What does a Made in the USA label really mean?

What does that "Made in the U.S.A." label on your sweater really mean? Even assuming that a product is made completely in the U.S. and not in sweatshops overseas, current Federal Trade Commission standards say nothing of fair labor practices. Nor do the proposed new standards for "Made in the U.S.A." labels, which would allow foreign labor costs to make up to 25% of the product's total cost.

"Products with the 'Made in the U.S.A.' label could very well be made in sweatshops in the U.S.," says Darlene Adkins, vice president of public policy for the National Consumers League. Sweatshops earn the name by the systematic violation of one or more fundamental workers' rights that have been codified in international and U.S. law.

According to the Union of Needleworkers, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), there are thousands of sweatshops (most prevalent in garment manufacturing) in the U.S., many of which exploit undocumented immigrants and children. In 1994, the U.S. General Accounting Office estimated that there were 2,000 sweatshops (out of 4,000 garment factories) in New York City and 4,500 (out of 6,000) in Los Angeles, where Thai nationals found working in slave-like conditions in a garment shop made headlines in 1995. In the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the western Pacific, companies attach the "Made in the U.S.A." label to products made by immigrants from Asia allowed into the commonwealth specifically to work in sweatshops. U.S. Representative George Miller (D-CA) has introduced legislation to restrict the use of the labels in the Northern Mariana Islands to companies that comply with all U.S. labor laws.

"The 'Made in the U.S.A.' label should stand for a production process which consumers can trust," says Shareen Hertel, director of the child labor and international sourcing project at the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), who warns consumers to look beyond the label to the corporate codes of conduct and related monitoring of companies. "Codes of conduct are worth little on paper if the companies are not monitored," she adds. The Department of Labor (DOL) investigates the labor practices of companies within the U.S. However, although there are laws by which companies must abide, the DOL enforcement capacity is limited. Only 800 investigators exist to protect the rights of one million garment workers, as well as the other 110 million employees in 6.5 million workplaces in the United States.