An Interview with Robert Ross

Slaves to Fashion
Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops
Robert J. S. Ross

Most people would be surprised and astonished to learn that the sweatshop-along with all of its cruel and inhumane conditions-has made a reappearance in the United States. We've heard stories about the sweatshop in other countries around the world, but Slaves to Fashion, author Robert Ross's book about the new sweatshops, is the first to examine this phenomenon from inside the United States.

Slaves to Fashion is an important and timely addition to this urgent debate. Here, the author-himself the son of garment workers-answers some questions about his book.

University of Michigan Press: What is Slaves to Fashion about?

Robert Ross: Slaves to Fashion analyses the new sweatshops-in the United States and in the new apparel industries around the world. It shows the rise and fall and then the return of sweatshops in the United States and in explaining why this form of labor abuse in the garment trade returned, the work turns first to the form of global capitalism and then to the package of deregulation, erosion of union strength, retail concentration and power and the abuse of undocumented workers. The last third of the book explores policy alternatives and analyses the new antisweatshop movement among young people.

UMP: How is your book different than others on this subject?

RR: This is the only work on the apparel industry that begins with an analysis of sweatshop conditions inside the United States; with an estimate of the size of the US sweatshop population and systematic evidence about the wages and conditions of garment workers; with evidence about the race to the bottom in labor standards. It combines these with data and field observation from abroad. It also has pictures and poetry.

UMP: This seems like a timely subject. What was the inspiration or impetus for Slaves to Fashion?

RR: In the spring and summer of 1995 I decided to return to the analysis of sweatshops that I had first published in 1983 (among the first in the academic literature). Then the El Monte slave labor case occurred in August and I realized my own inclination was in tune with what was becoming a more widely recognized problem. After the Kathie Lee Gifford revelations in August 1996 a burgeoning movement both occupied my time and convinced me that a book would be useful.

There's another way to say this: In the mid-1990s it was time for me decide on a new big project. Given that I am a son of garment workers (and teachers), and engaged in policy issues, this seemed more like love than labor.

UMP: Why has the sweatshop reappeared, and reappeared in America?

RR: Sweatshops reappeared after almost 40 years of retreat because of the unregulated nature of trade-that protects the rights of investors but not those of workers. In addition, loose law enforcement, the evolution of law and culture that has weakened labor unions, the rise in the price making power of the retail chains, like Wal-Mart where about one-fifth of US clothing is bought-all these pressures are pointed directly at vulnerable parts of the working class. Right now and in this country it puts immigrant workers in the target zone.

UMP: It seems like "something's gotta give." Can we go on expecting low-priced clothing at the expense of underpaid and poorly treated workers? Are profits, low prices and fairness mutually exclusive?

RR: There is technical work (by Robert Pollin and associates at the University of Massachusetts) that shows prices would have to rise only a little (2-6%) for workers, for example, in the U.S. and Mexico, to double their wages. It is the competitive "race to the bottom"-and the complex pyramid of contractors -- that makes conditions so miserable at the bottom of the commodity chain. Internationally agreed and enforced labor standards could put a floor of decency under that competition. Then we might have low priced clothes-only a little more than we pay right now.

UMP: What can we learn from past mistakes? Or is the new sweatshop a new monster that requires all new thinking and solutions?

RR: Global trade without labor rights given parity with investor rights will recreate the conditions of the turn of the 19th-20th Century. An American economy without strong unions will lead to polarization and misery at the bottom. Both of these require a new perspective on global capitalism and global labor.