Sad moments

It was very sad and somewhat horrifying to see the footage from the 2000 fire in Bangladesh that shows that the garment industry has managed to go back almost 100 years regarding workers - but instead of being American immigrant women dying at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in NYC, it was a sweatshop near Dacca, Bangladesh. Both places had doors locked to prevent workers from walking off the job or leaving early. Both places cut costs by avoiding any safety equipment, such as fire extinguishers (they were around then). Employees were paid little and worked long, hard hours.

Why should a clothing manufacturer pay an American worker minimum wage where they can only work 40 hours per week before getting overtime pay when you can have someone else do the work in Asia or Central America for, maybe a tenth of the wage, and no limits on the number of hours those people can work. After all, like the one man said, we're helping those people. Some help.

Unfortunately, this seems to be true for most manufacturing in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Find the cheapest labor, make the most profit for a while as we race for the bottom.