I'm listening to Dispatches on CBC as I wash dishes. One of the dispatches was from Haiti. Sweatshop workers making t-shirts for Americans and Canadians are earning $11/week... and that's for a 60 hour work week. One lady they interviewed wouldn't be eating dinner that night, because she spent the last of her money on the bus ride home from work. The argument *against* raising the minimum wage to $5/*day*? That they wouldn't be profitable any more, and would have to close. Another country raised the minimum wage to $5/day, and lost hundreds of millions of jobs.
I want to know what the break-down is for the cost of the t-shirts we buy as consumers, and why it is that we can't pay Haitians (or other sweat-shop workers) enough that they can eat dinner... something that people wearing those t-shirts take for granted.
This is why I do my best to buy goods made in countries that have humane labour laws. It's not that I don't want my money to go to developing nations, but that I don't want to buy goods that don't even pay the workers enough to eat.
Sheesh. (Big business? Can you hear me? Helloooooo?)
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