A conscientious consumer may think that buying clothes made in America automatically means wages are better than those in the developing world.
But that is not necessarily true: When the Department of Labor randomly examined the practices of dozens of clothing makers based in the United States, it found that the vast majority were breaking the law — and that workers making clothes for Nordstrom and other brands were in some cases earning less than $2 an hour.
Clothes with a "Made in the USA" tag account for a small fraction of sales in the American market, typically coming with a higher price tag. But when federal investigators looked at 50 contractors and manufacturers in Southern California, the heart of the domestic garment industry, they discovered that 80% were breaking one or more provisions of US labor law, according to the report published Wednesday.
Over a third of garment makers falsified their payroll records, investigators found, while more than a quarter kept no documentation at all. And while California in 2021 banned piece rate wages, where workers are paid based on how much they produce, the Department of Labor discovered that 32% of those investigated were still doing it, resulting in take-home pay that sometimes fell...
Dangote Group has dismissed as false and malicious a publication alleging that its President, Aliko Dangote, distanced himself from Tony Elumelu, describing the report as entirely baseless. In a s...