China Blue on PBS - the workers who make your jeans

China Blue airs on many PBS stations tonight (check local listings).

Even if you aren't wearing something now that was made in China, something in your closet probably was.  This documentary  introduces you to some of the women who make clothes and the conditions they work under.  

Actually, many aren't even women.  Some are as young as 14 and work up to 20 hours a day with no overtime.  For about 6 cents an hour.

Filmmaker Micha Peled is able to show a story few people have seen before.

He became interested in how our clothes when they made the website for his previous documentary, Chain Wars - When Wal-Mart Comes to Town.

He made the film illegally in China.   And if you watch it, you can see why they don't want films like this made.

One former factory supervisor describes how they were warned when there would be an inspection.  A worker describes how there are two sets of timecards.  One for when there is an inspection.  The other for their real wages.

An interview with Peled from Your Call Radio

http://a4.g.akamai.net/...

•  About an hour late

  by Da Rock on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 08:52:31 PM PDT

  •  Sorry

    Check your PBS listings. They may run it again this week (and probably will run it a few times over the next few years).

    And people on the west coast should still be able to watch it.  Also, some PBS stations don't run Independent Lens on Tuesday evenings.

    This page has an email address to ask about DVDs

    http://www.teddybearfilms.com/...

    by ari on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 08:55:47 PM PDT

    •  Thanks for sharing this diary

      I've recommended it, hopefully others will to.

      by pkbarbiedoll on Wed Apr 04, 2007 at 08:12:18 AM PDT

•  are they making Levi's 'Signature' jeans

  which were designed for sale by Wal-Mart?

  Or are they making the actual Wal-Mart brand?

  by QuickSilver on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 09:24:04 PM PDT

  •  I noticed that you used a Levi's tag

    In the early 1990s, Levi Strauss promised all of its U.S. employees the equivalent of a year's salary if they stayed on the job a certain number of years.

    Instead, they ended up firing their entire U.S. domestic manufacturing force by 2004, throwing in their fortunes with Wal-Mart.

    Needless to say, they didn't pay their retention bonuses.

    by QuickSilver on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 09:41:15 PM PDT

•  Saw China Blue

  ...and the film maker in person. Fantastically touching documentary. Highly recommended.

  His thesis is that the biggest issue in terms of impact on every single person on earth is/will be  globalization, but no one quite realizes how big it is yet. For example 30 million rural Chinese girls have migrated in the last few years to the urban centers of China. He says this the biggest displacement of human beings in the history of the world and is only the beginning. Only an example.

  The film puts a human face on this displacement.

  He named is production company Teddybearfilms so that when Walmart sued him it would read like this: Walmart vs.Teddybear

  by Duccio on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 09:33:46 PM PDT

  •  Jeans

    In the film, the factory makes jeans for a variety of different companies.

    Negotiations are shown with a british company.  When the factory owner (the former police chief of the city) tells them they can do it for around $4.30 a pair, they reply they need to make them for around $4 a pair.

    This section of the website has info on different jeans companies

    http://www.pbs.org/...

    I used to live next to the last place that made Levi's in San Francisco (and the US).

    by ari on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 10:02:16 PM PDT

    •  Thanks. I just bought 2 pairs of jeans tonight.

      I can't do ALL my shopping at thrift stores, I need neat looking jeans for work. At that, I'm lucky, most computer geeks have to wear Dockers and such. I never see those at the Goodwill. (Okay, nobody can post that the Goodwill exploits their workers. I still need some shirts, damnit!)

      by genwah on Wed Apr 04, 2007 at 01:30:28 AM PDT

      •  A suggestion?

        http://www.usstuff.com/...

        by pkbarbiedoll on Wed Apr 04, 2007 at 08:11:39 AM PDT

      •  Here's another one

        http://www.unionjeancompany.com/

        Hope this helps!

        by pkbarbiedoll on Wed Apr 04, 2007 at 08:15:22 AM PDT

      •  Dockers are also made by Levi Strauss & Co.

        Dockers were the engine of the company's growth in the early 1990s. It was on the basis of the Dockers success, in fact, that the company created a lot of false expectations for itself — borrowing billions to pay off an internal family buyout.

        Levi's stock is family-owned, and belongs exclusively to descendants and collateral relatives of Levi Strauss's four nephews (he died in 1902). Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, the internal stock value was multiplied/inflated 50-fold in the run-up to an intra-family LBO; every heir was given the option of either selling back for cash up to 10% of their stock holdings at that inflated 50-fold price, or all of their holdings at that price if they so wished, forever divesting/divorcing themselves from company matters. (In other words, you could either sell up to 10% or all of your holdings. There was no in-between option.)

        The Goldman branch of the family did particularly well, choosing to divest itself of all of its stock (becoming cash billionaires in the process). Most of the (200-odd) other heirs, however, chose the 10% option, which at inflated value still made most of them richer than they had ever been before.

        The company had to borrow massively to pay everyone off, and is still serving billions of that massive, self-inflicted, family debt. To be sure, there was plenty of sniping about it within the family. But the real victims, of course, were the people who made the jeans — the employees who trusted the family's wayward stewardship.

        by QuickSilver on Wed Apr 04, 2007 at 09:47:59 AM PDT

        •  I remember the ad campaigns

          Levi was pushing Dockers big time.  Interesting what you write about company finances.  I vaguely remember hearing about labor disputes, lay-offs, plant closures and moving work off shore.  Here's what Coop America advises:

          Levi's classic American blue jeans aren't actually made in America. The last few years has seen closures of Levi's manufacturing plants and layoffs in Georgia, California, Texas and Tennessee and in Canada. So who is making Levi's jeans these days, and how are those workers treated? Levi's thankfully pulled its manufacturing out of Burma over concerns about the country's oppressive regime; but Levi's avoided a settlement in a class action lawsuit against a Saipan manufacturing plant where thousands of garment workers were subjected to sweatshop conditions. Levi's remaining American employees enjoy excellent diversity policies concerning both ethnicity and sexual orientation; however, the company has far to go before the same can be said for all workers in its supply chain.

          Bottom line: tell Levi's to uphold its own supplier code of conduct and say no to sweatshop labor. Find sweatshop free options through the Green Shift.

          ````
          peace
          
          

          by peace voter on Wed Apr 04, 2007 at 01:27:48 PM PDT

•  Breaking: Wal-Mart had a surveillance operation

  The New York Times just published this a few minutes ago (via the Wall Street Journal):

  The Wal-Mart Stores Inc.worker fired last month for intercepting a reporter's phone calls says he was part of a larger, sophisticated surveillance operation that included snooping not only on employees, but also on critics, stockholders and the consulting firm McKinsey & Co., The Wall Street Journal reported.

  As part of the surveillance, the retailer last year had a long-haired employee infiltrate an anti-Wal-Mart group to determine if it planned protests at the company's annual meeting, according to Bruce Gabbard, the fired security worker, the Journal said.

  The company also deployed cutting-edge monitoring systems made by a supplier to the Defense Department that allowed it to capture and record the actions of anyone connected to its global computer network, the Journal said.

  by QuickSilver on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 10:00:51 PM PDT

  •  Wal-Mart

    The Frontline documentary Is Wal-Mart Good for America?
    has a good section on Wal-Mart and China (and one company that refused to move their factories

    http://www.pbs.org/...

    by ari on Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 10:11:54 PM PDT

•  Jeans made in the USA

  They aren't designer, but they are nice and made by non-sweatshop labor:

  http://www.usstuff.com/...

  by pkbarbiedoll on Wed Apr 04, 2007 at 08:11:17 AM PDT