cheap cheap for you
I think that I will have a really hard time going back to Canada and buying clothes, shoes, bags, make-up, and food, and it will definitely be hard to pay for an apartment. Everything here is ridiculously cheap, I don't think I'll ever get over it. An expensive cab ride for us here is about $6, seriously.
We were talking about this in the staff room the other day, about how living here really makes you think differently about working conditions and what we would consider to be sweat shops. Someone said that the minimum wage in Thailand is something like 22 THB per hour, which is about 60 cent Canadian. Walking down the street, you see people begging, selling toys and fruit for next to nothing, and it just makes you think about the people working in factories. Working in a factory here is actually not a bad job, especially considering the active sex trade industry in this country! When we hear in Canada how much these people make, we are outraged because it seems so low, and it is, but so is the cost of living, and compared with other jobs, it's actually not a bad wage. Now, I am definitely not condoning sweatshops, or saying that Nike should be making billions of dollars and paying people 60 cents an hour, but I also don't think that the answer is to boycott and only buy clothing or merchandise that is manufactured in Canada or the States. Sure, we know that those workers are being paid and treated better, but what happens to the workers here if the factories are closed and moved to North America? There are so many people here who already don't have work, and those people who were making next to nothing are now actually making nothing, as are the people who work in the shipyards and on the ships that are taking those clothes over to North America.
The obvious and easy solution to dealing with sweatshops is to just buy everything from American Apparel or other companies that manufacture their things in the States, and I have nothing wrong with these companies, but that really is just ignoring the issue and not helping things in any way.
Obviously, we didn't actually come up with any solutions as we were talking, but it was a really interesting conversation, and I just thought I'd share!
posted by Jill @ 10:43 AM
5 Comments:
I used to always have this argument with my grandpa back in the day. He would always bug me and my concern for buying locally by saying these exact things. My response is that my problem with these factories is not so much the wages they are paying (as they are offering good jobs for some), but the fact that they are there in the first place. Doesn't it seem counterproductive to be supporting organizations that are taking money away from Thailand? Shouldn't we be rather incouraging Thai people to be producing stuff on there own? Buying locally isn't ignoring the problem at all. It isn't maybe the complete answer, but at least it's a recognition that sustainable economies rely on local business (be it Friesen's Bigway or some Thai grocery store) to thrive. Anyways, don't want to have an essay in the comment section. Just wanted to through this out there as well.
I agree with you, what I was trying to say, and probably not very clearly, is that people often think that the solution is to simply close the sweatshops. Maybe that is part of the solution, but definitely not everything. By closing down the sweatshop, you are hurting the large company, but you are also hurting the people who work there. I agree that we should be encouraging Thai people to be producing things on their own, but this is the step that is often not taken, that is the point that I was trying to make.
It sounds like you were opening up a conversation, so here you go. Yes, not enough people do encourage producing locally. One org. that does is the Grameen Bank - the guy who started it just won the Nobel Peace prize. You should check it out. They give a small loan to poor people who want to start their own small local business. It's scary though to imply that it's ok to buy a shirt from Gap that costs $3 to make but $60 to buy - it's just not looking at the bigger picture. So, yeah, I do think buying locally is helping things in some way and is not ignoring the issue. If we just keep doing things the way they are now, nothing will ever change. But, that may just be me, the idealist social work student...
I wasn't implying that it's ok to buy that shirt from the Gap, but I was saying that it's not ok to buy locally and feel as though the problem is solved, and I know that this is not what you were saying, but I think that there are those who feel that way. I think that buying locally is a very important first step, but it is just one step. That organisation does sound interesting, I'll check it out!
That was a really thought-provoking perspective Jill.
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