My Sweatshop Guitar

"The air on my skin and the world under my toes,
Slavery stitched into the fabric of my clothes" Brett Dennen

I sold my old guitar last week, which was more emotional than I expected it to be. There was no sense in keeping it, but I learned to play (such as I can) on it and kept it for ten years, and you know how we become attached to things.

It was a Cort, and while I was looking for a new guitar I happened to google Cort one day and found the following videos, which feature South Korean Cort factory workers describing the terrible working conditions they have experienced.

The images of women describing how they were told that the guitars were worth more than they were, and saying that if you press a Cort guitar tears will pour out, were harrowing to me. I read some more and found out that in 2008, Cort workers had gone on a 30-day hunger strike and sit-in to protest working conditions at a Cort plant in South Korea. One worker even set himself on fire.

These awful revelations, about an item which I own and has sentimental value to me due to the countless hours I've spent with it over the last decade, gave me pause. I felt guilty. Shameful.

I arrived again at a question that has confronted the West many times in the last century: how then should we buy? As consumers, what should we do about sweatshops and injustice in the workplace and terrible working conditions and child labor in far-away countries which make so many of the goods that we bargain shoppers purchase?

It's a difficult question, because I'm not convinced that the obvious answer—do not buy from companies which support these practices—is always the right one. As Nicholas Kristoff stated in this excellent article (as well as this one, and this one), "the only thing worse than being exploited in a sweatshop is not being exploited in a sweatshop." For many people in the developing world, the alternatives to working long hours in terrible factories for almost no pay are actually worse. Not having a job and an income and earning a living by picking through acres of garbage or pulling a rickshaw is more dangerous and less healthy. What's more, industrialization and increased manufacturing are the only way out of poverty for developing nations. If we work to prevent factories from operating in the developing world, we won't fight poverty—we will perpetuate it.

This is not to say that working to fight poor working conditions and abuses in factories in the developing world is pointless. Consider the following selection from this revealing article by a former sweatshop inspector:

As for those who feel especially strongly about the issue and kick up a (peaceful) fuss about sweatshops, I think they're doing a valuable thing. Even when they take actions that are sometimes off-base—such as continuing to boycott Nike when its competitors are the bigger problem—the effect is still, overall, good: it scares businesses into taking compliance more seriously. Boycotts, protests, letters to Congress, saber-rattling lawmakers, media exposes—they do have an impact. And just imagine if members of Congress or the executive branch made an effort to praise or shame companies for their records with foreign suppliers and to encourage transparent monitoring in the private sector. I suspect it would do more for international labor standards in months than the most intricate trade agreements could do in years.

I don't pretend that everything monitoring brings about is for the best. An example: Mattel's factories in China are superb, but workers there often earn less than their peers in shadier factories because their employers confine them to shorter workweeks to avoid paying overtime. Another: You may rightly hate the idea of child labor, but firing a fourteen-year-old in Indonesia from a factory job because she is fourteen does nothing but deprive her of income she is understandably desperate to keep. (She'll find worse work elsewhere, most likely, or simply go hungry.) A third: Small village factories may break the rules, but they often operate in a humane and basically sensible way, and I didn't enjoy lecturing their owners about the necessity of American-style time cards and fifteen-minute breaks. But labor standards anywhere have a tendency to create such problems. They're enacted in the hope that the good outweighs the bad.

So we must be measured in our approach. Some companies are better than others about hiring foreign suppliers which employ fair labor standards. The article above praises Target over Wal-Mart, for instance. There is something to be said for conscionable consumerism. However, there is also much to be said for encouraging manufacturing in developing countries by lowering trade barriers and resisting movements which will harm its growth. Should I have bought my Cort guitar? Probably not. Should I feel guilty every time I put on my GAP jeans? Probably not.

I own a Martin now, and I have to say I feel a little better when my fingers hit the strings.

Image: Cort Guitar Workers Action