I wanted to launch the first phase of the website WhereAreYouMade.com on the 24th of April 2014 for a very concrete reason. It was one year earlier that a building collapsed with thousands of workers having been forced to keep working in it despite strong warnings that the building was at risk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse). It was horrible.
For decades, I have been watching, and being part of, the massive economic globalization and the tremendous social upheavals associated with it. “Free trade” has become the mantra of many political and business leaders. The aggressivity with which some companies want to run up their profit margins, their ROIC’s, and their share price, has led to many aberrations.
In the 3 days after the Savar building crash, I kept seeing images of rescue efforts on TV, and thinking what could be done to help prevent these types of tragedies and other kinds of abuses in the global marketplace. I had felt frustrated for years about my inability to find out meaningful information about the products I bought. In some countries, you were lucky to find a “Made in” label, but that information was really only marginally interesting and useful. It didn’t tell me anything about the working conditions of the employees who made the products, nor about the ingredients or parts that went into those products and how they in turn were made (the thing economists call the “supply chain”). What good did it do to know which country something was made in? Are some countries producing products categorically under inhumane conditions and others under humane ones? Even in the supposedly “developed” countries that have stringent labor laws, the working conditions vary greatly, and labor laws are frequently unenforced.
As a child, I had a simple vision and hope for the future. I grew up in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and it was a time when the ideas of computers and robots weren’t really that widespread. My cousin and I created plans for future cities, and talked about how life would be or could be or should be in the future. The idea that technology would free us from the dreaded “40 hour work week” for an entire life on an assembly line seemed like a realistic possibility.
Little did we realize that the slow progress we had witnessed in the country we grew up in would soon be attacked by invisible forces so powerful that no human being seemed to be able to stem their assault. At the same time that we were producing the things needed for material well-being more efficiently than ever, the idea of rules that would improve the well-being of all of us in society were no longer considered viable. While our house was filling up with a vast amount of things I neither wanted nor needed, I was being told that I wouldn’t be able to retire any longer before reaching 67 years of age. I was told that salaries would no longer rise. I was told that the work weeks would have to be lengthened again in order for us to be competitive – kiss the dream of a 30 hour work week with 3 month vacation per year goodbye my friend!
Since I personally experienced all kinds of injuries related to working in monotony-filled jobs (in my case, typing on computer keyboards most days of the last 30 years), I can very well identify with those people around the world that sew clothes or slaughter animals all day.
These types of thoughts had been simmering in me already for many years, but the Savar clothing factory disaster was the event that brought everything to a culmination. And my conclusion was, “OK, we can’t get international labor legislation to be agreed on, so let’s try the bottoms-up approach.”
I believe that many of us “consumers” want to know much more about the products we buy. We want to have meaningful control over where we spend our money. We want companies, or anyone for that matter, who produce things for sale to us, to tell us where they make the products and how they do it, right down to the last thread and screw and egg.
Even though I won’t see the outcome of my efforts in my own life, I wish for either my sons or their children or grandchildren to see that we can make a difference by making meaningful decisions based on true knowledge. During my own lifetime, I just want to thank and honor the workers that provide our material necessities and luxuries. I can’t ease your burden today, but together, we will at least let others know where and how the things they buy are made.