Made in USA

This is one of the best pieces of fashion reporting I have ever heard: it's a reworked version of a story that originally aired on the NPR podcast Planet Money https://www.npr.org/sections/money/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=ppc&utm_campaign=22411878927&utm_content=186155777748&utm_term=npr%20planet%20money&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=22411878927&gbraid=0AAAAAD_p7R62c4RyG6DLAz-qRmi3bxkz9&gclid=Cj0KCQiAr5nKBhCpARIsACa_NiPttj1ldi0HlMHWe8F-0LezVLdjti9lipetVR4iV3WzVhmQwpeweRUaAhVmEALw_wcB. And to get my recommendations of well made, relatively ethically produced t- shirts, head to articlesofinterest.substack.com https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/ Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The idea started out, I have a four-year-old and a one-year-old, but when I had my first baby, I remember she would just be like laying on my chest or in my arms or on my lap. And, you know, I used to buy like really kind of crappy fast fashion clothes. Like, I just like grew up shopping at like the $5 store, which I loved. And I remember being like, oh, I really want to buy at least like good t-shirts so that her little face and her little mouth as she sleeps on me is like on something that I can feel good about her like laying on. So then I set out for like a year and a half to try to find a t-shirt that I could feel

• 0:41Speaker 00

  good about, a t-shirt that looks good, that feels good, that is good for the environment. And then ideally, the last layer was like good labor practices.

• 0:52Avery Trufelman?

  Sarah Gonzalez usually covers economics.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't cover fashion.

• 0:56Avery Trufelman?

  She's a reporter and host of the NPR podcast Planet Money.

• 1:00Speaker 00

  We're an economics podcast and we're like fun and narrative.

• 1:04Avery Trufelman?

  So Sarah found herself in a pickle that a lot of us might relate to, which is this eternal question, how do we buy clothing ethically? Is that even possible?

• 1:16Speaker 00

  I mean, it's so hard to be a good shopper, you know? And then you have like children and they grow out of things and so you have to buy them more things. I'm like a bad consumer. Like, where should I buy this t-shirt that I can feel good about? And then I did an interview with a remarkable woman. Her name is Aisha Berenblatt. She is the CEO of this group called Remake. Their whole thing is like, we want to like remake the fashion industry. I was asking her, like, you tell me, like, where do you shop? Like, you've dedicated your life to this. So like, what do you do?

• 1:48Speaker 02

  You know, there are certain... Companies that I like very much, but for the most part, for the last decade, I'd say I've bought very little. Like, you come see my closet and there's, you know, six classic pieces. I do a little rental, a little vintage.

• 2:03Speaker 00

  Wait, wait, wait. You have like six pieces of clothes in your closet?

• 2:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, six dresses. That's it.

• 2:11Speaker 00

  So she has six pieces of clothing that she like owns? And I was like, oh, my gosh, like this is kind of like the moment when I was like, what? And she like rents, she rents clothes and does like that kind of thing and thrifts and like swaps with her friends.

• 2:25Speaker 02

  I just, I, I know too much to want to have very much from this industry.

• 2:30Speaker 00

  I know too much to want to have very much from this industry. I don't think she was like preaching like this is what you should do or that even she is the best consumer ever. I think the short answer was basically you cannot buy your way out of this problem of bad labor conditions, bad for the environment. Like buying clothes is not gonna solve the problem.

• 2:58Avery Trufelman?

  Not even if those clothes were made in the USA.

• 3:02Speaker 00

  Who doesn't like the idea of things being made in America? I mean, not for like patriotic reasons, just like made in the USA has to be like the first step. Like, well, we're getting to better labor conditions and better for the environment. And she was like, why would you think that? Why, like, where did you get that from? And I was like, I, I don't know. Like, isn't that like the goal is made in the USA?

• 3:23Avery Trufelman?

  Made in the USA is not the bastion of virtue that Sarah imagined it was and that I imagined it was, honestly. But I had no idea what the garment industry in the United States actually looks like.

