Nicole Pepperl, attending Stanford University, wrote a great essay about the impact of trade agreements.

The globalization of trade fueled by the World Trade Organization and recent free trade agreements has led to a decreased standard of living for America’s working families because businesses can freely outsource jobs to cheaper countries. The garment industry in particular illustrates how globalization creates a race to the bottom in working conditions both in America and internationally. Free trade agreements replace American garment factories with sweatshops abroad, negating the hard-won labor victories made at the turn of the 20^th century. I became involved in the anti-sweatshop struggle on my campus when I learned my university was doing nothing to guarantee the rights of workers to collective bargaining, fair wages, and safe working conditions. I believe that anti-sweatshop activism is necessary to protect the rights of workers in America and abroad by ending the downward spiral of globalization.

            Garment sweatshops were at the heart of the fight for better labor rights in the 1890s and early 1900s. The hazardous conditions and starvation wages in American sweatshops had been criticized for years in books and photographical exposés, but a major turning point came in 1911 when 146 trapped workers, mostly young women, died in a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. The event sparked national outrage and fueled the successful push by the 1930s for safety codes, minimum wage, and trade unions. Campaigning under the banner of eradicating sweatshops, protestors were able to improve conditions for many other working Americans by increasing the power of labor codes and unions. Thus, a push to improve conditions in the garment industry improved the lives of all workers. Unfortunately, the labor victories proved short-lived. Within a century, the sweat-shop conditions that had been the source of such protest and activism were simply replicated overseas.

Worried about cheap exports from developing countries, industrialized nations created the Multi-fiber Agreement to impose import quotes on textiles and clothing in 1974. When the World Trade Organization came into being on January 1, 1995, one of its first acts was to begin a ten-year phase-out of the agreement. The impact from the removal of quotas and tariffs on the American garment industry was staggering. Once given the opportunity to outsource, factory owners quickly did so, moving operations to developing countries with lower wages and laxer safety codes. In 1974 less than 10 percent of clothing sold in the U.S. was imported; by 2005 this number had skyrocketed to 80 percent, according to data from the U.S. Economic Research Service. Free trade proponents claim that the outsourcing of jobs is beneficial for the average American by reducing the cost of the clothing. However, the primary cost of clothing is retail mark-up, while labor represents less than 2 percent of the total cost, according to a 2004 study by researchers at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

            Even before factories began outsourcing to developing countries, owners kept wages low by relying on immigrant labor—particularly young women. As immigration shifted, so too did the factories: Eastern European immigrants in New York were replaced with Latino immigrants in Texas and southern California. But the conditions remained the same. Workers faced long days, low wages, and no benefits. Some even worked in slavery-like conditions. In August 1995, a government raid of a factory in El Monte, a suburb of Los Angeles, found 72 Thai workers had been trapped in a compound surrounded by barbed wire and forced to work 16-18 hour days for less than 70 cents an hour, according to the Los Angeles Times. Like a modern Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, the event awakened public attention to the presence of sweatshops in America and abroad, fueling the anti-sweatshop movement of the 1990s.

            Although the El Monte case was an extreme example of sweatshop conditions within the United States, many garment workers in Los Angeles endure poor working conditions and very low wages. Factories regularly ignore labor laws in order to increase competitiveness by cutting costs. According to a 2003 study by the U.S. Department of Labor, less than one third of Los Angeles garment factories comply with state and federal labor laws, such as minimum wage standards and overtime pay. Unfortunately, the structure of the garment industry makes it difficult to increase worker power by unionizing. As part of our campaign, we screened a PBS documentary on sweatshops called “Made in L.A.” and invited one of the featured workers, Guadalupe Hernandez, to come speak. Because she now works as a community organizer, she was able to take the time to speak at our event. Ms. Hernandez spoke of the extreme difficulty in attempting to unionize due to the unskilled nature of the labor and the ease with which garment factories can be relocated. Workers who decide to unionize can come to work the next day to find that the entire factory had been moved, and entirely new workers hired. But she remained confident in the power of organization since she and fellow workers had recently led a successful lawsuit and boycott against a famous retailer, resulting in a favorable settlement.

             When the low wages in Los Angeles become too high for the tastes of factory owners, businesses relocate to developing countries such as Bangladesh, China, and India. Like the immigrant workers who had previously filled these jobs in the United States, the workers of these countries are willing to work for extremely poor wages and in hazardous conditions out of economic desperation. These poor conditions then require the factories remaining in the U.S. to lower wages to continue competing with sweatshops abroad. Globalization hurts American workers twice over: first, by directly outsourcing jobs, and secondly, by lowering working conditions in the U.S. due to competition from developing countries. Each factory competes to see who can reduce costs the most by cutting corners on safety and lowering wages. The loss of labor’s power due to globalization has harmed not just America’s working families, but all workers, by creating a race to the bottom in wages and working conditions.

The goal of early labor activists was to improve working conditions, and this is still the goal of the modern-day anti-sweatshop movement. Because of the global nature of the problem, the majority of activism has focused on pressuring American retailers to implement standards and monitoring to maintain a baseline for working conditions and wages both in America and abroad. One particularly active area of the anti-sweatshop movement has been on university campuses. Colleges have the power to influence manufacturing decisions thanks to their control over logo licensing decisions. If efforts to improve working conditions such as codes of conduct and monitoring can be shown to work for college apparel, then these same tools can be applied more broadly to the industry as a whole. My university has been slow to adopt these standards. Stanford joined the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent monitoring organization, in May 2007, but only after intense student pressure culminated in a sit-in at the administrative offices.

The right to unionize is the most important right protected by university codes, since unions are key to securing all other rights. However, this fundamental labor right is sometimes ignored, even in the United States. In late 2007, the New Era Hat Company factory in Mobile, Alabama was accused of union-busting by workers who had attempted to form a union to improve wages and working conditions. Because the factory produces college apparel for several members of the Worker Rights Consortium (including Stanford), the organization conducted investigations and in January 2008 reported that the factory discriminated against African-Americans in pay and promotion decisions and had recently union-busted by firing 20 union-supporting workers. In response to the report, two universities cut ties with the factory and five more began the process. Thanks to pressure from students and universities, one month later, the company reinstated all 20 workers and officially recognized the union. It was a great victory for the workers of the Mobile factory, but the garment industry will not be fixed a single factory at a time when so many factories continue to ignore basic labor rights.

            The key to improving working conditions is recognizing that similar labor problems have been solved before. The term sweatshop originated in reference to the sweating system where the production of clothing was subcontracted by middlemen called sweaters to workers at extremely low piece-rate wages. This isolation kept workers unable to organize and collectively bargain with their true employer. Free trade agreements have recreated this sweating system on a global scale as corporations subcontract work to factories that compete to keep wages as low as possible. Proponents of globalization argue that sweatshops will eventually disappear as workers in developing countries undergo their own industrial revolution. But the history of American sweatshops clearly indicates that improvements in working conditions are won only through the collective organization of workers. The force of globalization requires that workers and allies stand together to demand fair conditions for all workers. Americans should be able to compete with workers in developing country on an equal footing of safe and fair working conditions.

            I often find the greatest difficulty in speaking to other students about modern-day sweatshops is their complete lack of knowledge about the history of the fight against American sweatshops. The minimum wage and safety codes didn’t come into being because corporations felt sorry for workers, or because the government stepped in when it saw a problem, labor activists were the ones responsible for creating all the labor rights we enjoy today. The problems of globalization can only be solved in the same manner—by organizing to fight for workers rights. Progress doesn’t just happen on its own, we need to make it happen.