cheap high street clothing - ethical update

[fl0wer]

What has been happening in the clothing industry since the Bangladesh factory disaster?

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/oct/06/ethical-high-street-clothes-supply-chain-bangladesh

[giggirl]

Thanks for posting. Often difficult to find online help in shopping ethically, both for food and for clothing, so it was a good read.

[Loz]

I've just come back from some time in Vietnam, where a lot of clothes are made. It is going through what I would describe as its own industrial revolution - the movement of labour from an agrarian economy to manufacturing. It has the same good and bad effects as like the one here a couple of centuries ago - people working long hard hours for low wages, but other things like education and (surprisingly, given these sort of articles) child labour use seem to be improving. I believe the net effect will be a positive one in the longer term.

These 'cheap labour' jobs are central to this and jobs have no shortage of takers. The trick is not to stop using these companies, but (as this article does) pressure western companies to ensure suppliers improve terms and conditions and check that a fair wage is paid.

[woodrot]

surely fashion from intellectual perspective, is always going to be facile and wasteful ?

Im not advocating a PolPotite year zero with regard to sartorial elegance, but the fact that 95% of clothes produced are shiity and throwaway is the real problem. Improving the lot of the enslaved is all very worthwhile, but they are still slaves to the whims of a vacous parasitical money making machine. innit.