to be annoyed at cheap uniform ads

[greenfanta]

workers in bangladesh are protesting about wages that they can't even live on. they want a 300% wage rise so they can survive, but the govt will only allow 80% (is it me or are these %s mental!)yet the supermarkets are bragging about school shirts for £2. how LITTLE are they paying these people??! and since when do we expect to only pay £2? IS IT ME OR IS IT IMMORAL TO EXPLOIT WORKERS IN THE EAST?

Ours was just a small shop which got so busy you were given tickets and had to queue outside ..and my ds had a habit of using his tops as goal posts on the school field and losing them thank goodness hes at college now

This is the thing about capitalism, it needs inequality to survive.

The workers in Bangladesh may find that all their protests lead to is the manufacturer finding another region to work in.

There is an argument that sweat shops are not neccesarily a bad thing (not my opinion btw) as they do provide a level of income that would not otherwise be available. I have research notes on this somewhere but they are packed up due to renovations at home. Basically the argument is that for many in developing countries they want the manufacturers to come to their area as the alternative can be NO work or days spent scavaging in rubbish tips.

The bottom line is always going to be that companies want to make maximum profit regardless of the workers.

Sancti - i thought you'd called me nickel arse, then!!!

In my area they do a few second-hand uniform sales in schools, but I assume it can't be the same everywhere. :(

OOps Nickel, sorryr!

I often wonder when I pay £5-£10 for a top from Next (preschoolers, btw, no need for uniform yet) if the workers actually make more than if I buy a £2 from Asda - are the extra profits passed on?
Paying more doesn't necessarily mean better quality either. Some of my Sainsburys or Primark bargain basement clothes have stood the test of time better than my Next or Mini Mode clothes.

M and S uniforms are cheap and Fairtrade so I buy from there.

Very cheap clothing does worry me as I always think of some poor 7 year old in a sweatshop.

"i actually do not agree that there are families who can only afford that"

Yes, there are. My school uniform - which was compulsory - was really expensive as I didn't fit into standard 'school shoes' or knee-highs and had to buy men's/adults. When I started secondary we got a grant as we had barely any money at all and it just about covered the cost of the blazer and skirt. If you have no money, a £2 shirt is as expensive as a £20 shirt. I'm absolutely not advocating exploitation of children but a lot of people forget that there are a lot of people who are less well-off than themselves and in that position feeding and clothing oneself and one's children overrides ethical concerns.

Remember secondary school children about to leave aren't much smaller than adults.

" Looking at ProfessorLayton's list, you could (hypothetically at least) buy your DCs school shirts from Moss Bros and jumper from Edinburgh Woolen Mill at a cost of about £50"

Neither of those shops exist in my town either! We did have uniform sales but seldom - I was also five foot seven by the time I started secondary so that really cuts down on what you can get second-hand. Apparently children are getting larger (taller/heavier) in general so that makes it hard.

When my parents were working again we got things to last but sometimes the only choice for many is bargain basement. A friend of mine, who went to a very posh London school thanks to a grant scheme, wore her uniform seven days a week at one point because her parents had absolutely no money.

And yet when you go on the children's clothes and shoes section of mumsnet it's always the same faces, doing their bit for recycling and saving a bit of money too.
We all no doubt have wardrobes bursting full of children's clothes that could be passed along to each other.
We changed school last year i three bin bags full of nvay blue M&S skirts, jumpers, cardigans immaculate, couldn't give them away.

OP I absolutely agree with you. It's like modern day slavery - consumers in the west are, intentionally or unintentionally, exploiting the workers in the east .

really good point shitforbrains

mama MN isn;t the only place to recycle reuse though is it?

I've never been on there yet have just sorted a mountain of clothing that will be divided between charity shop (usually old evening wear type stuff) and Salvationa rmy (anything else). Same value.

I take my old clothes to the charity shop ..or use the clothes recycling bins ..and me and my neighbours always used to pass on grown out of school uniforms to each other ..but so many peoples kids in the same neighbourhood go to different schools now its harder imo

Im with you mippy on this

Some people are on low incomes that are poor but not poor enough for benefits and have to decide between paying extra for uniforms or putting food on the table. At the end of the day im not responsible for working conditions I just want cheap stuff.

Anyone shop at sports direct? there was a prog on that about cheap labour and all that. How many other shops are doing it. You can go on and on and say oh i wouldnt put my child in that as its not ethical but you probably dont give a thought to it when buying their footie tops and all the rest.

Who shops at the pound shops? its all cheap labour. the reality is our homes are full of stuff made by people working for peanuts and we dont give a second thought to it.