• 3:36Speaker 00

  I remember being like, where are the garment factories? Like, where do you, like, I've never seen one. I've never been like, oh, look, they're making clothes there, like ever. I used to live in New York City. I never like stumbled upon these things in any real way. And Most of them are like tiny, tiny operations. Like 76% of our garment factories in the US have less than 10 workers because they're like so hidden. You can't even, you don't even know where they are. Like I went to some garment factories and I would show up and I would be like, this is, this is like a house on a street with all the other houses. But technically it's a garment factory, but it just, you couldn't tell. In New York, it's like some unit on top of a restaurant.

• 4:18Speaker 00

  They're so small that they're not, it's not like we make clothes here, you know? So they exist, but they're kind of like hidden. They're really, really difficult to find online, like really, they're, they're quite hidden.

• 4:32Avery Trufelman?

  But Sarah Gonzalez has pulled back the curtain on the US garment industry for an episode of Planet Money that I think is one of the best pieces of fashion journalism I have ever heard. I couldn't not share it with you.

• 4:45Speaker 00

  I started working on it, setting out to like find a t-shirt I can feel good about. And then all of a sudden, like the conversation was made in the USA, made in the USA. And, and then I was like, wait, I don't know if this is the future we actually want.

• 5:00Avery Trufelman?

  After the break.

• 5:05Speaker 03

  Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020, discussing every episode of the show, The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, who starred on The West Wing as Will Bailey, and Rishi Kesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller, The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14th. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 5:51Speaker 00

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• 6:34Speaker 00

  Start shopping now at therealreal.com artikles. Maria doesn't speak any English. No, casi no. Not a word, she says. No, no, no, nada, nada, nada. But she does know some, like sizes. She knows sizes. Small, mediano, large, extra large. She knows label, ticket, all words related to her job. Manager. El mister, el mister. Patron se le dice mister. OK, the boss, you just call him mister. Hola, misis, misis. The boss is a girl, it's a misses. Misis, misis pa' acá y misis pa' allá. Misses over here, misses over there, she says. You gotta call your bosses mister or misses, she says.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  And I'm like, this is all English, Maria? Oh. Mister, misses. Misis. Maria is a garment worker in the US, one of not that many left. She's originally from Puebla, Mexico. Puebla, Camatera. Sweet potato city, she says, proud, nodding her head and making a little fist to herself when she says it. Maria is only 73 years old, but she has the presence of both a much older, comforting grandma and somehow also like this easily delighted kid. She has those little grandma sandals on and a little white flower tucked behind her ear. Whenever Maria sees a flower, she picks it up, puts it in her hair. Desde niña, desde chiquita.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  You've been doing this since you were a little girl? Me da alegría una flor. It makes her happy, a little flower in her hair. Me llena como de espíritu. Maria has been in the US almost 30 years, and she has done the exact same job the entire time. Soy trimiadora. Trimiadora. She's a trimmer. O trimi. At a garment factory in Los Angeles. Es factoría. Es factoría. Half of what is left of the garment manufacturing industry in the US is in Los Angeles. Dime qué es trimming. And when I ask Maria what a trimmer does in a US garment factory, Maria reaches for my shirt. Aquí. Mira aquí. Empieza. She tucks her hand under the bottom of my shirt, at the hem,

• 8:45Speaker 00

  the back of her warm fingers on my bare stomach, the way only a grandma can do. That was so cute. She taps all the places on my top where a piece of thread would be left behind when a hem, or a seam, or a stitch ends. The side of my stomach, at the side seam, my shoulder, where a sleeve was sewn on, the back of my neck, where the tag was sewn on. And when she's tapping me like this, it feels like something my grandma's sister would do, actually. Like this blessing. Y ahorita cuando me tocaste así, como me dio como que... And when I tell Maria, she looks at me like, I understand. Maria's job is to cut off all the leftover thread.

• 9:29Speaker 00

  Sí. Cortarle el... Ese es el tronco. That's what a trimmer does, all day, crouched over. Estás kitiquitiquitiqui. Just snip, snip, snip, snip, snipping loose threads. And as we're talking, Maria notices a little spot at the hem of my shirt where a tiny piece of thread was left over. Uh huh. Like, half a centimeter. Uh huh. And she goes, "I guess the trimmer working on this was in a rush."

