“Made in the USA”
Are your made in America products really ethical?
We all know sweatshops are bad, but it can be fairly difficult to parse out what was made in a sweatshop just by reading the label. It has always seemed a fairly safe bet then to buy clothing made in the good old U.S. of A. Are these purchases actually any more ethical?
Just because a tag says something was made in the USA does not always mean it was. Block Division Inc, a company based out of Texas was having pulleys manufactured overseas stamped “Made in USA” before being shipped into the U.S.
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2017/03/made-usa-should-mean-it
Even when these products are made in the USA they are often not made under the conditions one imagines. Rather than a union job with fair wages and hours many of these USA products are actually manufactured in prisons. The working conditions of these prisoners are not too different than those experienced by labourers overseas, with workers receiving pay as low as 25 cents an hour, with many corporations now looking to the US prison system as a cheap source of labour.
“[Prison labor] seems more common than it did ten or twenty years ago. And a real concern is that employers, whether they’re public or private, are naturally going to be attracted by a uniquely docile and powerless, and literally captive labor force,” David Fathi of the ACLU, pulled from
https://newrepublic.com/article/119083/prison-labor-equal-rights-wages-incarcerated-help-economy
Some companies that have used prison labour to manufacture products include Victoria Secret and Signature Packaging Solutions- which creates the packaging for Starbucks coffee.
http://grabhouse.com/urbancocktail/products-that-are-actually-made-by-prisoners-reformed-lives/
With these prisons providing such cheap labour a question is raised about the incentive for states to keep these prisons full of ‘employees’ for these companies. Without the pressure of private prisoners could it be argued that the need for workers is also motivating the high incarceration rates in the USA?