303: David and Goliath

Ira Glass

It's a classic David and Goliath situation. Younger sister and older sister. In this case, it's a big age gap. The older sister's 12. That's Kennedy. The younger sister's just 5. That's Zadie. And their mom, who was an only child, found their fighting to be kind of overwhelming.

Ira Glass

So, two months ago, their mom, Lisa, came up with an idea, a way to change things between the two girls. She and I talked about it back then. You're going to notice in this recording that I have a pretty bad cold when we had this conversation.

At the time, Lisa described for me the girls' history together.

Ira Glass

When David is facing off against Goliath, nothing normal is going to work. Normal is just going to keep you stuck. If you've got a situation where one side is super-powerful, one side is very weak, normal is just status quo. Nothing is going to change. Your only chance is grand, extraordinary measures. A junior high school experiment? That is about as good as a slingshot. And today on our program, we're going to bring you three stories of people trying extraordinary things to balance the scales between David and Goliath.

Act One is about a little girl and a big girl. Act Two is about a little country and a big country. Act Three is about some small-minded people and some very big-minded retail chains, and something about American commerce that happens all the time, everywhere, that no one has noticed is a national phenomenon except David Sedaris. Stay with us.

Ira Glass

OK, so you remember where we are with Act One. You've got Zadie, you've got Kennedy, and their story. Their mom, two months ago, was explaining to me how she was going to try to solve one of the oldest struggles that humans have ever had, the struggle between big sibling and little sibling. Again, we've got a 12-year-old. We've got a 5-year-old. Two months ago, the mom, Lisa, went to the older girl, Kennedy, with a plan. And Kennedy is the kind of 12-year-old who loves reading, who loves science, who loves experiments. And Lisa explained the idea of this one to her.

Ira Glass

This, of course, is Kennedy, age 12.

Ira Glass

That's Kennedy, age 12.

[MUSIC - "IT'S A SHAME" BY MONIE LOVE]

Coming up, David Sedaris finds a David and Goliath story where we believe that you will probably side with-- well, that would be Goliath. That's in a minute, from Chicago Public Radio and Public Radio International, when our program continues.

Ira Glass

It's This American Life. I'm Ira Glass. Each week on our program, of course, we choose a theme and bring you a variety of different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's program, David and Goliath, stories of people doing extraordinary things to try to even things out between the two sides, give the little guy a shot. We've arrived at Act Two of our show.

Act Two, Dreams of Distant Factories. What if there were a battle between David and Goliath that meant a great deal to David and nothing at all to Goliath? And maybe Goliath doesn't even show up. From Cambodia, Rachel Louise Snyder tells this story about the garment industry there. We first put this on the air two years ago, which was a crucial turning point for everybody involved.

Rachel Louise Snyder

The garment industry is 90% of Cambodia's exports, so when the minister of commerce visits a factory, he's greeted like a movie star. Hundreds of workers, all of them women, stand along the factory driveway in traditional Cambodian silk dresses in maroon and gold, waving hundreds of Cambodian flags. They offer the minister flowers and fruit. As he walks through each section of the factory, workers stand up from their stations and cheer.

Plexiglass cases hang from the ceilings and show the kinds of things they make. Fleece sweatshirts, cotton blankets, flannel pajamas. The minister, Cham Prasidh, is particularly happy about the pajamas.

Rachel Louise Snyder

They're not, of course. And that's Cambodia's entire problem in a nutshell. The clothing business has transformed Cambodia in a way most Americans can't imagine and know absolutely nothing about. In the 1970s, between one million and two million Cambodians died, about a third of the population, in the country's civil war. The Khmer Rouge eliminated business of every kind, and even money itself. The middle class was slaughtered. For two decades after that, the country's economy was flattened, and chronic drought affected hundreds of thousands of families.

But in the mid-'90s, outside investors began opening garment factories, and within five years, clothes were the country's biggest export. Two things made this possible. First, an international quota system implemented decades ago kept any one country from being the sole provider of clothes to the American and European markets. That meant more than 50 countries got a shot at the industry.

