Reject their claims that counterfeiting hurts the workers—the protection of rights benefits those who have the privilege to design and not the efforts of the laborers who make their work tangible. Instead the notion of authenticity and reputation for products incentivizes sweatshops and further exploitation of labor.

Solyom 12 (Solyom, Jessica A. (2012), Associate Research Professor, School of Social Transformation at ASU "Tearing at the Seams of (In)visibility: Anti-counterfeiting, Harper’s Bazaar, and the Project of Neocolonization," Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research: Vol. 11 , Article 5. Available at: http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/kaleidoscope/vol11/iss1/5 //ATW)

Designers respond to these queries by insisting the rising popularity of counterfeiting affects their right to material and financial profit (Hilton, Choi, & Chen, 2004; Weller, 2004). They believe counterfeiting lowers the credibility and reputation of both the designer and product (Hilton, Choi, & Chen, 2004; Weller, 2004). From this perspective, counterfeiting practices have far-reaching implications for society as they could potentially curtail future artistic expression (Raustiala & Sprigman, 2006). In this perspective, rights are framed as entitlement to profit from one’s artistic work. For designers, justice includes the right to profit from the efforts of laborers who work to create tangible results from their designs, as well as the right to profit from the sale and distribution of ideas or goods associated with their designs.

Garment workers see things differently. Rather than focus exclusively on perceived loss of profit, aesthetic rights, or intellectual property associated with counterfeiting, they view practices that mass produce copied designs as serving an important function in creating jobs for people who desperately need work (Adamson, 2012). Unfortunately, the benefits of globalized fashion trade may end there as counterfeiting practices have provided fertile ground for the proliferation of national and global abuses. Globalization has been identified as a major contributing reason for the reemergence of harmful and exploitative practices and conditions including the use of sweatshops (Bonacich, Applebaum & Chin 2000; Ehrenreich, 2008; Louie, 1992; Ross, 2004; Scheer, 1995; Su, 1998). Sweatshop operators, often employing immigrant labor, subject workers to poor working conditions, various health and safety hazards, absence of a living wage or benefits, and/ or arbitrary punishment (Hilton, Choi, & Chen, 2004). Additionally, garment workers often lack fringe benefits, knowledge of their rights in hiring and firing procedures, paid sick leave, paid vacation leave, salary increases, overtime pay, paid holidays, health insurance coverage, break time, and workers’ compensation (Su, 1998). Use of sweatshop labor within the U.S. has surfaced from ready-to-wear fashion lines to high-end fashion houses affiliated with elite designers. Gap, Kathy Lee Gifford, Jessica McClintock, and Alexander Wang have all been accused of utilizing sweatshop practices (Bonacich, Applebaum & Chin, 2000; Dumas, 2012; Louie, 1992; Ross, 2004; Scheer, 1995; Su, 1998).

Preying upon the fear of deportation to wield their cruel and unlawful practices, sweatshop conditions have emerged in states with large populations of immigrant and undocumented Latino/a and Asian workers, including California and New York (Louie, 1992; Su, 1998). In 1996 a group of workers brought suit against several garment manufacturers and retailers of off-therack fashion, including Mervyn’s, L.F. Sportswear, New Boys, Inc., Bigin, Inc., Italian Club, and B.U.M. International, Inc. (see Bureerong v. Uvawas, 1996). The workers, who had emigrated from Thailand, claimed they had been “falsely imprisoned” and “employed in a system of involuntary servitude” by their employer (Bureerong v. Uvawas, 1996, p. 1458). Less than a decade later, in March 2012, a $450 million lawsuit was brought against high-end fashion designer Alexander Wang and his brother for operating a sweatshop in New York’s Chinatown. Workers claimed they were forced to work for up to 25 hours at a time in unsafe conditions, not paid overtime, and “threatened with losing their jobs if work in the ‘windowless’ room was not completed” (Dumas, 2012, para. 10). The group also reported a lack of sleep, illnesses, injuries, and missed days brought on by the hard labor of producing luxury goods (Dumas, 2012). According to Ming Hai, one plaintiff’s lawyer, sweatshop-like conditions are rampant among working-class minority workers in the U.S.: “There are around 20 garment factories in Chinatown—and the conditions reported at Alexander Wang are far from unique: ‘Bad labor conditions are everywhere in the Asian garment community.’” (Dumas, 2012, para. 15). Hai describes this phenomenon as “a new kind of slavery” whereby workers “are made to work long hours because they ‘are new immigrants and they don’t speak English’” (Dumas, 2012, para. 16).