• 9:53Speaker 00

  But then again, they're all in a rush.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  The shirt I'm wearing this day with Maria, made in Vietnam. My pants, made in Bangladesh. My bra, made in China. But the clothes that Maria works on are made in the US, in Los Angeles, California. And a lot of people love the idea of making things like clothes in America. One of the Trump administration's goals is to bring manufacturing in general back to the US. But what people might picture when they think of a "Made in America" future might be different from the "Made in America" we have now.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  When you start out as a garment worker, you often start out as a trimmer, like Maria. Then you might get trained on a sewing machine. But Maria never moved on to a machine. She likes being a trimmer. But really, she just likes having a job. She's liked every job she's ever had, she says.

• 10:53Speaker 04

  Todo me han gustado porque agarras dinero.

• 10:56Speaker 00

  Because you get money.

• 10:57Speaker 04

  Sí, por dinero, sí.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  When she first started out trimming, she was not the best. She'd nick the clothes, leave a little hole. But she'd show up with a little needle and thread set, hand-sew it real quick. You couldn't even tell the hole was there, she says.

• 11:10Speaker 04

  Ni se nota siquiera.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  All right. And her boss loved that she could patch things up, actually.

• 11:16Speaker 04

  Me abraza, ¡uh! Mucho inteligente, bueno.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  So much intelligence, he told her.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Uh, dice mucho bueno, mucho bueno.

• 11:25Speaker 00

  But what the garment industry really prizes is speed. Speed more than anything else. And in the beginning, Maria was not so fast.

• 11:34Speaker 04

  Ay, hice como 100 piezas en todo el día porque no sabía mover la tijera.

• 11:40Speaker 00

  She didn't know how to move the scissors, she says. So she'd do like 100 pieces of clothing a day?

• 11:44Speaker 04

  Muy poquito, pero el mister pues... No más lo único que te decía, amiga, rápido, amiga, rápido.

• 11:50Speaker 00

  El mister. The boss would be like, friend, friend, faster, faster. And she did get fast.

• 11:57Speaker 04

  Ya me aventaba 600 piezas, 700 piezas, 800 piezas.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Okay, so when you first started, you were doing like 100 pieces a day. And now you're 700, 800 pieces.

• 12:08Speaker 04

  800 piezas en un día, es cansado, es cansado.

• 12:12Speaker 00

  800 pieces a day is a lot. It's a lot. Okay, mira, compré este.

• 12:20Speaker 00

  I brought Maria a garment that was made in the US so we could talk about the work that goes into it. It's a purple sports bra from a fancy, pricey, American brand. The nice, thick cardboard tag says "Made in the USA." It sold for $62. And it's good quality, definitely. You can feel it in the fabric. But all Maria sees is the amount of loose threads that she would need to trim on a piece like this.

• 12:43Speaker 04

  No tiene mucho hilo.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  There's not much, she says.

• 12:45Speaker 04

  Ese es muy bueno para las trimiadoras porque rápido sale.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Okay, so you want something like this. This is an easy job for you.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  Nosotros en el crimen le llamamos esto es papita para nosotros porque rápido.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  Oh, this is like potato chips? Like a piece of cake, you know? You can really make money doing the trimming on a bra like this, she says.

• 13:05Speaker 04

  Pues si quieres ganar dinero, tienes que serlo rápido.

• 13:07Speaker 00

  If you want to earn money, you have to do it fast.

• 13:09Speaker 04

  What? Porque? Pues yo estoy por pieza.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  Why does she have to work fast to get money? Maria gets paid by the piece, meaning the faster she works, the more pieces she does, the more money she makes. It's called piece, rate, pay, and it is very common in this industry. This is why Maria likes a nice, simple garment. Jeans? No. Oh, you don't like working on jeans?

• 13:32Speaker 04

  No, eso no.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  A button-up shirt? Oh, the worst.

• 13:35Speaker 04

  The botón sí te costaba mucho porque hay que terminar el botón también.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  The buttons, the buttons take a while. You have to trim all the loose thread. You don't make much money when there's buttons involved.

