIM
COLLINS)
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| Robert J.S. Ross Talk and
Signing on ‘Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse
in the New Sweatshops’ |
When: 7 p.m., Feb.
8
Where: Tatnuck Bookseller &
Sons, 335 Chandler St., Worcester
How
much: Free and open to the public
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Robert J. S. Ross acknowledges that his social and
economic agendas could only be realized with a liberal president and
Congress.
Mr. Ross, a professor of sociology and member of
the faculty of Clark University for 32 years, says, though, that he
isn’t the least discouraged by the re-election of George W. Bush and
the control of both houses of Congress by conservatives. People who
are intensely committed to a certain vision forge ahead in the face
of immediate obstacles, he maintains.
“We are keepin’ on,”
Mr. Ross says during a telephone interview from his office at Clark.
“The trade union people I know are spending no time being gloomy.
They are tuning up for the Social Security fight. The AFL-CIO is
going to be putting a ton of resources into it.”
A scholar
activist, Mr. Ross is redoubling his efforts to effect changes in
labor laws and international trade, which, driven in part by
globalization, have moved relentlessly in a pro-business, anti-union
direction over the last several decades. “This was just an
election,” he asserts. “My spirit is unflagged.”
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Robert J. S. Ross stands beside
a poster that was used for the cover of his book, “Slaves to
Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops.” (T&G Staff/JIM COLLINS)
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| Mr. Ross, 61, got a head start with the
publication in October of his book “Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and
Abuse in the New Sweatshops.” It is a comprehensive examination of
the reappearance of apparel sweatshops in the United States. He
traces the 20th-century decline and then resurgence of the
deplorable working conditions, citing documentation he gathered
estimating that in 2000-2001 there were 250,000 sweatshop laborers
in America. Now, he says the figure is about 170,000 because of the
loss of jobs to other countries. Mr. Ross goes on to explain how
sweatshops are a product of unregulated global capitalism combined
with deregulation, union erosion and exploitation of undocumented
workers.
“A combination of political, economic and social
trends has come together to recreate working conditions that are
nearly as bad as those of the early 20th century,” he writes.
“Sweatshops are back, and they are right here.”
Both
personal and professional reasons have driven Mr. Ross’ commitment
to the issue.
In the depths of the Great Depression, Mr.
Ross’ father, Irving Barrett, quit high school after one year to go
to work as a cutter in the New York garment industry. His father’s
working life spanned a period of terrible conditions, then
unionization resulting in enormous improvement, then regression in
the 1970s, a decade when he continued to be employed, but not always
in union jobs.
“In those days, a nonunion job paid the same
as a union job but did not contribute to the pension fund,” Mr. Ross
says. “When he retired, his pension earned him $75 a month. It’s a
lucky thing my mom was a schoolteacher.”
Mr. Ross’ scholarly
interest in sweatshops was sparked back in 1983 while he was engaged
in an analysis of New York City that resulted in an article focusing
on the mistaken belief that all residents of rich countries live
well. He and co-author Kent C. Trachte made the case that conditions
exist in industrialized countries that are similar to those in
developing countries as exemplified by the re-emergence of
sweatshops.
“That was one of the very first articles to
observe the flight of industry from old industrial countries to new
industrial countries and comment on the consequences for the old
blue-collar working class,” Mr. Ross says.
An early critic
of corporate globalization, Mr. Ross would go on to write commentary
and articles on the subject. Then in 1995, while he was on
sabbatical, it came to him that labor in the rag trade, as the
garment industry is called, should be his next big project. “My
heart was telling me that this was the thing my mind should do,” he
says.
Both his heart and his mind are in clear evidence in
“Slaves to Fashion.”
The book is a scholarly yet accessible
study, replete with charts and graphs. At the same time, Mr. Ross is
frank about his disgust for those who force workers to toil long
hours under dreadful conditions for minuscule pay. He expresses his
sadness at the toll it takes on workers’ spirits and the poverty
they must endure. In his introduction, he uses “hearts starve” —
part of a line in a Judy Collins song about sweatshops — as a
refrain to describe so emotionally debilitating a life.