Bossyboop I feel the same to an extent.

It would be great if all shops were ethical, if all meat was uk grown and produced and free range, if all produce was fair trade.

Sadly though, it just doesn't work that way.

I have watched programmes on tv about how your bar of cadburys will never be truly fairtrade, and the same goes for hundreds of products - something is labelled fairtrade if it can be sourced back to a particular farm, but sometimes those farms buy in goods and resell them themselves!

The world is overpopulated and we demand cheap goods. We live in a throwaway society.

Animals are reared overseas inhumanely to meet demand for our massive appetites.
Africans work finger to the bone to provide us with our luxurious green beans when cabbage is in season at home.
Children and adults are exploited for cheap labour making our clothes.

It's a massive, massive issue, and as consumers, try as we might, we don't stand a chance. I truly wish we did.

Monsoon is full of £100 clothes labelled 'Made in India/China'. Can we say that an adult getting paid a good wage made them? No, sadly we can't, as even sometimes if the FABRIC is made fairly they are outsourced to children to sew on the sequins, for example.

I feel hopelessly uneducated about the bigger picture, and I wish it were different, but I can't honestly say that buying your clothes somewhere other than Asda will make a blind bit of difference, sadly.

I agree that the simple act of buying clothes from somewhere other than Asda won't make much difference in the short term, but I don't accept that change is not possible. If more people put pressure on the big supermarkets and clothes shops paying unfair wages in the developing world then they will, eventually, have to listen.

Women used to say there was nothing that could be done about their lack of rights in this country - it was only through the suffragette movement - women making a stand and campaigning for change - that things changed.

Black people campaigned for and won civil rights in USA - that wouldn't have happened if people hadn't refused to accept the status quo.

Campaigning (this is where I signed up) is something we can ALL do and if more people do it then things CAN change for the better.

Of course change is possible and I would hugely advocate we all pop by sites such as Amnesty where we can help thet with a few typed words.

But there have been a few of these threads lately and they seem to target the very poorest. Instead I woudl reserve any anger for the very many who shop at ASda then pop off to spend ££ at Starbucks, rather than the person who shops at Asda then eats beans on toast to make the budget work.

Denying there is ahrdship in the country is simply wrong. have just apcked up lots of clothes to go ito Salvation Army for those who can't even afford charity shops*, and it's also veryw rong people should be that poor in such an affluent country as ours.

• Ever since that amry queen of charity shops, many have been useless. Ours seems to bin nayhting not designer now. I always thought it was a great model: helping both the poorest and charities, now it's all vintage and statements about only duty is to the charity

SM... why shouldn't people who can't afford to buy new have second hand stuff?

what the hell is wrong with re-using perfectly good uniform

i can afford to buy new. a lot of my kids stuff comes from ebay.

just because you CAN buy new doesn't mean you should. I really don't get this bizarre mentality of new being better
i would rather have a decent second hand jumper than a shitty £2 one that's brand new but made by kids in a sweatshop

and the argument that it's sweatshop labour regardless of price, or that it's on offer so why shouldn't i buy it, or if we don't buy it the poor children will be on the streets
is ludicrous!

none of those things make it ok

Huh?

I never said that TIY!

I just pointed out that its ahrd to get hold of second hand stuff

My kids have second hand stuff, I posted about the ebat puma trainers further down!

They don't make it OK, but they do mean that it's ludicrous to think "tsk, deary me, all these selfish people buying £2 shirts, I am far more ethically superior buying more expensive shirts" unless you KNOW that the more expensive shirts you are buying are specifically and auditably fairtrade -- because if they are not then you will be exploiting workers in developing countries just as much as the buyers of £2 shirts.

And I never said the second post either- goodness how you are reading it!

I never said it was OK at all

I did say that I thought some people needed it mroe than otehrs

I also suggested people should be using other campaign messages as a way of changing things

I buy in M&S as often as I can, the top listed one on that site, and they also do a cheapo range (which I also pointed out.....)

But I think sitting here villfying the very most poor people in society who might not be able to access cheap uniform (my poor lcoal town doesn't offer uniform in charity shops as it ahs too low profit margins, and many poor people dont ahve access to Ebay) is silly when it would amke far mroe sense to target those who actually have the cash to make decisions.

Probably by actually telling people where is good to shop for a start. On that alst thread on this topic loads of people asked but didn;t get any real answers. At elast one has a list!

I think tiy means SM as in scottishmummy, not SM as in SanctiMoanyArse...

OOps

Sorry

I did scan but missed anyone with same initials