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The Guardian has spoken to more than a dozen workers at the fashion label's factory in Subang, Indonesia, where employees describe being paid one of the lowest minimum wages in Asia and there are claims of impossibly high production targets and sporadically compensated overtime.
The workers' complaints come only a week after labour activists investigating possible abuses at a Chinese factory that makes Ivanka Trump shoes disappeared into police custody.
The activists' group claimed they had uncovered a host of violations at the plant including salaries below China's legal minimum wage, managers verbally abusing workers and "violations of women's rights".
In the Indonesian factory some of the complaints are similar, although the wages paid to employees in Subang are much lower.
[...] PT Buma, a Korean-owned garment company started in Indonesia in 1999, is one of the suppliers of G-III Apparel Group, the wholesale manufacturer for prominent fashion brands including Trump's clothing.
[...] When Alia was told the gist of Ivanka Trump's new book on women in the workplace, she burst out laughing. Her idea of work-life balance, she said, would be if she could see her children more than once a month.
[...] Carry Somers, founder of the non-profit Fashion Revolution said: "Ivanka Trump claims to be the ultimate destination for Women Who Work, but this clearly doesn't extend to the women who work for her in factories around the world."
In March, Indonesia was called out by President Donald Trump for having an unfavourable trade balance with the US. The president took issue with Indonesia's $13bn surplus last year and vowed to penalise "cheating foreign importers".
Bad pay, unrealistic production requirements, unpaid overtime and verbal abuse are among the complaints of the workers. Ivanka has factories in China, and Indonesia where wages are even lower. Does textile production really have to be like this? Can we really not afford buying clothes made in humane conditions?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:02PM (8 children)
Total nonsense, put forward by apologists for the global sweatshop industry but in no way reflecting reality, for one simple reason: Manufacturing labor is not a significant percentage of the cost of clothing. Most clothing companies spend far more on advertising than they do on making clothing, for instance. If you multiplied the cost of manufacture 10-fold, you'd increase the price of a typical item of clothing by maybe $1.
This sounds alien to those who believe that supply and pricing perfectly reflects what it actually costs to make things, but since clothing manufacture is more of an oligopoly than a competitive market, that's the reality of it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:00PM
Of course it is not, because they pay 1$/day in third world
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:03PM (5 children)
Not sure where you're getting your facts and numbers but they smell suspiciously like someone's ass. Multiplying the labor to produce a simple t-shirt to 10x would increase the manufacturing cost roughly 5x. This would absolutely be reflected in prices because manufacturers are not charities.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:47PM (1 child)
Oh look the turd dropping birdman is back with his little pellets of wisdom. Hark ye and be dumbed down.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:06PM
I know facts offend the weak-minded. They remain the facts though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tfried on Saturday June 17 2017, @08:29PM (2 children)
So will you offer numbers that don't smell? Not sure what you think of these, but your turn to provide something better:
https://qz.com/980283/a-simple-change-could-ensure-garment-workers-a-living-wage-at-minimal-cost-to-shoppers/ [qz.com]
In summary, for a) produced in India, b) 25$ retail price, c) sold in the EU, the manufacturing labor cost is around 5% of the retail price. Which means that the GP was exaggerating, but also means that a whopping 100% wage raise could realistically mean less than 10% extra for western consumers.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 17 2017, @10:40PM (1 child)
I don't dispute the current numbers there. I dispute what percentage of profit the manufacturers are willing to settle for. Right now they're making about 3-400% profit on the manufacturing process. It is my opinion that they would still want 3-400% profit after a 10x wage increase, as would the wholesalers, as would the retailers. Any labor cost increase is going to be multiplied by ~50-60 before it hits the consumers.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tfried on Sunday June 18 2017, @06:56AM
Do they want to make 3-400% profit? Sure. More, if they can.
Would they still need 3-400% profit margin to keep their overall profit? Certainly not. They'd need a small extra slice of profit to cover stuff they produce but don't sell, etc. But the largest part of their expenses (esp. marketing) is not affected.
Could they keep operating at 3-400% profit margin? Depends on the market. Right now, "fair clothing" is a niche market with few players, and premium prices. And thus, "doing the right thing / voting with your money" is prohibitively expensive to most. However, if all manufacturers were forced to pay the same higher minimum wage, do you think they could keep that margin? I for one don't see the market mechanism for that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @08:02PM
"Made in the USA" is like "Organic" and "SCSI" or "SAS".
The younger crowd won't remember this, but there was a time when hard drives could be SCSI or IDE. SCSI was costly. I suppose today the alternative to SATA might be SAS. SCSI drives cost far more than IDE drives. It was about a 2x difference if I remember right. The drives were otherwise identical. Nearly the same model, with all the same hardware except the connector, would be available for both SCSI and IDE. SCSI cost more because it cost more, pretty much. That seems silly, but price differentiation is pretty much that. Fancy computers would have SCSI. If you were willing to pay for a fancy computer, the drive manufacturer figured they could squeeze more money out of you, and so they did. Because SCSI was expensive, it was only available in high-end fancy systems.
Organic food is similar. The store wants to offer different prices to maximize their profit. Organic really means "premium". It gets plenty of pesticide BTW, including horridly toxic brain-damaging stuff like the juice of young pawpaw tree twigs. You find organic produce in carefully padded trays. It is hand-picked. You pay for all sorts of unrelated stuff, but mostly you pay just because the store can get away with it. A second price point means more profit.
Something that is "Made in the USA" is probably high quality, but not enough to justify the increased price. You're paying for a premium product. Price differentiation means more profit. Something "Made in the USA" might go for $20 and sell really well, but the existence of a foreign product for $18 means that the "Made in the USA" stuff is more profitable to sell in smaller numbers for a much higher price, such as $100.