He
writes:
Hearts starve. You arrive at work in a cramped
and mean little shop at seven in the morning. The boss has told you
not to punch in until eight. He or his wife screams at you all day —
“Hurry up, you idiot! Can’t you sew a straight line? You clumsy
dog.” At five he punches your time card, but you work until six or
even later past evening and into the night. …The work is boring,
repetitive, extremely uncomfortable, but it requires absolute
attention. Should your thoughts stray for but a moment, should you
wonder how your boy is doing in the first grade or if you might get
nice weather to take a walk on Sunday, you will get injured.
Hearts starve. You have to use the toilet, but the
washroom makes you nauseous and you are scared of the dark corridor
and of catching some disease. The bathroom is filthy. The boss
screams if you take enough time to try to clean it yourself.
Hearts starve. There is a course for finishing high
school at night in the neighborhood, but you never know when the
overtime will come. You can’t plan. If you say no to overtime you’ll
get fired. Will it always be like this? Can you ever breathe
free?
In “Slaves to Fashion,” Mr. Ross explains
that after World War II, garment workers experienced a halcyon
period lasting about 35 years. A decline set in as the garment
industry changed in structure and gained power. Mr. Ross writes that
powerful chains such as Wal-Mart have come to dictate prices to the
producers, rather than the other way around, forcing clothing
contractors to keep costs as low as possible.
Meanwhile, the
federal government has backed off enforcing codes established under
the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act, and the threat of workplace
inspection has declined precipitously. All of this has led to the
exploitation of undocumented workers, who cannot fight back, Mr.
Ross says.
The situation is even worse in other countries.
Globalization has increased the percentage of clothing
imports to the United States from 3 percent to 90 percent, resulting
in the mushrooming of sweatshops, particularly in Asia and Latin
America. It has broken down the barriers to trade without setting
respectable labor standards. “Our trade agreements do not compel
governments to enforce labor standards, but do compel them to
protect investors,” Mr. Ross says. “We make a big thing of
intellectual property rights with China but do nothing about labor
rights.”
At home, the key to improving conditions is to
restore workers’ rights to association and representation won under
the Wagner Act of the 1930s, Mr. Ross says. “The slaves to fashion
need the right to form a labor union and the right to collective
bargaining. There are a number of things that employers do that
erode the ability to associate at work.”
Today, only a union
label ensures that a clothing item has not been made in a sweatshop,
he says.
Internationally, the most effective step would be
to change the policies of the World Trade Organization to more
evenly balance investor rights and labor rights. Countries would be
given time to change their labor laws or face paying a tariff. “It
begins to level the playing field,” Mr. Ross says.
Mr. Ross
first committed himself to social justice causes more than 40 years
ago.
Raised in New York City not far from Yankee Stadium, he
attended the Bronx High School of Science with Todd Gitlin, now a
high-profile sociologist at Columbia University. Mr. Ross went on to
the University of Michigan, where he became an activist in the early
civil rights, student and antiwar movements and formed a friendship
with ’60s radical Tom Hayden. Both were devotees of social theorist
C. Wright Mills, who dissented from the common sociological view of
the time that all was right with America. Mills was the intellectual
guru to the founders of Students for a Democratic Society, among
them Mr. Ross, Mr. Hayden and Mr. Gitlin, who had joined the other
two in Michigan for his master’s degree after graduating from
Harvard College.
Over the years, Mr. Ross continued his role
as an activist, writing speeches for former state Sen. Gerard A.
D’Amico and advising Ray Flynn, the former Boston mayor, on economic
policy.
After coming to Clark, Mr. Ross and his wife,
Marion, a social worker, settled in Southboro, where they raised
their two children. Gabriel, 30, is an environmental lawyer in San
Francisco, and Rachel, 28, is completing a master of public health
degree at the University of Michigan.
For Mr. Ross, the
friendships and social issues from his student days are key in his
life today. Both Mr. Hayden and Mr. Gitlin wrote glowing
endorsements of “Slaves to Fashion.” And Mr. Ross has recently
published an article comparing today’s activism against sweatshops
to the causes of the tumultuous ’60s.
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