Before visiting a sweatshop in Honduras, I had an image in my head of a dusty big warehouse building with a bad environment and hundreds of people working hard all day. However, the sweatshop I visited was a newer building with a fairly clean environment, actually cleaner than the book factory I worked at in Michigan. Basically, I knew nothing about sweatshops.
In Honduras, there are 2 kinds of factories. The majority are those that make clothes, and a few make a type of band for cars. The number one country with the most factories is China, and Honduras is number ten on the list. In Honduran factories, there are 100,000 employees, with another 300,000 support employees (drivers, airlines, lunch lines, housekeeping, etc.). These jobs are very important to the country.
The minimum wage in Honduras is $225/month, or $7/day, but the minimum wage in factories in Honduras is $180/month, or $5.60/day. In Bangladesh, it is $3.00/day. Before Mel Zelaya was president in Honduras, the minimum wage for normal jobs and for factories was equal, but he decided to raise minimum wage for everyone except those in factories.
If tomorrow Lobo, the President of Honduras decided to raise minimum wage for factories in Honduras, the factory owners would pack up and move to Nicaragua, or any other country where minimum wage was lower, leaving 400,000 Honduran workers without jobs.
Of all the importations of the US, Honduras makes up only 2.5%, meaning that 97.5% of US importations come from other countries. This is an unequal relationship. If tomorrow Honduras decided to go on strike and not send the US any materials, the US would shrug its shoulders and say, “Eh” as if they just flicked a tick off their shoulder. But, if tomorrow the US decided to shut down all the factories in Honduras, many Hondurans would be without jobs and the Honduran economy would drop drastically, as if you were the tick that just got flicked and stomped on. This is to say that the power is in the hands of the US.
There are very bad factories in the world with horrible conditions that produce dollar store materials and knock off brands, but generally speaking (at least in Honduras), the factory jobs are stable and good jobs for many people, and are better than many alternative jobs. So, the principle problem is the salary. It is almost impossible to live off of $5.60 a day for one person, and many workers are supporting families of 4 or 5 people. Bus fares, food, clothes, uniforms, pencils for your children to do homework, house payments, all with $5.60/day. Also, they are working very hard for very little money. This summer I sat behind a desk for my job and made more money an hour than they make in a day for doing almost nothing. Our Professor, who has lived in Honduras for 20 years, said, “I honestly don’t know how they live off of so little.”
Another problem is that many of the sweatshop owners are Gringos (Americans) and a small part are Asian or of other races. They are making a lot of money while giving low salaries to factories in other countries in order to make more profits. However, if we called up these clothing line owners and persuaded them to pay out of their pocket to double the salaries of the employees, the stockholders would go mad and fights would break out.
So what’s the answer? To me, there seems like there are 2 options. One is to change the hearts of the owners to create fair businesses in the first place. The other is to change the consumers (you and me) who are creating the demand for these products.
Fair Trade coffee took a step in changing consumers. They created a stamp to put on coffee that says that it was made with fair wages. In order to get this stamp, companies have to meet certain requirements to become certified. Although this fair trade coffee is more expensive, the money you spend to buy it goes towards higher employee wages. The alternative is to buy cheap coffee that was made in a factory with unfair wages. The more and more people that buy products with this stamp and stop buying products without the stamp, the more pressure companies will receive to re-do their companies in order to meet the requirements to get the stamp of fair trade because they will have to compete with the fair trade companies. For example, if tomorrow everyone decided to only buy Fair trade coffee for the rest of their life, eventually all companies would become Fair trade to rise to the competition.
This same thing needs to happen with clothing. Buying cheap clothing at Kohl’s or cheap food at Aldi seems like a good deal, (and I have always chosen good deals) but it is actually supporting giving low wages to employees working in sweatshops. Spending more money on a product that was made in a better place with fairer wages is a better idea. Picture this. Tomorrow you meet a woman and can choose to pay her $5/hr or $7/hr, knowing that she is supporting a family of 5. I would tell myself that to me $2 is nothing, but for her an extra $2/hr means she can afford a uniform to send her son to school. Now, picture that when you but a cup of coffee and have the option of paying more for Fair trade.
What would be ideal is if tomorrow, a huge group of people decided to only buy fair trade products. This would pressure companies to restructure their factories in order to receive the consumer’s desire to buy products produced at fair wages. Unfortunately, this is a lot easier to do with coffee than with clothes, but it can be done with the unity of the people. My question is why isn’t there an organization for Fair trade clothing, and who wants to start one (or support one that I don’t know of) with me? As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Although our Dutch minds may tell us otherwise, we should choose to spend more money knowing it is giving well-earned food to a family.
(The two pictures are of my university and a project that I am doing in Sculpture class).
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