Behind the label: inequality in the los Angeles apparel industry
In a book that is essential to our appreciation of social inequality and class stratification in America, Edna Bonacich and Richard Appelbaum write Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry. On a more fundamental level, Bonacich and Applebaum articulate the need for these new...
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| Format: | Book |
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| Summary: | In a book that is essential to our appreciation of social inequality and class stratification in America, Edna Bonacich and Richard Appelbaum write Behind the Label: Inequality in the Los Angeles Apparel Industry. On a more fundamental level, Bonacich and Applebaum articulate the need for these new sweatshops along the lines of a new global capitalistic system. What is going on here? In am move that reminds or Naomi Klein in No Logo or Shock Doctrine, Bonacich and Applebaum argue that the ascendance of multinationals, global production and world trade, and coupled with that increased immigration into the US (with prices dropping from outsourcing, note Thomas Friedman); the race to the bottom through the free market is causing all these flexible production to blossom. Behind the Label therefore is an in depth study of the phenomenon of the proliferation of garment industry sweatshops in the Los Angeles area. These sweatshops, Bonacich and Appelbaum argue, needs to be examined in relation to other factors: 1) the demise of American welfare, 2) the weakening of union involvement and 3) juxtapose that to the globalization and caustic effect of flexible production (Bonacich, Behind the Label 258). In contrast to the bullish Thomas L. Friedman in The World is Flat, Bonacich and Appelbaum use the apparel industry in LA as a stark counterpoint to a neo-conservative economic framework and come up with an example of a Marxist inspired social scientific examination of the political economy (Bonacich, Behind the Label 62). In this book, the manufacturers now have economic justifications to, at will, move production to wherever low-wage labor can be facilitated (Bonacich, Behind the Label 56?57). Power, in this scenario, sits squarely in the hands of a cabal of powerful manufacturers and their comprador contractors. Unlike the high tech examples of Friedman ? things are not getting better for these low tech workers, on the contrary, things are getting worse (Bonacich, Behind the Label 180 -181 and 196 -199). Manufacturers can substantially distance themselves from the sweatshops as they neither own them nor invest in them. The word is plausible deniability and manufacturers can deny working with sweatshops as they are buffered through contractual agreements only. Contractors serve as modern day intermediary compradors (Bonacich, Behind the Label 150 - 151). This distance protects the manufacturers and makes it difficult to call them account for the less than humane treatment of the lowest factory worker. In reality, the connection is direct and real. Manufacturers often, and Bonacich and Appelbaum posit, that manufacturer send a quality control representative ? who comes almost on a daily basis ? and can, and often do dictate delivery schedules. With so much of the industry already moving south of the border, we are starting to see a sharp increase in imports of product into the United States and a decline in employment in local sites. Having said that how is it that there is still so much done in the LA area? Los Angeles is an enigma in that the industry continues to grow, is very resilient, and is, in effect, has become garment capital of America (Bonacich, Behind the Label 36). One explanation is the ready supply of low-income immigrant (a mix of documented and undocumented) work force (Bonacich, Behind the Label 189 ? 190). Behind the Label looks at the key group of actors in the L.A. apparel industry: manufacturers, contractors, retailers, and labor. Taken along each of these areas, Bonacich and Appelbaum evaluate and hope to ameliorate what they see as a disparity vis-à-vis wealth (Bonacich, Behind the Label 115 ? 126). Moreover, Bonacich and Appelbaum also take to account the role of government and the unions play in trying to get rid of sweatshops on the one hand while concurrently preventing the flight of jobs to places like Mexico and others that take the outsourcing (Bonacich, Behind the Label 245 ? 246). The book ends with a very interesting but idealistic adage of instituting more government controls and increase union involvement. Only the future knows what will happen. Several questions come to mind, most that defy easy answers. Bonacich and Appelbaum et al are straightforward about their social agenda ? that is to side with labor (Bonacich, Behind the Label xi ? xv). One has to wonder if their stated position colors or informs their analysis. Grounded on several interviews, statistical data, surveys, and ethnographic fieldwork (mostly participant observations), Bonacich and Appelbaum are careful not to seem flippant about the role of the manufacturers and contractors. As a short backgrounder, 1965 was a watershed year for Asian immigration. Altering what began with the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, continuing with the Gentlemen´s Agreement of 1907, and on and on until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Asian immigration was either closed or limited. The opening up of immigration to about 20,000 per county per year regardless of area of origin had a tremendous impact on the demographic picture of the United States. Sender countries like India, Korea, and the Philippines flooded the embassies with request for visas on an occupational/skill preference grading system and later with family re-unification request that did not fall under the quota system. Mind you, this is was all facilitated not out of American altruism but rather on a pull basis that was needs driven and greased on a push system that was a brain drain to sender nations. The rise in Asian immigration had a remarkable impact on the demographic picture of the United States (Bonacich, Behind the Label 169 ? 170). There were dramatic shifts in and around the mostly inner city areas ? of which we see in an example like Los Angeles. In Los Angeles, we see an already evolved stratification that seems to conflate race with class in a mostly white Jewish manufacturing strata (Bonacich, Behind the Label 31 ? 44), a middle class mostly Korean and Chinese contractor segment (Bonacich, Behind the Label 150 ? 151), and mostly a poor and working class group of Mexicans and Southeast Asians (Bonacich, Behind the Label 189 ? 190). Bonacich and Appelbaum are all too ready to bring to presence the El Monte case of Thai laborers who were practically incarcerated in this prison like sweatshop scenario that is both heartbreaking but more importantly very telling of a class divide that is not just apparent, it is cultivated (Bonacich, Behind the Label 141). Bonacich et al pen an interesting and compelling anecdote of the authors need to purchase a dress for a dinner/fund raiser dance for Jonathan Bernstein that raised a whopping $300,000 and cost Bonacich $300.00 for a dress that she seemed ill at ease to select and wear (115). Juxtaposed to this spectacle of extravagance was a yarn that marked Bonacich?s involvement in a discussion with contractors and unions of which she was later treated like a pariah (Bonacich, Behind the Label 123). The juxtaposition, I argue, is no coincidence. On the one hand, one sees extravagance. On the other hand, we see abject poverty looking for spaces of resistance and justice. What is really more telling is that at the top of end of the food chain we see millionaires who are all too willing to donate to philanthropic causes (in an effort not to be seen as exploitive) but are also all too willing to keep wages below an acceptable living wage as demanded by ideological capitalism ? it is all about efficiencies really. The race to the bottom is on (Bonacich, Behind the Label 159). Juxtaposing this book with Thomas Friedman?s The World is Flat reveals that arguably Friedman is too bullish on the trends he outlines. Both books are clearly written from an American Rashomon or point of view but Behind the Label is clearly on side of labor and The World is Flat is clearly on side of capital. While Friedman is a reporter for the New York Times and Bonacich is a professor of Sociology at the University of California, Riverside ? their respective backgrounds clearly influenced the writing of their books. Once could conceivably argue that there is no one size fits all in globalization studies and that Los Angeles (U.S.) or Ciudad Juarez (Mexico) is not Bangalore (India) and vice versa. Welcome to the new economic world order of 2008. |
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| Physical Description: | xviii; 395 páginas: 24 cm |
| Bibliography: | incl. ref. |
| ISBN: | 0520225066 |