 | T-shirts Black With Outsourced Sweat |
For a couple years now, Irregular Times has had its own shop of progressive political items. Part of this online shop of progressive goods is stocked with items we make and sell ourselves. Another part of the shop, however, is run through a company in California called CafePress.
CafePress is a pretty good company to work with, all in all. They open up the field of mass political expression beyond its traditional, campaign-based, boundaries by allowing people like us to sell a variety of items with thousands of designs. They also feature many shirts made by a company called American Apparel, which provides American workers with good money in an ethical work environment. Among these shirts is one made with organic cotton - an extra bonus. When you see shirts for sale in our Irregular Goods political shop, our Time for Peace anti-war shop, and other areas of political goods we have on CafePress, you’ll see that we sell these made in the USA, sweatshop-free, t-shirts.
Well, this year, CafePress has introduced a new kind of t-shirt: The black t-shirt. There’s a lot of demand for black t-shirts, it seems. People think that black is stylish, and that wearing black helps to give a person an edge. Others, like myself, note the glut of black clothes for sale and suspect that black is the new beige.
Whatever our personal opinions at style at Irregular Times, we would be happy to sell black t-shirts with progressive political designs - if we could do so ethically. It turns out that there’s a problem with that, because the black t-shirts sold by CafePress are produced by Fruit of the Loom, not by American Apparel.
As far as we’re concerned, the way that Fruit of the Loom does business is unethical. They’ve taken good American jobs and outsourced them, shipped them to foreign countries like Morocco or El Salvador, where workers are paid tiny amounts of money - just pennies per shirt. Environmental standards are not high in these countries. Fruit of the Loom also has a bad history of intimidating and firing workers who try to organize labor unions in their factories outside of the United States.
These days, we’re told, everything has to be communicated in terms of moral values. Let me break it down for you morally, then. The reason you won’t see black t-shirts for sale on our CafePress shops is that we think that it’s morally wrong for Americans to get cheap t-shirts at the expense of workers in other countries. We think that it is morally decadent to lower American moral standards by purchasing products made in factories in foreign countries where the government refuses to protect its own workers from predatory corporations. We think it’s immoral to help fund factories that manufacture outside of the system of environmental protections we have here in the United States. We think that progressive political activists who complain about outsourcing and sweatshops, yet sell these outsourced, sweatshop black t-shirts, are hypocrites.
If CafePress starts selling black t-shirts made by American Apparel instead of Fruit of the Loom, we’ll be happy to create a whole bunch of political designs for people who want to look sullen and moody, you know, like they feel black on the inside. Until then, we’ll keep on doing the right thing, and sell shirts that are made in the USA. Maybe we’ll lose money, but we’re not about making profits at the expense of people.
Contact Us
Great to hear your ethical stand on jobs and sweatshop labor. You probably have issues with Chinese factories (where most of our clothing, computers, etc. come from these days) since they have the worst pollution records on the planet and could care less about their workers (much to the dismay of Mao). i can’t understand why corporations think they are saving anything by shipping jobs overseas. Who’s going to be able to afford anything here if all the jobs are gone? Greed and corruption seem to make the world go ’round these days.
Comment by Tom — 11/28/2005 @ 8:58 am
Corporations do save money by shipping production and jobs overseas.
It’s a mystery if you think about it, given the huge costs of shipping manufactured products all the way across the Pacific Ocean. Those costs are simply huge.
The only way that corporations can save money given the huge shipping costs is to make even huger cuts in the pay given to workers and the resources spent on making a workplace that is safe and healthy for workers.
Like jclifford, I would really like to be able to offer black shirts for sale. If Cafepress would simply use black American Apparel shirts (as they do for their organic, baby doll, spaghetti strap tank, fitted, hoodie and raglan shirts), we’d be right on board. But for some reason unknown to us, CafePress refuses to do so. If you’d like to be able to buy an ethical black shirt and improve working standards for textile laborers, give CafePress a call at 1-877-809-1659 and ask them to change their ways. If enough people do this, an effective change for the better can come to pass.
Comment by Jim — 11/28/2005 @ 10:49 am
FYI, some of us prefer black shirts simply because light-colored shirts are too see-through.
Comment by John Stracke — 11/28/2005 @ 11:15 am
Whatever the reason you want them, John, we’re not selling them until it’s ethical to do so.
This is an easy ethical equation for me: When outsourced jobs and substandard working conditions are balanced with the agony of someone wondering if a white shirt is too see through, I decide against the crisis of the person wearing the t-shirt.
Comment by J. Clifford — 11/28/2005 @ 11:18 am
I understand that. I was responding to your comments such as “people who want to look sullen and moody”. The ethical issue is separate.