• 13:44Speaker 04

  Uh, te cuesta.

• 13:46Speaker 00

  Leftover button thread just really slows you down. You get paid by the quantity you produce, right? The number of garments you get through. And the pay? Well, when Maria started out as a trimmer in 1994, the pay was...

• 14:01Speaker 04

  Había de tres centavos, de cuatro centavos, de...

• 14:04Speaker 00

  Three centavos? Three cents to five cents. Three to five cents per piece. That's the pay she started at. Maria would do 100 pieces a day, make $5, and she'd walk out happy, she says, feeling great about her $5 a day. Today?

• 14:23Speaker 04

  Ahorita ya lo pagan a 15 centavos y a 16 centavos.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Ahorita, 15 cents today? Today, Maria makes 15 to 16 cents per piece. And that can be okay pay if she gets a nice, easy sports bra. But if she gets, I don't know, a jacket, a jacket with buttons, working as fast as you possibly can, sometimes you do not get close to making minimum wage. Many times in her career, Maria has taken bundles of garments home, stayed up till 2, 3 in the morning, just trimming, trimming, trimming, more and more pieces, trying to earn enough money to pay her bills.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Uh, me competía de trabajo, no dormía toda la noche.

• 15:05Speaker 00

  Like, it's so weird that they are like, yeah, sure, take the clothes. Here, I'm a big brand, like, take the clothes home and do, and work on it at home. I'm like, what if you get the clothes dirty at your house?

• 15:13Speaker 04

  Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  And she's like, oh, no, no, no. You do not get the clothes dirty.

• 15:18Speaker 04

  Pones algo, una tela, algo.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  And many workers who get paid by the piece will do this. Their whole families will work on the clothes together. Now, sometimes, when Maria gets a bundle of really time-consuming garments, she will ask for more pay. Again, she doesn't speak English, but she makes gestures to the boss, she says, and gets by just fine.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  Yo le digo, mister, ven, ven, ven.

• 15:42Speaker 00

  She'll be like, mister, come, come. Look, look how much trimming this garment needs.

• 15:46Speaker 04

  Si, yo le hago señas y ya. Okay, okay, dice. Centavo? No, dos.

• 15:51Speaker 00

  He'll be like, okay, you want an extra cent? No, two cents, she'll say.

• 15:55Speaker 04

  Okay, okay, dice, no problema.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  And she's gotten in. But that would get her, like, an extra $10 for the day? Now, piece rate pay varies depending on what you're doing. The trimming is considered the finishing touches before a garment gets ironed and sent out to a store or brand. The person on the iron in L.A. might get 50 cents per garment. It's more dangerous. The person who sewed on the sleeves, did the bottom hem, maybe 12 cents.

• 16:22Speaker 05

  Uh, well, actually, that's better. When I started in industry over 30 years ago, we laughed and called it a penny a pocket because that's what they were paid for every pocket they would put on.

• 16:31Speaker 00

  In the U.S.?

• 16:32Speaker 05

  In the U.S.

• 16:34Speaker 00

  Lynn Buridi is the head of the Department of Design and Merchandising at Oklahoma State University. But back in the 90s, Lynn actually also helped figure out what garment workers working for U.S. brands would be paid. Like, she'd watch them on the assembly line, sewing on a pocket, sewing on a seam.

• 16:49Speaker 05

  Say you've got an 18-inch seam that you have to make. They pick up the two pieces, put it together, put it through the machine, cut the thread at the end, and lay it down. 18-inch seam takes X amount of seconds to make. I would keep track of that cycle and write down the cycle, watching their movements, et cetera.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  So you're standing there with a stopwatch, like, okay, she did that in 30 seconds.

• 17:13Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 00

  Oh, now 35 seconds.

• 17:15Speaker 05

  Yes, and I'm marking that down right in front of them. Yes, it was very awkward. You didn't do it all the time. You did it to set the piece rate and to set the cost of the garment.

• 17:24Speaker 00

  So you were, your job was to determine how many cents to pay or to charge per piece?

• 17:29Speaker 05

  I gave the data to the people. I gave the data to the...

• 17:32Speaker 00

  We're blaming you, Lynn. We're blaming you.