The second thing was that, under the Clinton administration, Cambodia was part of an extraordinary experiment. It got special access to US markets in exchange for good conditions for workers and factory monitoring by the International Labor Organization. The Cambodians didn't just make child labor and sweatshops illegal. They adopted some of the most progressive labor laws in the world. Eight-hour work days, paid overtime, three months' maternity leave, 43 days' vacation, annual health checkups, and free health clinics on site. The access Cambodia got to US and European markets made the industry explode, growing from nothing to 250 factories in just 10 years. The experiment was a huge success.

But as of January 1, 2005, both trade deals-- the quota system and the agreement with the Americans-- ended, and that's left Cambodia in a strange situation. It's the only poor country in the world that's agreed to all these strict labor laws. Left to the free market, it'll have to compete with neighbours like Thailand and Vietnam and industry mammoths like China and India. And so, the question facing Cambodia is, can a poor country survive if it treats its workers fairly? The minister sees the dangers as keenly as anyone.

Rachel Louise Snyder

What he doesn't want to elaborate on is that some of these women might turn to prostitution. Over a quarter million women work in the garment factories around Phnom Penh. They, in turn, support their entire families, often back in whatever village they came from. Minimum monthly wage is $45, and with overtime, most workers make $70 a month. That's two and three times what a police officer or teacher makes here. Garment workers send their brothers and their children to school, and subsidize farms that barely survive.

The good news is, so far, even with the trade deals expired, they've managed to stay afloat. None of the biggest buyers have left, and exports have even grown a little, 7% compared to last year. Though, in previous years, growth was more like 20%.

But since January 1, and the end of all their trade protections, Cambodian factories suddenly are being asked by their customers to lower costs and prices. Some factories have closed. Thousands of people have lost their jobs. Workers are getting less overtime and management is feeling the pinch.

Rachel Louise Snyder

Voren Van runs a relatively small factory of 800 workers on the edge of Phnom Penh. They mostly make Levi's jeans. To hear Voren tell it, business is bad. Making clothes is more expensive in Cambodia than in most countries. Cambodia doesn't manufacture any of the materials it needs, so to create a pair of jeans, Voren has to import not only the fabric, but the thread, the zippers, the buttons, the rivets, everything. Then there's utilities. Voren says a recent study found that the cost of electricity is the same in Cambodia as it is in downtown Tokyo. And there's labor compliance, which is hugely expensive.

Rachel Louise Snyder

To be clear, Voren's factory has a reputation for some of the best working conditions around. He believes in fair labor laws, that they're eventually going to transform society and the country by turning peasant farmers into an educated middle class. But doing the right thing, not dimming the lights, means Voren's only scratching by. And he's not the only one. The danger is that factories will pick up and move somewhere, like Vietnam. Voren says it's pretty easy. All you have to do is rent a space, ship your machines, and hire some workers. You can be running in two months.

Rachel Louise Snyder

One afternoon, I go with a translator to one of the main manufacturing areas of Phnom Penh, a neighborhood called [UNINTELLIGIBLE], where I've been many times before. It's the main route out of town, and it's lined with food stalls and other vendors that cater to factory workers.

We see a woman slicing pork and beef into tiny strips. I ask her why the pieces are so small.

Rachel Louise Snyder

Since the trade deals expired, Cambodia's had to hustle for new business, now that it's competing in a new way against so many countries. This is where Souieng Van comes in, Voren's brother and the owner of the factory Voren manages. He's also the head of the Garment Manufacturers Association.

One morning, we meet for coffee at a hotel in Phnom Penh, just two days after a smarmy factory owner skipped town and blew off paying nearly 1,000 workers. Mr. Van was furiously text messaging, arranging to sell the company's assets, mostly sewing machines and chairs, to cover as much as he could of the lost wages.

Rachel Louise Snyder

Mr. Van comes from a powerful family, and has the kind of money where he's imported a stable full of horses from France. He could be doing anything. But he happens to believe in what Cambodia's trying to do, and he considers it his duty to help save the garment industry. To do that, his days are crammed with meetings, often with the Factory Association's secretary general, Ken Loo, at his side.

