Amazon Sells Clothes From Factories Other Retailers Shun as Dangerous (wsj.com) 45
After a 2013 factory collapse killed more than 1,100 people in Bangladesh, most of the biggest U.S. apparel retailers joined safety-monitoring groups that required them to stop selling clothing from factories that violated certain safety standards. Amazon didn't join. The Wall Street Journal reports: According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, the site today offers a steady stream of clothing from dozens of Bangladeshi factories that most leading retailers have said are too dangerous to allow into their supply chains. A yellow gingham toddler top embroidered with flowers was among those clothes, listed on Amazon for $4.99 by a New York City retailer. The Journal traced the top to a factory in Chittagong, Bangladesh, that has no fire alarms and where doors are of a type managers can lock and keep workers in. A laborer at the factory, 18-year-old Nasreen Begum, said she spends 12-hour days there stitching shirts with 300 others. "You're trapped inside until the time you complete the orders," she said.
The Journal found other apparel on Amazon made in Bangladeshi factories whose owners have refused to fix safety problems identified by two safety-monitoring groups, such as crumbling buildings, broken alarms, and missing sprinklers and fire barriers. U.S. retailers such as Walmart, Target, Costco Wholesale and Gap have agreed to honor bans imposed by those two groups, to have their supply chains inspected and to disclose to the groups the factories that supply them. The Journal found clothing including pants, sweaters, clerical robes, fishnet body stockings and other items, that originate from blacklisted factories and end up on Amazon.
The Journal found other apparel on Amazon made in Bangladeshi factories whose owners have refused to fix safety problems identified by two safety-monitoring groups, such as crumbling buildings, broken alarms, and missing sprinklers and fire barriers. U.S. retailers such as Walmart, Target, Costco Wholesale and Gap have agreed to honor bans imposed by those two groups, to have their supply chains inspected and to disclose to the groups the factories that supply them. The Journal found clothing including pants, sweaters, clerical robes, fishnet body stockings and other items, that originate from blacklisted factories and end up on Amazon.
FUD? (Score:5, Informative)
A yellow gingham toddler top embroidered with flowers was among those clothes, listed on Amazon for $4.99 by a New York City retailer.
So Amazon's not selling them, retailers are. They just happen to be selling them on Amazon.
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The Subway System would have responsibility if the Rapist was doing the act while on the subway. Especially if they did nothing to stop it, and charged for others to come aboard and watch.
Now if this company that sold only the quality products on Amazon, and sold the bad stuff off of amazon. Say after a sale, they sent them a catalog with their other stuff. Then Amazon isn't responsible. But because Amazon is getting a piece of the action they are.
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Your point is?
Walmart isn't letting them sell on their marketplace.
Amazon needs to take some responsibility for what they allow to be sold on their site.
Re: FUD? (Score:2)
Why?
Unless the products are illegal to sell in the venue in which they are being offered, I donâ(TM)t see why Amazon has any responsibility whatsoever.
Donâ(TM)t like the product? Donâ(TM)t buy it.
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Ever hear of "blood diamonds" or other such "conflict" products?
Maybe you don't give a shit about how the stuff you consume gets made, but the rest of us don't give a shit about your continued existence on our planet.
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I put a pair of those cheap Chinese fake sheepskin boots on barefoot, feet came up with a rush in a couple of hours, those boots went into the bin, companies that sell unsafe rubbish like that, management deserve a custodial sentence.
A better story. The WSJ story uses subscription. (Score:2)
Re:FUD? (Score:5, Informative)
They just happen to be selling them on Amazon.
While they are indeed selling on Amazon, nothing about it is by happenstance, as you suggest. Rather, they are selling on Amazon because Amazon is one of the only large retailers that permitsthem to sell items from these sources. They can't sell to Walmart (and presumably Sam's Club). They can't sell to Target. They can't sell to Costco. But Amazon is more than happy to help them out.
Amazon is now AMAZINGLY poorly managed. (Score:2)
Re:FUD? (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon gets a cut of the sales. So they are selling them. If you are selling a product, and it is dangerous/illegal you are responsible.
This would be a bit different if it wasn't Amazon but Craigslist. Where the sale of the item or not wouldn't affect Craigslist... However Craigslist still needs to make sure what is being advertised is considered legal.
But because Amazon gets a cut of the purchase. And if I need to return the product or have a problem with it, I have to go via Amazon. Amazon is actually the seller.
I recently bought a Refurbished Saw from Amazon. I had to return it, because the third party seller improperly packaged it, and it arrived broken. Returning the Saw, I had to go via Amazon, where they sent me the UPS Return ticket, paid by Amazon, and all communications with the Seller went via Amazons Portal. If I didn't get my refund, I would be complaining to Amazon. They could in turn punish their reseller, but that is out of my concern.
Just because a reseller is the one that picked the bad products, it doesn't free Amazon from responsibility. Amazons business model may be based on making it easy for retailers to sell via them, it doesn't free them from responsibility. Amazon just bets that the revenue will overcome the legal repercussions for being neglagant
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That's not entirely true. I had a problem with an Amazon vendor when they shipped me an empty box by mistake. I contacted the vendor and they took care of it. Amazon wasn't involved on my end.
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"However Craigslist still needs to make sure what is being advertised is considered legal."
What does it matter what someone "considers" legal or not? Opinions are like assholes -- everybody has one. Just because some random asswipe considers something illegal does not make it so.
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Normally when something is considered legal or illegal. It goes threw a process where a person in authority creates a set of documents to explain its legality state.
In the United State we tend to elect directly or indirectly these people in authority who have the ability to make the laws.
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Try telling a judge that. You can let us know how that went when you get out.