• 17:34Speaker 05

  I'm sorry, I know. I feel so terrible now, but... You know, this is just something that you're taught.

• 17:39Speaker 00

  This is one of the main ways the garment industry in the US and globally has always paid. Pennies on the piece.

• 17:46Speaker 05

  This is a longstanding tradition, at least since the Industrial Revolution.

• 17:50Speaker 00

  Piece rate pay was meant to incentivize workers to work harder.

• 17:54Speaker 05

  So the people working harder and producing more would make more money than the people who were working slower. And everyone thought, that's a fair system, right?

• 18:02Speaker 00

  But Lynn has some regrets about this now. And she says piece rate pay means workers often wreck their bodies working as fast as they can.

• 18:11Speaker 05

  When you sew, you have one foot on a pedal, and so your weight tends to be on your other leg. Do you think that for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week perhaps, or more, that can cause issues?

• 18:23Speaker 00

  We spoke to workers who have gotten burned, scarred, need surgery on their shoulder.

• 18:28Speaker 05

  Doing the same arm repetitions every single day. And you do hundreds of these units.

• 18:35Speaker 00

  Okay, wait, let me show you. So this is my garment that I bought.

• 18:43Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  I show Lynn the purple sports bra. There's like a little keyhole right here.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  Oh, that's nice.

• 18:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:49Speaker 05

  Let me see the shoulders.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  When I showed this garment to Maria, she could really only tell me about the part she does, the trimming. But Lynn can tell us how many people worked on a garment like this and how much they each got paid.

• 19:01Speaker 05

  Okay, so you've got a front and a back. You've got the band along the bottom, and then you've got the piping pieces on the armhole and the neckline. It's a very basic bra.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  This is not a structured bra. There are no cups, no liner pads, no holes for the liners, no wire, nothing like that. And still, Lynn says, it could have taken 13 different people to make it, each doing a different step.

• 19:27Speaker 05

  Just to sew the bra. I'm not talking about any of the prep work, like laying out the fabric, cutting out the fabric, bundling the pieces.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  Would like a generous estimate be like every single person who touched this piece got?

• 19:42Speaker 00

  No more than thirty cents for what they did, or forty cents.

• 19:46Speaker 05

  Forty cents is probably too high.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Forty cents is too high. Okay, so we'll go with thirty cents. Oh, thirty cents times thirteen people would mean that potentially, theoretically, workers were paid three dollars and ninety cents to make this bra.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 20:05Speaker 00

  Which was selling for sixty-two dollars.

• 20:07Speaker 05

  Correct.

• 20:08Speaker 00

  And this is like made in America.

• 20:11Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 20:11Speaker 00

  So this is like as good as it gets.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 20:15Speaker 00

  This is, this is as good as it gets?

• 20:17Speaker 05

  Well, in terms of, um, people actually being paid.

• 20:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, basically as good as it gets in terms of pay. Now, some countries like Canada, Japan, Belgium actually do pay garment workers more than the US does. But generally, in countries that make most of our clothes, workers would make way, way less than three dollars and ninety cents total to make a bra like this.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  Oh, pennies. It could be fifty cents in other countries.

• 20:43Speaker 00

  So why don't they do it somewhere else? Is it because they wanna be a brand that says we use American labor?

• 20:49Speaker 05

  It, that's worth money. Absolutely.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  Do you think that your average consumer of this product thinks, "Oh, wait, that's what American labor is? It's like someone getting paid eighteen cents to thirty cents to work on this?"

• 21:04Speaker 05

  No, absolutely not. I think we have the image of a well-run factory that's air-conditioned, where people get nice breaks and go home to their families at night. And it's just not that. I've seen worse factories in America than I have seen overseas.

• 21:21Speaker 00

  Most of the garment factories left in the US, over seventy-six percent of them, are small operations with fewer than ten workers. You'd walk by some of these and never even know there was a garment factory there. In New York City, a factory could be on top of a restaurant in Little Italy. In Los Angeles, it could be on a residential street, looking like any other single-story house on the block. There aren't that many factories or that many domestic garment workers. In nineteen ninety, there were like nine hundred thousand apparel manufacturing jobs in the US. Today, there are eighty-two thousand.