Rachel Louise Snyder

They're sitting at a table with two dozen Singaporean men and women in Western suits. Tropical fruit and bottles of water sit on three big trays in the middle of the table. The Singaporeans are all members of a manufacturing association, and they're on a fact-finding mission, looking for a new country where they can open up their businesses. They've also been to Vietnam on this trip, and Mr. Van and Ken want to do everything they can to persuade them Cambodia's the better choice. They have two days. Ken does most of the talking, and he starts with Cambodia's trump card, really the only thing they have to sell.

Rachel Louise Snyder

The GAP alone has 40 factories in the country, and constitutes 25% of Cambodia's entire clothing industry. Lots of other big names are here, too. It's weird to be sitting in a tiled conference room in Phnom Penh while vendors push wooden noodle carts outside, and hearing Asian executives recite every brand name you'd see in your local mall.

Rachel Louise Snyder

The Cambodians are amazingly frank about the problems of doing business in their country. The corruption is notorious, and pretty much everyone in the region, including the Singaporeans, knows it. And there's not much point pretending otherwise. Then there are the unions.

Rachel Louise Snyder

That's right. An average of three unions per factory. Sometimes one group of workers in a factory will go on strike while the others work away at their posts. It makes negotiations totally unwieldy. Corrupt unions have extorted money from factory owners and other workers, and demanded ridiculous benefits. Owners already feel a number of the rules, based on French labor laws, are unfair.

In the meeting with the Singaporeans, for example, a lot of time was taken up with questions about breastfeeding breaks, which are required for new mothers. How do they happen? the Singaporeans wondered. Do the babies come to the factories? In Cambodia, working women leave their kids with family, so the breastfeeding thing is a logistical nightmare. There are a bunch of laws like this, headaches that are the cost of fair labor.

But Ken tells them these costs will all be worth it, and then he tells them Cambodia's new strategy to keep the country competitive. It's a bill before Congress-- the US Congress-- called the Trade Act of 2005. If it passes, Cambodia and a bunch of other poor countries would get tariff-free access to the US market. Right now, they're paying an average of 17%. Ken explains that Cambodia is asking for the tax break along with 13 other so-called least developed countries, or LDCs. They included Sri Lanka, hoping the tsunami there would earn the bill some sympathy votes. Ken and Mr. Van will be flying out to Washington to lobby for the bill in a week, and Ken lays out the pitch they're using with the American lawmakers.

Rachel Louise Snyder

This is what it's like to be the little guy up against the giant. You have to know everything about the giant, and the giant doesn't even know you're there. The Singaporeans ask for details about the bill, and the likelihood it will pass by the end of the year. They say the way Congress votes will sway their decision. The meeting adjourns.

What Mr. Van and Ken didn't tell the Singaporeans is that if the Trade Act doesn't pass, and soon, by the end of 2005 or the first few months of 2006, it might be too late anyway. At Mr. Van's factory, Voren says all it would take is two months without orders, and his factory and others would close.

In July, Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh, Mr. Van, and Ken flew to Washington, DC to lobby for the Trade Act of 2005. The trip had been planned months in advance, and they'd banked on the fact that CAFTA, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, would be resolved by then. It wasn't. For two days, they lobbied any member of Congress who would see them, which turned out to be eight people. Mostly, when they heard the Cambodian story, they were sympathetic, and three of them signed onto the bill. But Ken says the congressmen were preoccupied with other issues.

Rachel Louise Snyder

They'd also hoped to meet with President Bush, or at least someone from his administration. But the president was also preoccupied with CAFTA, and with his new Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts. Their previous trips had gone about the same. Their bill only has 25 sponsors, short of the 70 they ideally want, though this is way further than anybody thought they'd get.

Rachel Louise Snyder

In Cambodia, the garment industry is front-page news every single day. Factories open or close. New brands come in or leave. Workers strike or lose their jobs. And while this bill means everything to the Cambodians, the sad fact is that Americans don't even know any of this is happening. Here's Commerce Minister Cham Prasidh.

Rachel Louise Snyder

You'd think the one natural ally Cambodia would have for this bill would be the labor unions, who are always trying to get the US to include workers' rights overseas in its trade bills. But, in fact, Cambodia's most vocal opponent of the Trade Act is a labor union, and the most dramatic moment of their trip to Washington came when the minister was speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And Mark Levinson, the chief economist for UNITE, the textile union, stood to argue with him.

