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THE GLOBAL SWEATSHOP HAS EMERGED FROM THE INTEGRATION OF SUPERexploited labor in the Global South with the brands and retailers of the Global North. Beginning in the 1960s, apparel industry production migrated away from the high-wage nations. This trend is linked with the more general globalization of manufacturing, and is accelerated by the immensely concentrated power of
the department store chains, especially the big-box discounters like Wal-Mart. All of this, in turn, is a product of the 1960s class conflicts in Europe and the United States, in which workers' wages rose and corporate profits were threatened.1
Thus the global sweatshop is a dramatic symbol and particular manifestation of an evolution of capitalism in the older industrial regions - from high-price/high-wage competition among a few large firms to price-competitive, low -wage competition that incorporates many more locations on a global scale. Global capitalism makes it harder for workers in traditionally low-wage industries to maintain the decent conditions of the post- World War II Global North such as those briefly obtained by apparel workers. It has also decimated the job stability, wages, and benefits of manufacturing workers in formerly well-paid capital-intensive industries like auto and steel.
The current form of globalization is specifically a product of employers' resolve to evade and weaken organized labor and, so far, it has been successful. That is why the old miners' tell-tale - the canary indicating the presence of toxic gases - is so apt. The vulnerable rag trade is the most obvious sector in which globalization's impact on labor standards has made itself felt - but it is not alone.
FIRES
THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FIRE of 1911 - which killed 146 people - is an iconic moment in U.S. social history. Triangle Shirtwaist- one of the largest companies in New York City at the time - has come to symbolize the bad old days of sweated labor. This connection persists, despite the fact that tenement home workshops - not a relatively modern factory like the Triangle company - were what gave rise to the term "sweated labor," here and in Great Britain.2 The Triangle firm was a center of strike leadership in 1909's Uprising of the 20000, but it was one of the large firms that did not settle...