The Travels of a T-shirt in a Global Economy

The Book "The Travels of a T-shirt in a Global Economy" brings up many important issues that we as ordinary people would not think twice about. After reading and watching the short video in class, it made me wonder about the clothing I own. We as a society are so caught up in labels and brand names; we are not looking at the truth behind these labels. In her speech Pietra Rivoli, brings up many of the issues and problems she went through and discovered while traveling with her T-shirt. The two, which interested me, were when she was talking about Exploitation and the Tenure for teachers.

The First article that I read was titled “Nike Acknowledges Massive Labor Exploitation in its Overseas Sweatshops”. The article discusses their involvement and exporting their goods to other countries, to be manufactured at a less expensive cost. The product is then shipped back to the states to be sold to end-user suppliers. These suppliers then mark up their price to the end-user so as to gain a profit margin. This is a perfect example of what rivoli was talking about, how these companies send their products to other countries and they think do not take responsibility for the conditions and ways that these workers are treated, and getting paid little for the work they are doing.

The second article related to the issue of tenure, and was titled “CUNY Chief Gives Tenure To Professor In Brooklyn”. The article is involving Robert D. Johnson a professor who was to be promoted in his job and therefore was to get tenure. The college wanted to argue that this professor should not get this promotion. Tenure is a great idea in theory, but there are many negatives that come along with giving teacher tenure. It binds the school to the employee and gives that employee the ability to have an easier and less stressful career then a teacher with out tenure, due to the fact that they cannot get fired. It binds the employer to the employee until they complete their tenure term.


1.) http://www.organicconsumers.org/clothes/nike041505.cfm

2.)http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE6DD163CF936A15751C0A9659C8B63