Theu.s. Congress, The Fashion Industry - 1172 Words

According to the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress, the fashion is a nearly $250 billion dollars industry in the United States alone and a $1.2 Trillion industry worldwide. Although they account for roughly 17,000 high end jobs in the United States they only account for 144,000 middle range workers and very limited low end manufacturing workers. As with many manufacturing jobs they have been outsourced overseas to places like India and China. In those countries there are far fewer regulations and far fewer organizations to support higher wages and employee safety. In China they use intentional suppression of their people, money manipulations and trade in balances to keep the working population poor and labor cheap. This attracts American companies looking for cheap manufacturing and to avoid the costly regulatory systems in the U.S. Unfortunately this also means that the expensive shirt you are wearing was very likely made through the twenty first century’s fo rm of slave labor. As we examine the daily plight of the fashion industry workers we find that the glorification of the mill industries here in the Upstate of South Carolina have all been replaced with conditions the resemble areas like post hurricane ravished Haiti. Workers do not commute from their homes each night but rather live in large dormitories for months at a time with other workers. When they are able to return home they are returning to generational poverty, poor health conditions and a