“The most common goods listed are cotton, sugarcane, tobacco, coffee, rice, and cocoa in agriculture; bricks, garments, carpets, and footwear in manufacturing; and gold and coal in mined or quarried goods.”

– 2009 U.S. Department of Labor report on the use of child labor and forced labor in overseas production

“Footwear duties, which are higher on lower price footwear, serve no purpose…”

–Text of S. 730, the “Affordable Footwear Act”

19 Senators step up to the mike with regularity to talk about standing up for “American jobs.” Well, they’re standing up when they talk about it. But what do they do when the mike’s turned off and they’ve taken a seat in the plush chairs of a conference room? They take a dump on Made-in-the-USA. That’s what they do.

There are nationalist, xenophobic reasons to support garments that are made in the USA, but there are other reasons, too. Even though American labor laws and inspections are imperfect, they are among the best guarantors of at least a baseline wage, environmental safety and legal rights. Paying workers a minimum wage, not giving them cancer with toxic glues, allowing them the freedom to work elsewhere and not running a cafeteria where they buy food with maggots or dead rats? Why, those “labor costs” cut into profits. On the other hand, shipping shoes across an ocean on an oily barge costs money, too, which means that overseas production has to cut “labor costs” even more to overcome the expense of shipping a product tens of thousands of miles.

How do you cut “labor costs” if you’re a shoe producer overseas? You can beat your workers into submission so they won’t complain about illegally low wages. You can cut out worker protections against poisoning. You can put workers in housing where there are 2 bathrooms for 200 people and then make them pay for it, or fine away more than a day’s pay every time a worker annoys management.

Or you could use child labor or forced labor. In a 2009 report, the U.S. Department of Labor found that there is a “significant incidence of child labor or forced labor” in the countries of Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India and Indonesia; the report clarifies that this is not an exhaustive list, since in many countries inspectors have not been permitted access to factories to assess conditions. Regardless, these five nations alone are major sources of inexpensive footwear sold in the USA.

Import duties on footwear made in overseas sweatshops have been one way to not only protect American jobs but to counter the incentive of importers to work with contractors that “cut labor costs” by slowly grinding workers into dust. And yet, 19 U.S. Senators have signed on in support of a bill, S. 730, that not only does away with import duties on sweatshop shoes, but declares that “Footwear duties, which are higher on lower price footwear, serve no purpose…”.

No purpose? Environmental protection is no purpose? Buying local is no purpose? Workers wages: no purpose? Beatings: no purpose? Rats in the food: no purpose? Child labor: no purpose? Forced labor: no purpose?

No purpose? Make that no purpose that these Senators care to notice.

The 19 Senators who have taken a quiet dump on fair trade, on worker rights, and on Made in the USA:

Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) — principal sponsor
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO)
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS)
Sen. Roland Burris (D-IL)
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME)
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC)
Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL)
Sen. Michael Enzi (R-WY)
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH)
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Sen. Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT)
Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA)
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS)
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY)
Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)
Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO)
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA)
Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH)

In case you were expecting all of the supporters of the “Affordable Footwear Act” to be Republicans, go ahead and count the Rs and the Ds: that’s 9 Republicans, 9 Democrats and 1 member of the Joe Party. With well-heeled lobbyists like Ben Barnes bundling hundreds of thousands of dollars into the coffers of the Democratic Party, why should we expect the party with a progressive rhetorical reputation to take progressive legislative action?

Tags: affordable footwear act, child labor, duty, fair trade, footwear, forced labor, imports, s. 730, shoes, sweatshops, tariff