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

Andrew Ross (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1859841724 | ISBN-13: 978-1859841723 | Publication Date: September 1, 1997

Are you aware that the T-shirt or the running shoes you are wearing may have been produced by children as young as 13 years old, working 14-hour days for 30 cents an hour? Don't be reassured by a label that claims the item was manufactured in the USA or Europe. It could have been sewn in Haiti or Indonesia -- or in a domestic sweatshop where conditions rival those in the Third World. The label may tell you how to treat the garment, but it says nothing of how the worker who made it was treated. To find out about that you need to read this book. No Sweat shows you: * How Michael Jordan earned more for endorsing Nike running shoes that then company's 30,000 Indonesian workers get between them in a year. * How Disney CEO 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-shirts made by Haitian teenagers who work for less than $10 per week and are force-fed contraceptive pills. * How companies like GAP and Wal-Mart (producer of the Kathie Lee Gifford line), have been forced into embarrassing concessions after successful campaigning by the New York-based National Labor Committee, the American garment workers union UNITE and the European-based Clean Clothes Campaign. * How you can join the growing global campaign of consumer groups, human rights activists and international labor organizations to close down sweatshops and guarantee basic rights for those who cut and sew our clothes. In hard-hitting words and pictures, No Sweat tells the story of the chasm between the glamour of the catwalk and the squalor of the sweatshop. Don't go shopping without it.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Contributors include JoAnn 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, Paul Smith.

Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Verso (September 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859841724
• ISBN-13: 978-1859841723
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,434,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A strong attack on exploitative labor practices, April 24, 2000

By 

Getting rid of my name on here - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Workers (Paperback)

I read "No Sweat" to research a term paper on sweatshop labor exploitation. It's a collection of essays by different authors, all on the topic of exploitation of garment industry workers. There's a decent amount of information in this book, and it's related in an entertaining style, but I have two complaints: the information is not very organized, and the book is one-sided and does not even try to explain the arguments business leaders use to defend their practices. Even if you are fervently anti-sweatshop, you need to know the pro-sweatshop arguments so that you can refute them.

"No Sweat" is a good start if you're interested in learning about the abuses of sweatshop labor, but if you want a more thorough, organized and balanced treatment of the subject, read "The Sweatshop Quandary", edited by Pamela Varley.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Powerful remonstration, September 27, 2002

By 

"stenerin1" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No Sweat: Fashion, Free Trade and the Rights of Workers (Paperback)

No one LIKES sweatshops...we know they're bad, & all hiss convincingly when the latest human rights violation in the garment industry is read off on the evening news. We shake our heads & swear we'll boycott, and we DO...until the story fades from the top of the hour & the remembrance of those that suffered is forgotten. Because in truth, we'd all just as soon pretend that all our garments are made by shining, happy people sitting in front of gently humming sewing machines, joyously making a living wage which allows for a movie every Friday night so that we can go on buying our clothes for cheap. NO SWEAT takes that gentle complacency, that warm cocoon of apathy & shatters it, laying the garment industry bare for all to see in every last bit of its infamy.

Constructed out of the voices of a few, NO SWEAT speaks for millions. Including testimony from sweatshop workers themselves, along with activists, trade union organizers, journalists, academics & industry insiders, NO SWEAT covers the entire spectrum of the labor movement as it stands today, & gives us a not entirely promising glimpse into a future beset by our own apathy. Offering harrowing firsthand accounts from workers & ground level testimony from activists, NO SWEAT paints a very vivid picture of the immense dichotomy of the industry, which begins in the squalor of the sweatshop, but emerges on the catwalks. Some of the testimony seems hardly believable in this day and age, but the accounts are real & true, a sad testament to how far the movement has yet to go. Such is terribly affective, a powerful remonstration of our own apathy. Unfortunately, though the book does not attempt to appear objective, it does make a token effort to allow the other side a forum. While a great idea, ultimately, NO SWEAT doesn't go far enough in this vein, lending the preponderance of its pages to the labor movement, & only a few, always negative pages to industry insiders. This weakens the integrity of the piece as a whole. If the editors of NO SWEAT were not prepared to go all the way, then they should have never have made even the slightest pretension towards giving the other side a say. Such is only a small cavil however, among a great many strengths. NO SWEAT should occupy a place of prominence in every library.