Levinson said that since the US trade deal with Cambodia ended, workers' conditions have gotten progressively worse.

Rachel Louise Snyder

Here's where he's coming from. Even though conditions have improved for Cambodian workers when they're on the job on the factory floor, when workers hold demonstrations, even small ones of a dozen people or so, police come and run them off. There have been threats, intimidation, and beatings of union organizers by thugs trying to repress dissent. Two years ago, a wildly popular union leader was gunned down on a Sunday morning while he was reading the newspaper. Most everyone believes it was a political killing. 15,000 people attended his funeral.

But when Mark Levinson brings this up, it utterly galls the minister. From his point of view, established democracies like America don't have realistic expectations of brand-new democracies like Cambodia. A new country isn't going to solve all the corruption and civil rights abuses all at once. And without help like this trade bill, it'll just make the problems harder to solve, not easier.

Rachel Louise Snyder

Before they leave DC, Mr. Van and Ken check out a few chain stores in Georgetown. They never miss a chance to do this when they come to the States, to see the actual "Made in Cambodia" clothes that trendy Americans buy. Their first store is Adidas. It doesn't go that well.

Rachel Louise Snyder

The same scenario is repeated at GAP Kids and at Abercrombie & Fitch. At The GAP, things seem more promising. Ken spots some familiar shirts on the table, striped ladies' tops he swears he's seen in Cambodia. But when they check the labels, they see Sri Lanka. Not only aren't they finding Cambodian products, they're finding stuff they could be making in Cambodia, stuff they want to be making. Mr. Van seems almost mystified by his country's lack of representation. He picks up a tiny pair of khaki pants at Baby GAP.

Rachel Louise Snyder

Finally they have some success. They spot a blue soccer jersey costing $50. Cambodia will get roughly $10, or a fifth of the selling price. The few other Cambodian-made garments they see are simple t-shirts or sweat tops, nothing more complex, like ornamental stitching that commands higher prices, the kinds of things that China, Vietnam, and Thailand do. All in all, pretty discouraging for them.

Cambodia is still a small, struggling player in the industry. And the way they see it, the success or failure of their experiment at fair labor practices is now in the hands of the US Congress. But the legislation that could help Cambodia, the Trade Act of 2005, doesn't stand any chance at all to make it to a vote in 2005. Mr. Van and Ken and the minister aren't giving up. They had scheduled another lobbying trip for October, but it was canceled at the last minute because of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. They haven't rescheduled yet. They're waiting for a time when US politicians can give them more attention. It's hard to imagine when that time will be.

Ira Glass

Rachael Louise Snyder lives in Cambodia. This story also appears in her just-published book, Fugitive Denim, about the people who make blue jeans in the global economy. Lisa Pollak did reporting and recording for this story in Washington, DC.

It's been two years since we first broadcast that story, and the Trade Act of 2005, which Cambodians thought would save the clothing industry in their country, never got to the Senate floor. It was reintroduced this year, but is now currently sitting in committee. While the future of this particular act remains uncertain, the US has put limits on the amount of clothing that could be imported from China. Those limits on China will continue until 2008. Ken Loo says that Cambodia is likely to lose a fourth of their garment revenues if those limits are lifted.

For now, though, the Cambodians have actually done pretty well. Despite their fears, exports were up nearly 20% between 2005 and 2006, and they've remained up ever since, mostly because of companies like The GAP and Levi's, who want to buy from Cambodia because of their fair labor practices.

Cambodia continues to send their lobbying delegation to Washington, DC, hoping to get a version of the Trade Act passed, so they don't get creamed when Chinese quotas end.

[MUSIC - "SUCH A LITTLE THING MAKES SUCH A BIG DIFFERENCE" BY MORRISSEY]

Ira Glass

Act Three, Adventures at Poo Corner. Well, now we have this David and Goliath story, where the Goliaths are giant American retailers and the Davids are everyday people, a very particular kind of everyday people. This is a national phenomenon that David Sedaris noticed when he was out on the road.

David Sedaris

A book tour allows one to travel the country and see almost none of it. The airport, the hotel, the store that's hosting you, that's usually the extent of it. But you do get to meet people and enjoy the sorts of exchanges you probably couldn't otherwise. Take this woman I met outside of Detroit, I think it was. We got to talking, and while signing her book, I learned that she worked at Target.

