Saucony Shoe and Dexter Shoe recently closed their doors throwing more than 600 people out of work. Both Saucony and Dexter are moving their production to China, which has become the world’s largest exporter of footwear and garments on the backs of young women migrants from rural areas where a staggering 250 million people are classified as redundant labor. Here’s a glimpse of what their factory jobs are like.

On July 23, 2001, the Yangcheng Evening News, a daily newspaper that covers news throughout South China, reported on the “suspicious deaths” of two workers at the Nangang Shoe factory in Nanhai, Guangdong. A janitor had found 19-year-old Zhou Zhiyong in a coma in his dormitory bed the morning of June 28. He was rushed to a hospital where he died from cerebral hemorrhage two days later. Also on June 28, 23-year-old Yao Fangmei died in the same hospital after falling unconscious on the production line.

The investigating reporter found that workers toil “14-16 hours a day … in an environment without air conditioners, sweat pouring off them like rain. … The stinging odor of glue permeates the entire workshop, [but] it’s too hot to wear masks … and the cotton gloves don’t last long before being eaten away due to the corrosiveness of the organic solvent in the glue.”

A co-worker told the reporter that “when Yao Fangmei fell unconscious there were customers who were visiting the workshop so Yao Fangmei was moved to a nearby storage area for a while before being sent to the hospital” (article translated in the Verit? Monitor, Fall 2001).

Consumer confidence in a system that churns out sweatshop goods at the same rate it destroys local livelihoods requires that we all wear blinders. Companies say that exactly where, how and who makes the clothes we wear is “proprietary information.” Global trade rules say that it doesn’t matter where the products are made or in what conditions. Furthermore, rule-makers of global trade (e.g., the World Trade Organization) say that we shouldn’t bother trying to do anything to improve our world, except eliminating obstacles to further expand global trade. So we are both blind and paralyzed. We have to be.

For if we knew, and if we believed there was something we could do, how could we continue shopping-as-usual?

The Clean Clothes Campaign of PICA (Peace Through InterAmerican Community Action) is a contribution to the quest for openness in the world trade system. It demonstrates the power of a community of local retailers and consumers coming together to voice their concerns about sweatshop labor and insist on their right to know where the products we buy are made. The newly released Clean Clothes Shopping Guide does not give a final seal of approval or certification of clean factory conditions to any company. But it gives a boost to companies that disclose factory locations and conditions and pledge real access to unions and other organizations working to empower workers.

It’s a hopeful publication. It shows that there are alternative worlds, better worlds, worlds that are the product of a little imagination and a lot of determination. Here are but two examples: Lois Wells, a grandmother of one, stitches the collars on Carhartt jackets in Glasgow, Ky., a union plant: “I don’t want to miss work,” she says. “I love my work. I love the people here. I can’t say enough about them. The supervisors treat us with dignity and respect. They talk to you. They acknowledge you.”

Lois says she feels secure in her job even as garment plants in the U.S. South are closing left and right. Why? “I’ll tell you a story,” she laughs. “We have an outlet that carries seconds. Well, one day a guy comes in and barges right into the office. He had seen something that was made out of the country. How dare they, he yelled. They should be ashamed of themselves. He went on like that for a good five minutes. So the company knows that their customers want American union-made jeans.”

Twice in recent years, Carhartt has pulled back off-shore contracts, opened factories in Kentucky, and told the union that if they want come in and organize the workers, they wouldn’t fight them.

Maggies’ Organics – a company with a different customer-base than Carhartt – wanted to go off-shore after losing contracts with four U.S. sewing houses that went bankrupt in the face of sweatshop competition. But they did not want to be involved in factories where women are abused. So Maggies’ found the Women’s Cooperative Maquiladora, the first worker-owned sewing shop in Nicaragua that exports clothes.

This women’s maquila (export factory) was born after Hurricane Mitch devastated an area of squatters living along the lakeshore in Nicaragua’s capital city. When the lake rose 12,000 people were relocated to a cow pasture outside Managua where there is 80 percent unemployment and the population density is 3,000 per square kilometer. Women from this community – called Nueva Vida, or New Life – built the factory themselves, got business and cooperativism training, and secured financial assistance from a micro-credit organization.

Thirty-five-year-old Zulema Mena, a mother of four, is the president of the cooperative. Before Hurricane Mitch she worked at a traditional maquila in the capital city. “There it was just work, work, work,” she says. “No bathroom time. No water. And if you didn’t make your quota, you were gone.” Zulema is still poor and she still works very hard; her shift is 5 p.m. to 4 a.m. But here the women have a say. “There is a directiva (council) so everyone’s voice is heard,” Zulema explains. “We decided together to do shift work to keep up with demand.” And there are bathrooms and water, she repeats over and over.

These are stories of hope, seeds of budding alternatives. If Carhartt opens up new factories in the United States, inviting the union to organize workers because their customers have demanded union-made clothing, and if dirt-poor squatters devastated by Hurricane Mitch can create a viable democratic alternative to oppressive maquilas in Nicaragua, we can indeed create many other worlds. But Lois Wells and Zulema Mena need us to ask some uncomfortable questions, looking beyond brand-name images that are built on cover-ups.

Bjorn Skorpen Claeson, organizer of PICA, is a resident of Bangor. To request a copy of the Clean Clothes Shopping Guide from PICA call 207-947-4203 or write to info@pica.ws.