Denying Jobs for Desperately Poor People

University of Michigan police arrested 12 student activists yesterday after they refused to leave President Mary Sue Coleman's office, according to the Michigan Daily. The protesters staged the sit-in as part of Students Organizing for Labor and Economic Equality's Sweatfree Campaign, and demanded that the University toughen its labor standards for suppliers producing University-licensed apparel.

From Nicholas Kristof, "In Praise of the Maligned Sweatshop," available here or here.

Imagine that a Nike vice president proposed manufacturing cheap T-shirts in Ethiopia: "Look, boss, it would be tough to operate there, but a factory would be a godsend to one of the poorest countries in the world. And if we kept a tight eye on costs and paid 25 cents an hour, we might be able to make a go of it.

"The boss would reply: "You're crazy! We'd be boycotted on every campus in the country.

So companies like Nike, itself once a target of sweatshop critics, tend not to have highly labor-intensive factories in the very poorest countries, but rather more capital-intensive factories (in which machines do more of the work) in better-off nations like Malaysia or Indonesia. And the real losers are the world's poorest people.

Well-meaning American university students regularly campaign against sweatshops. But instead, anyone who cares about fighting poverty should campaign in favor of sweatshops, demanding that companies set up factories in Africa. If Africa could establish a clothing export industry, that would fight poverty far more effectively than any foreign aid program.

Even Paul Krugman wrote an article in favor of sweatshops titled "In Praise of Cheap Labor: Bad jobs at bad wages are better than no jobs at all," where he concludes that:

As long as you have no realistic alternative to industrialization based on low wages (MP: i.e. sweatshops), to oppose it (the sweatshop) means that you are willing to deny desperately poor people the best chance they have of progress for the sake of what amounts to an aesthetic standard--that is, the fact that you don't like the idea of workers being paid a pittance to supply rich Westerners with fashion items.