As much as we don't like to think about it, sweatshops are a reality. After all, there is a reason we can buy our clothes so cheap -- it's because somewhere, someone is getting paid a few dollars a day to make them.

It turns out Gap is no exception. The UK's Observer newspaper found that the company employs children as young as 10-years-old, who work in "conditions close to slavery." All this in spite of the company's attempts to rid their production processes of this kind of illegal child labour.

Granted, it's not as if there's malnourished pre-teens working in the back of your local retail outlet. These kids were discovered in the dark alleys of New Delhi, hired by subcontractors -- seemingly without the knowledge of Gap corporate executives.

Under the current policy, when child employees are discovered, the contractor that hired those children is not only supposed to take them out of the workplace, but also give them money, access to school, and a promise that they can come back to the job when they're old enough.

But that policy apparently isn't working. And as such, Gap will be pulling tens of thousands of items from store shelves later this year rather than look unethical by selling clothes made by the hands of abused, starving children.

But be honest, do you really care? Today the company's website prominently features their Product Red campaign -- designed to raise money for AIDS programs in Africa (just to prove they're not totally evil). Will this affect your shopping? Do you try and buy clothes from retailers that do good, or do you just want cute looks at better prices?

From Styledash.

i care, but coming from a country where the majority of people are living in poverty and very low wages are common, here is the other side of the coin. In south africa, a lot of african's were hired as manual labour for pitiful amounts of money, and often they were the only income providers in the country. Employment reform brought about minimum wage and paid holidays and all that, but the employers often could not afford to keep the workes on at these higher wages, and therefore a lot lost their jobs (and the ones who kept them now had todo the work of 3 people). Jobs became harder to get at that skill level and unemployment rose and now, those people cannot get a job, even for a pitiful wage, and their families are plunged further into poverty. Its all well and good to take a first-world view on the issue, but often those wages are all these people have and they are happier to work for that, then to have nothing.

This topic bugs me a bit.
After watching a documentary on counterfeiting and labour in this respect, it does make me question the clothes im wearing.
But in the end how is anyone going to know where their clothes come from, or where/how they are made. If i knew for sure that certain shops/designers did or didn't exploit people to create their clothes then i would 100% buy clothes accordingly, as it happens its impossible to tell unless you do copious amounts of research.
I wish we were able to tell, or that it just didn't exist, but we can't, and i do care a lot, i would rather spend more and be sure that the clothes were not made by exploited workers, than spend less on clothes that could have been.

The only time I've been able to tell is with some US made clothing which came with a big 'UNION MADE' label sewn into it. Nice that it's not made by child labour, but do I honestly want that big ugly label sewn in? Couldn't it just be attached to the swing ticket?