http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/st...IRTS?SITE=TXHOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT NEW YORK (AP) -- Sweat shirts manufactured in Myanmar were found on shelves of the NBA's Manhattan store Wednesday. The league promised nearly a month ago it would remove the sweat shirts following charges the store was violating federal law by selling goods made in Myanmar. The $55 "I Love this Game" sweat shirts bearing "Made in Myanmar" tags were found last weekend. Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor Committee, made the discovery when he returned different sweat shirts bought in January as evidence the store was selling goods made in the Southeast Asian country, formerly Burma. On Wednesday, several sweat shirts made in Myanmar were found mixed in with others bearing "Made in Vietnam" tags. On Jan. 21, the NBA said it would pull any items made in Myanmar off its shelves. "The fact that these sweat shirts could make it into the store after all of this means they are not monitoring this stuff at all," Kernaghan said. The NBA searched its Fifth Avenue store after being contacted by a reporter Wednesday and found and removed 12 Myanmar-made sweat shirts. "Given our process this should not have been able to happen," league spokesman Matt Bourne said. "We are currently investigating how this occurred." Last July President Bush signed the Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act, which bans imports from Myanmar. It went into effect in September. Congress passed the law because of Myanmar's poor human rights record, which includes the jailing of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Aung San Suu Kyi, who is currently under house arrest. Bourne said in January that NBA licensees must sign a code of conduct that requires factories "meet NBA standards regarding working conditions." Kernaghan said the league's standards must not be very high. "The message that they are delivering to their licensees must be very, very weak," he said. "The sad part about it is the NBA is powerful, the players and the owners are powerful, and if they stood up and tried to make a statement they could have tremendous impact."
Whenever you change or stop something you've been doing for years, I guarantee this will happen almost everytime. Then somebody speaks up. And it's taken care of. I've seen it time and time again. Human nature. If there was ever a business model this is it.
the sad thing is, now those "made in myanmar shirts" can be sold on ebay for 100$. but who's to say if we are actually hurting or helping myanmar by using them for production? so far the countries that made these sweatshirts 20 years ago are much better off today.
I don't think it is illegal to sell these shirts, I think it is just an NBA policy. The ban on imports from Burma (Myanmar) took effect in September, which caused a lot of importing from Burma in August.
Agreed. This is our good cop approach, as opposed to our bad cop, post 9/11, country destroying approach. Also, is Castro hurting more or the Cuban citizens?
I didn't even know we had put an embargo on Myanmar. Can anyone tell me when an embargo (that was not accompanied by a war) has actually had the desired effect on the target? Why do we keep doing that?
I try not to buy anything from sweatshops, and I recently got a Chitwood Rockets sweatshirt that was made in Russia. I figured, "I've never heard of sweatshops in Russia. They're all in China or Burma or something." Turns out Russian sweatshop workers are among the lowest-paid in the world -- something like 11 cents a day. I was pissed. I'm glad to see the government taking steps to eliminating sweatshop labor in their products. If the NBA can get $55 for a shirt, they can afford to pay livable wages. Cut their profit margin from 500 percent to 400 percent.
