Human cost behind bargain shopping

But the big question is, how much are workers really paid? It turns out starting wages can be as low as 10 cents an hour. That was something the manager at that first factory acknowledged.

Factory Manager: “About 10, 11, 12 cents.”
Kernaghan: “And like a senior operator?”
Factory Manager: “Roughly about 19 cents.”

But remember, Masuma's boss told us he pays his employees two dollars an hour. If that was the case, Masuma would be taking home an astonishing $140 a week. What does she say?

Masuma: “If I earned that kind of money do you think I would be dressed like this?  I would have much nicer clothing.”

Masuma says she's paid more like 17 cents an hour, a perfectly legal wage here, and more than many Bangladeshis earn. So for a 70-hour week, she brings home about $12. What kind of life does that buy?

Masuma showed us her home, two small rooms where she says she lives with her mother, two year old daughter, and a couple of other garment workers. There's no table. She makes and eats breakfast on the floor. Their only water comes from a pump they share with neighbors. After paying the rent, Masuma says she cannot afford very much. Her typical diet is rice and lentils. Fish and meat are too expensive, she says. One chicken costs more than she's paid for an entire day.

Masuma: “Sometimes we go without food.”

And sometimes, when the heavy rains come and there are floods, they have to go without a home.

As bad as she has it, Masuma is better off than many of the people she works with. A bamboo walkway leads to a slum built on stilts where many garment workers live over a swamp, and where they sleep on the floor. More than 30 families share one cooking area.

What do our bargain hunters make of it all?

Vilma Matera: “That's slave labor.”

Hansen: “Slave labor?”

Matera: “Absolutely slave labor.”

It’s slave labor perhaps by American standards, but in Bangladesh, where 40 percent of the population lives in abject poverty, Masuma's earnings are higher than average. Regardless, Masuma says she's too tired to dream of a better life. or even think about something as simple as where the clothes she makes end up.

Masuma: “I don't know anything about America, except that it's a faraway place.”

But that's about to change. Masuma is about to make a journey into a new world,  where she'll follow the fruits of her labor to their destination and find out just how much Americans pay for the clothes she makes. 

Masuma says she's barely surviving, but a spokesman for the garment industry in Bangladesh says that, as poor as Masuma and her coworkers are, it could be a lot worse.

Lutfor Rahman: “If they were jobless, then what standards they will maintain? What standards they can maintain? Then no standard at all.”

Lutfor Rahman, who has a couple of factories of his own, says that the industry is doing what it can, setting up health clinics and a model private school for workers' kids. But he says it's hard to do more when American companies are constantly pressing for lower prices.

Rahman: “We are trying to reduce price, at least to keep the factory running.”

He admits factory workers sometimes do have to put in extra long hours, for instance when deadlines are looming and fabric deliveries are late. They have little choice, he says, meet the deadline or American companies could take their business elsewhere.

Rahman: “Simply, that will be a disaster.”

When we were undercover as Hansen Fashions, an executive told us that he wanted to pay higher wages, but he claims Wal-Mart wouldn't agree to pay even a penny more per garment.

Executive: “A few years back, I told Wal-Mart, "Give me one cents more a piece, one cent. I will use that money for these poor people.’ He says, ‘No, give us two cents less.’"

What would a worker like Masuma think if she could see just how much the clothes she stitches sell for? We got a chance to find out.

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