• 21:56Speaker 00

  The US lost most of its garment industry in the 90s, when brands and retailers started sourcing more and more products overseas and paying other countries to make more and more clothes. And when that happened, the US kind of stopped investing in the factories that were left, stopped innovating. So walking into some of these factories today can feel like going back in time.

• 22:17Speaker 02

  It's tiny, subcontracted, overcrowded factories with these juke machines.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  This is Aisha Berenblatt. Her work running a nonprofit called Remake has taken her inside garment factories all over the US and abroad.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Come look at the factories in Southeast, not just in China, in Cambodia, in Bangladesh. Some of these are state-of-the-art facilities, innovative, you know, with robotics and AI and using clean technologies. We don't have that.

• 22:46Speaker 00

  We have some, not many. The governments in a lot of the countries where our clothes are made today actually subsidize those state-of-the-art fancy factories. And unless the US were to do the same, Aisha says she cannot imagine that there would be the right incentives for anyone to invest in more US factories.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  This is an aging workforce, you know? Who is going to do the skill development that's needed? Without investment in workforce, without investment in R and D, in technology, in actual factory development, and patience. It's not as though these jobs are just going to come back. Can I just say that? These jobs are not going to, we're not going to make iPhones in America and we're not going to make a lot of clothes in America. We don't know how to. Like, let's just put that out there.

• 23:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, the US outsourced a lot of its garment-making expertise a long time ago. Other countries got really good at making clothes, not just sewing clothes, but like the pattern-making, fitting, making a bra. Not a simple sports bra like our purple bra, but like a legit, structured, support bra with cups and the whole thing. Aisha says the US doesn't really know how to make those bras.

• 23:57Speaker 02

  No, look in your closet and see where most of your bras come from. Sri Lanka, probably. It's hard, you know? It's a technical garment. I mean, the wire, the clasp, the sizing, the different kind of material.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  Moulded part.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Different countries have become experts at different things. One country might be really great at making cheap pearl buttons for our clothes. Another, great at working with silk. The US is apparently not known for its silk work. You really want to go to where silk production originated for good silk work. So China. But there is a garment manufacturing industry in the US, right? That's what Maria does.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  Entrimi y ganas tu dinero.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  And if you're wondering why there is any industry left at all when clothes can be made cheaper, sometimes even better abroad, here's why. Some US brands like to have factories nearby for things like prototyping and making samples. They just want a few pieces right away. Why have it made all the way in China? And then there are clothes for the niche customer, like consumers who really want clothes that aren't shipped from across the world because they really care about emissions, for example. Specialized clothes for people with physical disabilities. The US makes a decent amount of that. And here's another big reason. Basically, all of the clothes for the US military have to, by law, under the very amendment, be made in the US.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  The fabric, the fiber, top to bottom, made in the USA. Because the US military doesn't ever want to have to rely on a particular country in case we ever, like, go to war with that country or something. This is the part of the garment industry that the US government does prop up. And there is a perception, right? That made in America must mean better labor conditions, maybe, better pay, good for the environment even.

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Why do you think that, Sarah? That's not true.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  That's absolutely not true.

• 25:59Speaker 00

  Aisha's nonprofit does these reports where they basically grade brands on labor issues like pay and worker well-being and environmental issues like the raw materials brands use and where their clothes get discarded.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  There's this perception that somehow if I'm paying more or if it's a luxury item, then the workers are paid better. And, you know, time and time again, you know, there've been scandals with sweatshops in Italy and they have been high-end brands, luxury brands. There's math out there, something like 20 cents for a $20 t-shirt. But the same holds true for a $120 t-shirt.

• 26:36Speaker 00

  A $20 t-shirt, a $120 t-shirt. The workers likely got 20 cents to work on it either way. Aisha says you generally cannot buy your way into better wages for workers.

• 26:51Speaker 00

  There has been an effort in California, where Maria and half of all US garment workers are, to raise the pay. But the thing about making clothes is it has historically gone somewhere else, where you can pay workers less. That's after the break.

