NET-workers

Over the last several years, American Apparel has received a lot of positive publicity for their purported good practices for workers. The company sells its simple clothes with wording like "sweatshop free" and images of young, hip, progressive people lounging sexily in the cotton t-shirts. href="http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2005-03-17/news_feature-1.jpg">photos of women (porn-chic?) are. But, anti-union activities and resistance and an environment of fear prevented UNITE HERE from organizing the factory in 2003. It seems like that age-old problem of a company being good in one respect but really bad for another (like Starbucks, for example). Should we support them for at least being better than the Wal-Marts and Gaps of the world?

To read more about American Apparel's anti-union activities, see Behind The Label.

Dov Charney, founder of American Apparel Inc., stated in an interview in May 2004 with the Los Angeles Business Journal. Saying that sweatshop free sounds like charity and that it's no big deal makes me want to rip off my American Apparel shirt (yes, I am wearing one right now) and boycott American Apparel forever.

"Q: You advertise heavily the fact that you are sweatshop-free.

A: I think it is a secondary appeal and I'm getting a little bored with it myself. It's too PC. It's like — big deal. I'm de-emphasizing it. There are other companies that pay crappy wages that are winning awards for their financial performance. I want to create a new platform for the future. It's less about sweatshop-free because that sounds like charity. It's more about a program of efficiency that dwarfs full capitalism and creates the new form of capitalism."

// posted by Metis @ Thursday, June 16, 2005