"Do a lot of people defecate in your store?" I asked.

And she placed her hand over mine, saying, "How did you know?"

"Well," I told her, "It's like this."

In my boyfriend Hugh's last year of high school, his family moved back to the United States and he got a job at a certain clothing store. OK, it was The GAP. Hugh got a job at The GAP. And on more than one occasion, a customer entered the dressing room and defecated on the floor. The carpeted floor, to be exact. He mentioned this about six months ago, and I was like, "We've been together for how long? And you're only telling me this now?" Because this kind of story is right up my alley. What kind of a person would defecate in The GAP?

It could be seen as a political statement, or an attempt to even some sort of a score, but that's probably giving credit where it's not due. There are bound to be exceptions, but from what I've gathered, the store itself is unimportant. In this woman's Target, people will crouch down in the middle of those circular clothing racks, do it right there with no door to hide them. In Pier 1, they'll just lean against the wall and lower their pants. The place is an outhouse, from what I've heard. So are Sears and Penny's. And this sort of thing has been going on for ages.

As an author on book tour, I believe it's my duty to spread pertinent information from one part of the country to another. Night after night, I addressed the subject of chain store defecation, and 97% of the audience would shake their heads, no. "You're putting me on," they'd say. "I don't believe it." The other 3% would nod, yes. And these were the ones who worked in retail.

One man that I spoke to stocks shelves at Kroger, and swore that it happens all the time. "In my case, it's mainly kids," he said, which is something I heard from quite a few people. Some poor four-year-old will ask to go to the bathroom, and the mother will point toward a dark corner of the shoe department or to a pyramid of canned pineapple. I guess they figure that, because it's a child, it doesn't really count. But I mean, come on, of course it counts.

In Chicago, I met a librarian who decorated her children's department with an elaborate cardboard castle, something she'd crafted by hand and painted to look like stone. The castle went up, and come the second day, what did she find lying just inside the drawbridge? A turd, that's what. Though, in this case, it was left by a teenager, who confessed after committing a similar crime in the elevator.

It's sort of a different category, but in Las Vegas, I spoke to a guy who worked for casino security that told me that people are so reluctant to leave a favorite slot machine that they'll often defecate in their pants. He orders them to leave, but instead of skulking out in shame, they'll put up a stink, or most of them will, saying they'll go back to their rooms when they're damn well ready. The nerve. I said to Hugh, "You'd expect that kind of behavior at the craps table. But slot machines?"

As my tour advanced, the stories got meaner and more senseless. I learned of a woman who'd entered the restroom of a bookstore and defecated into the center of the toilet paper roll, which is not one of those things you'd get right the first time. It would require a certain amount of practice, but practice where? When she had finished, the woman placed the roll back on its holder, which is inconsiderate, but not as inconsiderate as a college student who has taken to defecating into his dormitory's washing machines, the customer who defecates into the urinal of the delicatessen I heard about, or into the standing ashtrays of a once-grand hotel.

I'm guessing that most of these cases have to do with leaving your mark on the world, an impulse we all share on one level or another. Some shoot high, creating lasting works of art, and others-- well, who am I to judge? As a form of self-expression, defecating into a washing machine falls somewhere between scratching your initials into a bus window and setting fire to a trash can. Whatever notoriety there is to be gained is destined to be private, and hopefully short-lived. But that's what you get when you settle for number two.

Ira Glass

David Sedaris is the author, most recently, of the book Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, and editor of the book, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules.

Ira Glass

Our program was produced today by Diane Cook and myself, with Alex Blumberg, Jane Feltes, Sarah Koenig, Amy O'Leary, and Lisa Pollak. Our senior producer is Julie Snyder. Adrianne Mathiowetz runs our website. Production help from Sam Hallgren, Chris Ladd, Seth Lind, and Bruce Wallace. Music help from Jessica Hopper.

Our website, where you can get our weekly podcasts free, or listen to our old shows for free, www.thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is distributed by Public Radio International.

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WBEZ management oversight for our show by Mr. Torey Malatia, who feels this way about working with us.

Ira Glass

I'm Ira Glass, back next week with more stories of This American Life.

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