• 27:12Avery Trufelman?

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• 29:20Speaker 00

  So, we know that Maria gets paid by the piece. But here's how they add it up. Every day when Maria walks into work, she gets bundles of clothes that need trimming sorted by size. And Maria keeps track of the cut, the style, and the number of pieces in a notebook, and then figures out her total pay at the end of the week. And the mister or missus will do the same accounting on their end. And sometimes their math might be $5, $6 short, and Maria will be like, "No, no, no. Check your math again." Si, haz tu cuenta bien y veras que sí. Maria does feel like she has to fight for every dollar she gets. Working a regular, average day, where the garment she's working on is not so easy and not so hard, Maria might do like 500 pieces at $0.15 apiece. So, $75 a day. ¿Y te pagan en cash?

• 30:05Speaker 00

  Sí, claro, en cash. Working full-time, she could make $375 a week, $1,500 a month. If Maria was making the minimum wage in California, though, she'd make $2,640 a month. When you convert piece-rate pay to hourly wages, it can add up to much less than the minimum wage. According to a Department of Labor survey of garment workers in Southern California, some workers made as little as $1.58 an hour. And in California, the way that Maria is getting paid by the piece is actually not legal. It's wage theft. And Maria knows it. Sí, es un robo de salario. Maria is a member of a group called

• 30:49Speaker 00

  the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles. The center, and also Aisha's nonprofit, pushed for this law in California that prohibits piece-rate pay in the garment industry. It passed four years ago. So now, by law, Maria is supposed to be getting paid hourly, at minimum wage or better, not by the piece. But getting all the brands and factories to comply with the law is another story. Sometimes garment workers are asked to clock in and clock out every day, even though they are not paid by the hour. Factories do this to try to avoid being caught by state investigators. They'll even coach workers on what color the paycheck would be, if they got a paycheck, not cash, so that they can be more believable to investigators.

• 31:33Speaker 00

  Our purple sports bra, the one we bought, we spoke to a worker who says they worked on those bras, paid by the piece. And the company that made it was actually fined for using factories in California that were committing wage theft and issuing fake checks. And listen, many brands have worked with factories that pay garment workers per piece. According to the Department of Labor, it's been contractors and manufacturers that make clothes for Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Lulu's, Dillard's. So it's not just the, you know, bad, fast fashion brands doing this. It's luxury brands. It's good, American brands that boast about being made with US labor, like our sports bra. And if factories get wind

• 32:18Speaker 00

  that maybe someone is poking around on how they're paying workers, there's this thing that can happen. The factory can close up, relocate, change their name to avoid having to back pay workers. Lynn, Lynn who used to have the stopwatch, timing workers sewing on seams, she says she saw factories do this all the time.

• 32:39Speaker 05

  If they were caught doing anything and the government came in, they would say, sorry, that company no longer exists. We're this owner. We're, you know, the new company now.

• 32:49Speaker 00

  But it would be the same owners?

• 32:51Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  Just a different name?

• 32:51Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  Yep. And how can they do that?

• 32:54Speaker 05

  Oh, it's all illegal. It is the very definition of a sweatshop, but you have to catch them at it.

• 33:03Speaker 00

  Yes, sweatshops. It's a term people toss out a lot, but the actual definition of a sweatshop is poor working conditions, low pay, long hours.

• 33:12Speaker 00

  And the problem with trying to make wages and conditions and hours better is that you can risk losing the industry altogether. For example, the law in California that prohibits piece rate pay in the garment industry, the California Chamber of Commerce labeled it a job killer. People said that if California is the only state in the country that bans piece rate pay, factories and brands will just make clothes one state over where they can still pay workers by the piece. There has been a years-long push to eliminate piece rate pay nationally, but I mean, then the work could just go to another country. These jobs have already moved from China to Bangladesh and Vietnam where the labor is cheaper. We did talk to a garment worker who has been paid hourly,

