By: Brooklyn Middleton/ Assistant Opinion Editor
Apologies alone do not suffice; there must be a fundamental change in the manufacturing of clothes abroad. The Brazilian government is bringing 52 charges against Zara’s parent company Intidex for slave labor.
Brooklyn Middleton / Assistant Opinion Editor
It is a bit of a numbers game. While Intidex has stated that only 0.03 percent of its garments were made in “unlicensed workshops” out of seven million, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that the factory was subcontracted by A.H.A., which is responsible for 90 percent of Zara’s production in Brazil.
Even if it was only 0.03 percent out of seven million, the numbers lack relevance to human cost. Some of the workers interviewed and freed from the workshops were as young as 14 years old.
According to Forbes, “In one of the workshops, a Bolivian worker explained to the reporter that a pair of Zara jeans – which in Brazil is sold for roughly [$126] – has a working cost of [$1.14]. Such a sum is divided equally between all the people involved in the production system, which in the case of the pair of jeans takes about seven individuals. The workers’ average monthly income is about [$569] for a shift of no less than 12 hours. Working safety conditions found in these factories were also critical. A fire extinguisher had an expiration date of 1998.”
The response from Intidex, which is headed by Amancio Ortega, the richest man in Spain, was trite and simply echoed what other huge retailers said when they too had been caught with their pants down: unauthorized outsourcing. In other words, Intidex and its millions of dollars is incapable of monitoring and remaining aware of the conditions in which its clothes are being produced. This showcases a total lack of welfare for who it employs, or more accurately, enslaves.
It is shameful that multi-million dollar companies have to go through a slavery scandal to be prompted to do the right thing. Nike had a similar mea culpa that resulted in copious appeals to the mass media and public. In July 2000 , writer Jim Keady lived in Indonesia and worked with Nike factory workers. Wages were $1.25 per day. A multi-million dollar company outsourcing labor to cut corners financially by exploiting workers with abysmal wages epitomizes gross corporate greed.
As recently as two years ago, Keady returned to the field and conducted research that showed positive progress, but as he points out in an article on huffingtonpost.com, “Nike workers are still being paid a poverty wage and Nike still refuses to bargain with their workers in good faith.”
Of equal importance is consumer awareness about where their $126 skinny jeans are coming from. If it is from Zara, it might have been made by an enslaved 14 year-old Bolivian in some godforsaken sweatshop in Brazil.
However, I resist the notion that consumers are solely responsible for ensuring their clothes are coming from ethical practices of companies. The average consumer, unlike Spain’s richest man, does not have endless resources and millions of dollars to properly research where their garments are coming from.
The consumer should know where their clothes are coming from, but the company that produces it should be held ultimately accountable.
“Borderless with Brooklyn” is a biweekly column examining world events.
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