Wear to shop
December 9, 2005
Noelle Nightingale
When it comes to clothes shopping, Trinity Western University students said that price is one of the most important considerations.
“I think about price, and how I’d rather spend my money,” said David Faulkner, second year.
For many, price and convenience are more important than whether clothing comes from any particular store.
Danielle Kooy, second year, said she’ll shop “anywhere, really—the mall. I base my decision mostly on price.”
“I shop at a lot of thrift stores, [and] Nordstrom,” said third year student James Rempt, adding that his choice to buy depends on factors such as sales and return policies.
Although many students shop at secondhand stores, some, like first year student Kayla Gerber, take things other than price into consideration.
“I would never buy something based on the label, because big labels usually mean poor working conditions and sweatshops. I try to buy secondhand, [and not] spend $80 on a pair of jeans that some girl got paid 13 cents to make.”
Other students expressed similar concerns, but said it doesn’t affect where they shop, because they don’t know which companies use sweatshops.
“I shop on Robson [Street],” said first year student Andre Yu, but “nobody tells me where [the clothes] come from. It would affect my decision.”
“I don’t usually know, honestly, but if I did know that something came from a sweatshop, I wouldn’t buy it,” said Rempt.
To some, sweatshops aren’t an issue. “I don’t think about sweatshops and the effects and consequences…you just like [certain stores] more than others,” said Faulkner.
Second year student Zach Bulick buys clothes based on quality, and said that he sometimes shops at Gap and American Eagle, but also buys from smaller companies whose clothes are made in the USA.
“I take [sweatshops] into account,” Bulick stated, and went on to point out that it’s a confusing issue, because he also thinks about the fact that if people didn’t work at sweatshops, they might have no job at all.
Indeed, it is hard to know what to believe when it comes to sweatshops, and which manufacturers use them. The websites of companies like American Eagle (www.aeoutfitters.com) claim that they require suppliers “to provide a workplace environment that not only meets basic human rights standards, but also one that complies with all local legal requirements and encourages opportunity for all, with dignity and respect.”
Words like “basic,” and “local,” however, raise suspicions of how fair local laws may be in the first place, and a search using the company’s name and the word “sweatshops” turns up dozens of hits.
There are countless websites and movements decrying sweatshop use (see below), and yet economic experts like Jeffrey Sachs, author of The End of Poverty, say things like “My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops, but that there are too few,” the idea being that more sweatshops mean more jobs for impoverished workers.
In response to this type of thinking, fifth year student Timothy Orsino stated, “It doesn’t make it right—why can’t we [as consumers] pay a little more so [sweatshop workers] can get paid more? The fact that they’re able to have a job when they wouldn’t otherwise doesn’t relieve us of our responsibility to try to make their lives better.”
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