by Jamison Maeda
In the world’s tiniest gesture of goodwill, Gap Inc. changed the background photo on their Twitter account to a South Asian male model. Several people were very moved by this apparent display of racial sensitivity. However other more socially aware consumers remembered that much of Gap’s clothing is made by children as young as 5 years old in South Asian sweatshops.
In 2007, Indian police rescued 14 children as young as 8 years old from a sweatshop in Delhi that made clothing for Gap. The children worked 12 hours a day in a tiny room, poorly ventilated room. They suffered from eye and skin conditions, and one boy had sores on his face and limbs from untreated chicken pox.
Sweatshop working conditions throughout South Asia are well known and well documented. Children and adults, mostly women, are often forced to work 100 hour weeks for salaries insufficient to buy food, and certainly not enough for anything resembling health care. Beatings and harassment are common, and women are usually terminated when they become pregnant.
A report was published by a human rights group entitled “Gap and Old Navy in Bangladesh: Cheating the Poorest Workers in the World.” It documented working conditions in a factory in Bangladesh that produced clothing for Gap and Old Navy.
The report states “…workers are forced to toil 14 to 17-plus hour shifts, seven days a week, routinely putting in workweeks of over 100 hours…Workers are visibly sick and exhausted…By the third week in a month, most have no money left for food.”
Even more disturbing than the miserable and inhumane working conditions is the total disregard for worker’s safety. More than 600 South Asian workers have died in factory fires since 2006.
Nearly 30 Bangladeshi workers died in a 2010 factory fire, and at least 117 people were killed in a fire at the Tazreen garment factory in 2012. In May of 2013 another 7 people died in a factory fire. Most recently, in October of 2013, 8 workers died in a factory fire.
But even with factory fire deaths on the rise, Gap and Walmart refuse to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. They refuse to allow workers to organize, and in fact support factories known for union-busting.
On April 24th, Rana Plaza, an eight story garment factory collapsed killing 1,129 factory workers.
Management was warned to close the building after cracks appeared the day before. But warnings were ignored and workers were ordered to return to work or management would withhold a month’s pay.
Gap Inc. has confirmed wage and over-time violations in the past. But companies like Gap claim that they do not own these factories, and if their vendor subcontracts with another vendor, Gap has no way of knowing whether or not their clothing is produced in a sweatshop or by children.
Perhaps we should help Gap and Walmart and other companies in the unfortunate position of not knowing who makes their clothing. Let’s ask them to publish their vendor list. Then the public and the media can investigate each vendor for workers’ rights violations and unsafe working conditions. We can help companies understand what issues are important to us by signing the many anti-sweatshop petitions online. And we can contact Gap Inc. via their twitter account to tell them we will shop elsewhere until we are satisfied that no more workers die in a preventable fire.
And don’t forget, their Twitter account is the one with the photo of the South Asian male model.