When is Inexpensive Too Inexpensive?

I've been pleased to see how much coverage the recent Bangladesh clothing factory collapse has gotten, and how it has raised important questions about protections for workers in developing nations, and about how cheap is too cheap.

In my post last week, I reiterated my promise to read clothing labels more carefully, but honestly: it's hard.

How do I know whether the Pakistani factory that made this pair of jeans is run more carefully than the Malaysian factory that made that pair of jeans? The manufacturer's label won't tell me much, and it's possible that the manufacturer doesn't even know, as many items will be subcontracted through many times. (Yes, this provides plausible deniability.)

The simple solution is to refuse to buy anything from, say, Bangladesh, until working conditions improve there.

The Walt Disney Company, "considered the world’s largest licenser with sales of nearly $40 billion, in March ordered an end to the production of branded merchandise in Bangladesh," according to Steven Greenhouse's article in yesterday's New York Times. "Less than 1 percent of the factories used by Disney’s contractors are in Bangladesh." Other companies are said to be considering pulling out of the country also.

But -- and I know I've used my favorite H. L. Mencken quote before -- "For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong."

In today's New York Times, Greenhouse wrote about concerns in Bangladesh that more Western companies will decide to leave. He quoted a Bangladeshi legislator (and factory owner) who pointed out that many factories in the country do comply with safety regulations, and noted:

The whole nation should not be made to suffer. This industry is very important to us. Fourteen million families depend on this. It is a huge number of people who are dependent on this industry.

So if the labels can't be entirely trusted, and there's no easy solution, should I just throw up my hands and say, Never mind?

Of course not.

In an article for The Nation, Elizabeth Cline, the author of recently-published Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, has some suggestions:

Eileen Fisher has introduced a labeling system that marks whether an item of clothing is fair trade, made in the USA or certified organic. Knights Apparel, which produces clothing for American colleges, owns a successful, unionized factory in the Dominican Republic that pays a living wage.... Get that? The company is not subcontracting. It actually owns and takes full responsibility for the factory that makes its products. And its products cost the same as those of its rivals (Nike and Adidas). I hope in the coming months we see major fashion brands adopting similar practices, or coming up with their own innovative and ethical alternatives to the cheap-fashion juggernaut. 

There are other options, too. Interviewed by Terry Gross on her NPR program, Fresh Air (highlights of the show here; podcast and transcript of the complete 39-minute interview also available there), Cline acknowledged that not every consumer buys cheap clothes because they're fun or disposable; some buy cheap because they can't afford better.

...When we don't support domestically made clothes, that, you know, translates into a loss of jobs here. All these things are very tied together. But, you know, and that's also why I say if people can't afford better, shop where you're going to shop. Sometimes it's about how you shop and not where you shop. So if you buy something cheap, that doesn't mean you have to have a disposable attitude about it or a disposable relationship to it. 

She also mentioned fast-fashion powerhouse H&M, which has developed a "Conscious Collection, which is made out of organic, cotton and recycled polyester and other eco-friendly materials." (It's not clear, however, whether the materials are made in an equally "eco-friendly" factory.)

All of these are positive moves. But it's up to us, as consumers, to keep the pressure on. We need to ask for labels that give more information and to make it clear that we're willing to pay the small additional price to know that the workers who make our clothes have a safe workplace and a living wage.