• 33:57Speaker 00

  not by the piece. ¿Me puedes decir en inglés, like, what you do for work? What you do for work? What, no, what do you do? Oh, what do you do, what do you do for work? Where, um... This is Pacheco. She is a sewer in L.A. who has made clothes for the U.S. military. Las camisas para los soldados. Ah, para los so... This is for the soldiers. ¿Cómo el camouflage? Sí, exactamente eso. But even getting paid minimum wage, Pacheco says there is pressure to do things fast. Que das todo lo que puedes físicamente. Físicamente y mentalmente porque tienes que hacerlo bien hecho. You give everything you can physically, she says, and mentally because you have to do really good work. En algunos lugares. In some factories, at least. And if you don't work fast, Pacheco says,

• 34:41Speaker 00

  sometimes they can just take the work away from you. Te dicen, oh, es que el trabajo bajo, te voy a tener que descansar unos días, ahí te llamamos después. They might say, oh, there's actually not going to be a lot of work the next few days. We'll call you when there's more. And you get the message, she says, to work faster next time. Pacheco says sometimes she actually made more money when she was paid by the piece. Now, we are not using Pacheco's full name because she fears workplace retaliation. This is also why we're not using Madiya's full name or the names of their employers. But the Garment Worker Center, which fights labor violations, says this kind of thing happens all the time. And Pacheco has a lot of regrets about investing so much of her adult life in this industry.

• 35:26Speaker 00

  She says she has nothing to show for her work, no savings, no career advancements. She feels broken by it. Vigan a la emoción porque...

• 35:37Speaker 00

  Se pierde mucho tiempo.

• 35:40Speaker 00

  Dame un espacio.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  You've lost a lot of time? Sí. Bueno, porque yo pienso que qué persona no quiere graduarse y tener un tipo de vida diferente. What person doesn't want to move up in work and life and have more, she says? Pacheco, María, they say this is not a job they would want for their loved ones, like Pacheco's kids or María's grandkids, who all graduated college. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. No, esto no, para ellos no. No, not this job for them, María says. Pues no. Que sean algo en la vida. María says she wants them to be something in life. I tell her, "You're something." ¿Tú eres algo en la vida?

• 36:28Speaker 00

  Sí, algo pues porque...

• 36:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, "I'm something," she says. But she raised her kids. Comimos y todo. They all ate. Mm-hmm. And she's proud of herself. But she cannot imagine many Americans would want this job. Como un americano gringo. No, claro que no. ¿Tú crees que va a estar agachado ahí? Pero no. She's like, "Come on, you think they'd be crouched over all day?" She can actually barely contain herself at the thought. Claro, no lo va a querer hacer.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  After doing that story, it still sticks with Sarah. I will never look at a shirt or a bra, a pair of pants, and not see, like, oh, 15 people probably worked on that. Like, I never knew that it took that that many people touched one garment in the United States. To this day, she cannot look at a piece of clothing without imagining all the many hands that touched it. It took 15 people to make a bra. It took 20 people to make a T-shirt. It took 35 people to make like a men's button-up dress shirt. That's what I see. Of course, there's like, you know, the do-gooder factories. But for the most part, it doesn't matter how expensive the clothes is.

• 37:50Speaker 00

  If it costs, if it's a T-shirt that costs $120 or a T-shirt that costs $20, the workers who worked on both of those shirts likely got 20 cents to work on it either way. You know, it's like, knowledge ruins everything.

• 38:06Avery Trufelman?

  Take it away with the credits, Sarah.

• 38:08Speaker 00

  I'm Sarah Gonzalez. Today's show was edited by Mary Ann McCune and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez, who also helped with research. It was produced by Willa Rubin, with help from Emma Peaslee, and engineered by Robert Rodriguez. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Also, super, super extra special thanks to Sheng Liu, who really helped us understand why the garment industry exists in the US at all and what it looks like.

• 38:32Avery Trufelman?

  This episode, I added music by Lele Tone, Sessami Ashworth, and Ray Royal, but...

• 38:37Speaker 00

  I have not found a perfect, simple, white T-shirt. If you have any tips...

• 38:41Avery Trufelman?

  Actually, if you want my humble suggestions for simple, relatively ethical, good, white T-shirts, go to articlesofinterest.substack.com.

• 38:54Speaker 07

  Radiotopia.

• 38:57Speaker 07

  From PRX.