No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade, and the Rights of Garment Workers [Hardcover]

Andrew Ross (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1859848664 | ISBN-13: 978-1859848661 | Publication Date: September 1997 | Edition: illustrated edition

This study tells the story of the chasm between the glamour of the catwalk and the squalor of the sweatshop. Few consumers are aware that the T-shirt or the running shoes they are wearing have been produced by children as young as 13 years old, working 14-hour days for 30 cents an hour. A label claiming that the item was manufactured in the USA or Europe is no reassurance that this is actually the case. It could have been sewn in Haiti or Indonesia - or in a domestic sweatshop where conditions rival those in the Third World. The label says nothing of how the worker who made it was treated. The book reveals: how Nike's celebrity spokesman Michael Jordan earned more for endorsing Nike running shoes than the company's 200,000-strong Asian workforce get between them in a year; How Disney boss Michael Eisner's annual pay and stock options, worth $200 million, are partly paid for out of profits from the sale of "Pocahontas" and "Hunchback of Notre Dame" T-shirt made by Haitian teenagers working for less than $10 per week and force-fed contraceptive pills; how campaigning by the New York-based National Labor Committee, the American workers' union UNITE and US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich has forced embarassing climb-downs by companies, such as GAP and Wal Mart, caught using sweated labour. Contributors include Jo-Ann Mort and Alan Howard (UNITE); Julie Su, Charlie Kernaghan and the National Labor Committee (edited by Kitty Krupat); Bud Konheim (interviewed by Sally Singer); Mike Piore; John Cavanagh; MacKenzie Wark; Angela McRobbie; Robin Givhan; and Paul Smith. Andrew Ross is the author of "The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life" and "Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits".

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Verso Books; illustrated edition edition (September 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859848664
• ISBN-13: 978-1859848661
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 8.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,102,515 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)