Kristoff is always on his travels managing to find burly construction workers whose ambition is to work on sewing machines. He found some in Cambodia too, and I seem to recall calling qualified "bullshit" then. Check out the hands of someone who's worked a few years on the sites, and then imagine them doing delicate assembly work.
It's also really patronising to the Asian textile industry to have the implicit assumption that Western companies have the choice of where they locate their sweatshops. Even if he wanted to, Phil Nike or whoever he is would have a hell of a time relocating his factories to Africa because there are not many African countries who have strong indigenous garment industries like those of Southeast Asia in the 1970s when Western companies started sourcing there. dd PS: According to the Economist, Namibia is currently undergoing a construction boom (makes sense, that corner of Africa is heavily driven by commodity prices like copper etc). So Kristof managed to find a bunch of the kind of guys who can't find regular work even when there are buildings going up on every vacant lot. These are typically the kind of guys who can't hold down steady jobs in factories either. -----Original Message----- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Louis Proyect Sent: 06 June 2006 21:35 To: [email protected] Subject: Nicholas Kristof, Joan Robinson and sweatshops Touring Namibia in his pith-helmet, Kristof discusses the misfortune of a group of construction workers who cannot get regular work. According to him, "they would vastly prefer steady jobs in, yes, sweatshops."
