Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.