The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade. New Preface and Epilogue with Updates on Economic Issues and Main Characters, 2nd Edition

8The Unwitting Conspiracy

Writing the Rules of the Race

Globalization's skeptics are quick to point out that even if the conditions in apparel factories are a step up from those on the farm, it does not follow that workers in developing countries should simply accept their fate, working day and night in poor conditions, for pitiful wages and with limited rights. While free trade advocates may wish to isolate the activists as an uninformed fringe element, research shows that most Americans have reservations about the slippery slope in the race to the bottom and the working conditions in overseas apparel factories.¹

Labor protection language is now written into U.S. trade agreements, ‘‘Global Labor Standards'’ has emerged as a topic on the agenda of the World Trade Organization, and the International Labor Organization (ILO) has endorsed a set of ‘‘Core Labor Standards'’ designed to serve as speed bumps in the race to the bottom. Yet many activists argue that the conditions for workers in Asian apparel factories are comparable to, or worse than, those found centuries ago in Europe and America. The dark Satanic mills have moved but not shut down. Even if the conditions in the factories are better than those on the farm, protestors argue, how can the conditions so deplorable a hundred or more years ago in the West now be acceptable in the East?

The truth, however, is that this comparison, too, is nonsense, as even a cursory review of factory conditions across time and space shows. ...