As it happens, I’m not sure I agree with the ethical point. I have some CafePress shops, and I’m not sure whether I’m going to refrain from selling black shirts or not—if I’m going to take that stand, I should first stop buying imported clothes.
When it comes to clothing, the sweatshop issue is extra complicated, because cheap clothing for the US translates into cheap clothing for the developing world. The US has started exporting much more used clothing than ever before, for miniscule prices. The result is a small rise in the worldwide standard of living, as it’s much easier to clothe everybody—including the people in the sweatshops.
I’ll have to think about it. I would prefer to buy clothes made by people who were paid well, and treated well.
Comment by John Stracke — 11/28/2005 @ 3:03 pm
John,
You’re right when you say that stopping buying sweatshop clothes is as important as stopping selling sweatshop clothes. Fortunately, it’s possible for most items to buy non-sweatshop clothes, and I’m trying to do that as much as possible.
I am sympathetic with people who say that, for example, business clothes just aren’t widely available in non-sweatshop form. But t-shirts certainly are, and CafePress has shown that a non-sweatshop t-shirt can be successfully produced, marketed and distributed. They have five or six varieties of them, as a matter of fact.
Given that non-sweatshop t-shirts are available to buy, there’s not much of an excuse for not buying them and getting a Hanes shirt for yourself instead. Given that non-sweatshop t-shirts are available to sell, there’s not much of an excuse for not selling them and selling Hanes t-shirts instead, shirts that aid and abet sweatshop production tactics. Given that Cafepress is refusing so far to produce on sweatshop-free black shirts, it’s a really tricky question of what to do. I hope that the answer is for CafePress to expand their production possibilities, so that people who want to sell exclusively on sweat-free merchandise have the opportunity to do so.
Comment by Jim — 11/28/2005 @ 4:35 pm
That’s a good point.
Possibly because they just started, and they’ve got a large batch of sweatful black shirts they need to sell; if they make the ethical option available now, it’ll hurt their profits. Since they must have invested in new plant to be able to print on black, that would make it look as if that investment had been misguided, which would scare off investors. (Having spent most of my career at pre-IPO startups, I can sympathize.)
Comment by John Stracke — 11/28/2005 @ 5:42 pm
John,
Yes, I agree that would be an acceptable scenario. But they’ve told us in conversation that they’re planning on just going via the Hanes line, and are not planning on expanding to American Apparel.
Comment by Jim — 11/28/2005 @ 7:01 pm
man, i’ve got a drawer full of fruit of the loom
and hanes underwear. so, are you saying hanes is sweatshop too?
i’ll have to start reading the labels or else go without.
but, it gets chilly for my willy.
Comment by randy ray haugen — 11/28/2005 @ 7:43 pm
Correction - not Hanes, but Fruit of the Loom. Hanes information was from a mistaken customer service rep. at CafePress.
Comment by Odd Claude — 11/28/2005 @ 8:13 pm
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/610460771?ltl=1132065976
I created a petition a few weeks back to beg, pester, nudge, and cajole Cafepress to offer more sweatshop free (verified sweat shop free) dark color and organic cotton shirts by American Apparel. I’d love a union made or even a fair trade made shirt, but I won’t push my luck. Please encourage your readers to sign it.
I use the link as my thank you page as well. You can create a special thank you page which directs them to the petition…just an idea.
Please. This affects more than 2 million shop keepers. Shops like Progressive Magazine, Air America, Bizarro, King World, Vegan of Light (me), Peta, and of course the excellent shirts at IrregularTimes.com.
Comment by Christina — 12/3/2005 @ 11:56 pm
Hanes, Anvil, Fruit of the Loom, Gildan, Champion all the big names outsource to contractors in third world countries where the labor is cheap and the workers are plenty. Sweatshopwatch.org, GlobalExchange, cover this stuff and you can always find the biggies running into trouble because these companies are not vertical, they outsource to contractors who “sweat” the workers to keep the prices low. It’s gut wrenching information. But some biggies are cleaning up their acts, so it’s good to be on top of it.
There’s a number of places on the web to find fair clothing and you can also do thrift store shopping where the damage is already done and many thrift shops support a charity. Look for union labels, fair trade (Global Exchange has a store of coffee, gifts and such that are free of sweat), and you can join Coopamerica.org to learn more. Also check out Ifat.org and FairTradeFederation.org for imported fair clothing places.
Comment by Christina — 12/4/2005 @ 12:11 am
Black is not just for moody teenyboppers who like to wear those black with white skull-and-crossed-crutches goth designs. Us blondes look really hot in black. Also if you have a couple of extra pounds, black is more flattering.
Comment by Iroquois Honky — 5/12/2007 @ 12:03 pm