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These items are sold by Amazon. You don't hold railroad if a paedophile comes to your house as a baby sitter but you do hold the agency who sent that person. See https://www.amazon.com/TiTCool... [amazon.com]
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Perhaps those are the primary outputs from the factories involved?
Me, I'd rather have the toddler dress. Yellow gingham? Oh yes.
Great movie! (Score:3, Funny)
I loved Chittagong, Bangladesh. Dick van Dyke in that cool flying jalopy... awesome.
How can I know before I buy? (Score:5, Interesting)
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As a consumer this is often difficult for us, unless we really spend a lot of time researching everything... However if we did that then we wouldn't be able to buy anything.
There are groups who do this, and Companies who sell the products do have responsibility in checking their sources too. Granted the current process is difficult to make sure your entire global supply chain (even a local one) doesn't have misdeeds in it.
Who knows that Organic Fair Trade Coffee you are drinking may had been shipped on a tr
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may had been shipped on a truck that was performing illegal human trafficking
The problem is that people tend to get so wound up in the details, such as say the truck is fine, but the company that made the windshield wiper fluid used in the truck is known for having polluted rivers. Or better yet, the company the windshield wiper fluid used to manufacture the bottle used prison labor. Or the company that supplied the plastic pellets to the company forces their employees to dig through landfills to find suitable plastic material for making the pellets. Or some issue with the landf
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So you're saying we're all going to end up going to the bad place?
Re: How can I know before I buy? (Score:2)
As a consumer, if you actually have a shit, you would do that research.
If you just want to pretend to give a shit, you will do so only so long as it is easy and convenient to do so.
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Now you know where not to buy from because it has not joined the alliance which monitors dangerous factories.
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Well, if it's clothing -- unless you're buying it from some hipster on etsy, it's probably made in deplorable conditions by slave-like serfs.
Re: How can I know before I buy? (Score:2)
Who would probably otherwise have no job at all.
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The UK based Ethical Consumer (http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/) has been tracking ethics in products for decades now.
They've also been calling for boycotting Amazon for years.
Capitalism! (Score:3, Insightful)
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Not if you're a true capitalist. /s
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I don't know who modded OP as "Flaimbait", but he put "/s" which means it's tongue-in-cheek / sarcasm.
If you don't understand something, please don't flag it.
There is an old saying (Score:2)
"Behind every great wealth, is a great crime."
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In 1911, NYC, there was a shirt factory fire disaster that killed 145 workers. This sounds like the same thing: https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-century-us/triangle-shirtwaist-fire [history.com]
There used to be a website (Score:2)
amazonian marketplace confusion strikes again (Score:2)
listed on Amazon for $4.99 by a New York City retailer
This is not sold by Amazon, but brokered by them, the seller is in fact a 'New York City' retailer, which is probably an apartment dweller that may or may not actually live in the United States and simply has the factory send the clothing to Amazon's warehouse fulfillment center.
Amazon wants customers to not know where products are actually coming from OR if they meet standard US trade laws, as long as they make money on the sale.
Automation (Score:5, Insightful)
The Journal traced the top to a factory in Chittagong, Bangladesh, that has no fire alarms and where doors are of a type managers can lock and keep workers in. A laborer at the factory, 18-year-old Nasreen Begum, said she spends 12-hour days there stitching shirts with 300 others. "You're trapped inside until the time you complete the orders," she said.
The only reason those 300 jobs haven't been replaced by robots somewhere in the developed world is because Nasreen Begum and 299 other Bangladeshis exist in economic circumstances driven by local political circumstances.
The inhabitants of Bangladesh fought and won a war of independence from Pakistan in 1971. Its second prime minister promptly turned himself into a dictator for life. Bangladeshis took him at his word and assassinated him the same year. Then the country was run by the military for a while, first with the Chief Justice as figurehead president, then directly by an army leader, who made an effort to return to democracy of sorts. Bangladeshis thanked him for his efforts by assassinating him too. His vice president who took over from him managed to win reelection in a landslide, and was promptly overthrown in a coup. The cycle repeated, including Chief Justice followed by direct army control, and eventually there was yet another popular uprising. Bangladesh's current government has existed since 1991.
Low digit UID Slashdot denizens are older than the country, and high digit users are older than the government. The region has spent most of the past 400 years being conquered, often by themselves.
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Sewing is surprisingly difficult to automate (Score:2)
The flexibility of fabric has made the creation of a sewing robot incredibly difficult. There are companies trying tricks like temporarily stiffening the fabric, but no-one has been able to create a robot that's capable of reliably sewing anything more complex than a t-shirt.
The work goes to the lowest-wage countries in the world because the products can be shipped in bulk and the work can be done by humans who are treated like robots. It just so happens that a human who's treated like a robot is still
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So clearly, the solution to this problem is to refuse to buy anything from the people like Nasreen Begum. That way, everyone can feel morally superior about themselves and she can just go die or else go work an even worse job. /s
These type of problems work themselves out over time in a country. As a country's citizens become wealthier (which the vast majority around the world have been doing lately), they are able to more afford stricter health and safety regulations, etc... For countries full of people who
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So clearly, the solution to this problem is to refuse to buy anything from the people like Nasreen Begum.
The solution to the problem was apparently to elect a female prime minister. They've been stable ever since. Make of that what you will.
Probably the biggest reseller or stolen goods as w (Score:2)
After all, it costs too much to check the credentials of sellers, be they dangerous factories or fencing operators for stolen goods.
Amazon doesn't sell shit (Score:2)
Amazon doesn't sell most of the things on their website. Amazon is not a retailer, they are a logistics company. Pay attention to the SELLER, not the guys providing a search engine or shipping.