…a person picking tomatoes receives the same basic rate of pay he received thirty years ago. Adjusted for inflation, a harvester’s wages have actually dropped by half over the same period. Florida tomato workers, mostly Hispanic migrants, toil without union protection and get neither overtime, benefits, nor medical insurance. They are denied basic legal rights that virtually all other laborers enjoy.
The owners had crop insurance and emergency government aid to offset their losses. The workers had nothing. Florida’s tomato fields are “ground zero for modern-day slavery.”
Barry Estabrook:  Tomatoland:  How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed our Most Alluring Fruit

In November, 112 garment workers were killed in a fire at Tazreen Fashions factory, where products were being made for Walmart and Sears. A year and a half earlier, Walmart shareholders had voted down requiring annual safety reports from suppliers, saying it “could ultimately lead to higher costs for Walmart and higher prices for our customers. This would not be in the best interests of Walmart’s shareholders and customers and would place Walmart at a competitive disadvantage.”
Nina Strochlic, JCPenney, Mango Among Companies That Used Fatal Bangladesh Factory (from The Daily Beast)

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Here’s a question?  Who is to blame for the working conditions of the people who provide us our clothing and our food?

And, if those working conditions are utterly inhuman, whose responsibility is it to change that?

I have read what is a growing number of books in the last few months that chronicle the working conditions of the people who provide us with what we wear, eat, and use on a daily basis.  I’m going to try to do my best to describe our current reality.

Many workers work in inhumane, unsafe conditions.  Some in conditions that can only be described as modern day slavery.  (There are quite a few convictions for this practice in Florida over the  last few years.  You can learn more about this here:  Coalition of Immokalee Workers).

And no one seems to be responsible.  The retailers buy from suppliers who buy from some “original source” which does not have employees, but contract all the work out.  Thus, no one seems to be responsible.

This is true with our tomatoes, our toilet paper, and as the horrific fire in Bangladesh reveals, our clothing.

I don’t even know what to do.  I can’t complain to Safeway about the toilet paper.  They have no control over, and no say over, the working conditions of the people who work in the forest.  And, apparently, the WalMarts and the JC Penneys of the world have no say over the conditions of the workers who provide our clothing.

You know, if you go back to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in 1911 in New York City, which cost 146 women their lives and led to the rise of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, you can see that that tragedy led to change for the better – that is, the betterment of the working conditions for the people who worked, in a sense, for all of us.  (The recent fire at the factory in Bangladesh killed 377).

Look carefully at the wording of that statement from Walmart, quoted above.

Walmart shareholders had voted down requiring annual safety reports from suppliers, saying it “could ultimately lead to higher costs for Walmart and higher prices for our customers. This would not be in the best interests of Walmart’s shareholders and customers and would place Walmart at a competitive disadvantage.” (emphasis added).

Translation: cheaper prices are what’s matter.  Cheaper than their competitors.  Shareholders – the “respectable men and women” who own stock in the company – “voted down requiring annual safety reports from suppliers.”

What kind of people are we, that we vote down requiring safety reports?  Do we really care more about our “competitive advantage” than we do the safety of the workers who make us our clothing?  Apparently, we do.

Just for the record, I would be willing to pay more for my shirts, my toilet paper, my tomatoes if it meant humane and fair conditions for the workers.  But, I’m not sure where to even find a list of such products/companies.  (And, I’ve done some looking…)

Again, I ask:  What kind of people are we? And, What kind of businesses will we invest in, and support?  This may truly reveal what kind of people we are.