Human cost behind bargain shopping

Chris Hansen Correspondent • Profile

Americans love a deal, and these days, thanks to the fast-paced global marketplace and big discount retailers, products are better and cheaper than ever. But what price do people in faraway places pay so Americans can get their bargains in stores like Wal-Mart? One kind of women's sports pants, for instance, is sold under a brand owned by Sara Lee. Like most clothes they're foreign-made. In this case, they are made in Bangladesh. It's no secret to shoppers that cheaper labor is why the $12.84 pants are made overseas. Consumers have come to expect those low prices to make ends meet.

Dateline investigates what's behind the bargains American shoppers count on. With our hidden cameras we'll find out who sews those pants, and under what conditions. We'll see how problematic it can be for American companies to monitor the working conditions in foreign factories they don't control, where factory owners are under pressure to keep costs down, while still treating workers fairly. We also invite two of the shoppers we met at Wal-Mart, Vilma Matera and her sister-in-law Peggy Rocciola, to take a look at the results of our investigation.

Bangladesh, where those pants are made, is halfway around the globe, and to an American it can seem a universe away. It's a mostly Muslim country next door to India, where a handful of rich are surrounded by masses of poor. It's the most densely populated country in the world, a land overwhelmed by seasonal floods and frequent disasters.

FREE VIDEO: DATELINE HIDDEN CAMERA Dateline NBC Hidden costs: Part 1 Are factories in places like Bangladesh living up to their promises to treat workers fairly? Dateline goes undercover. Dateline NBC Hidden costs: Part 2 Dateline created a phony clothing company to gain access to the factory floor, and spoke with a remarkable young mother. Dateline NBC Hidden costs: Part 3 A young Bangladeshi mother comes face to face with some of the shoppers who buy the clothes she makes.

Life there can be harsh. Jobs are hard to come by and the few there are pay very little. The average income is only $400 year. The biggest industry by far is the garment business, which employs nearly two million people and exports more than $5 billion of clothing a year, much of it to American companies like KMart and GAP. The top customer is Wal-Mart.

Twelve years ago, American companies were embarrassed by a Dateline expose about small children in Bangladesh making clothing for the U.S. Market. They vowed to stop that practice. And in fact, human rights groups and American companies agree that child labor is no longer a major problem in Bangladesh's garment factories, and Dateline found no sign of it either. 

Kevin Burke heads the American Apparel and Footwear Association. 

RELATED RESOURCE LINKS American Apparel and Footware Association Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers Association National Labor Committee (Charles Kernaghan’s group) Verite (Independent monitoring organization) WRAP (Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production) Federated Stores (pdf) GAP Kohl’s Sara Lee Sears / Kmart Wal-Mart (pdf)

Kevin Burke: “For the amount of time that we're talking about here, we've made tremendous strides.”

But keeping children out of factories is only part of it. American companies now demand that foreign manufacturers follow strict rules, codes of conduct, and they even send in inspectors to check up on them.

Burke: “Making sure there's proper ventilation and heating, that people are getting breaks, that they're paying the workers the minimum wage based upon the laws of that country.”

But are American companies getting the true picture? Are all the rules really being followed? To find out, we create a fictitious company called Hansen Fashions, complete with our own Web site. And with our hidden cameras, we present ourselves as executives looking to do business in Bangladesh.

We ask Charles Kernaghan to act as a clothing buyer for our company. He's a labor activist who's done battle for years with American retailers over working conditions in foreign factories. In conjunction with Kernaghan, we call many factories, among them, companies being monitored by local labor groups for poor working conditions.

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