Imagine - $.12 for labor. You couldn’t even get a member of the Garment Worker’s Union to put thread on their machine for $.12, let alone sew anything.
People want jobs brought back to the U.S. but how many of these same people would be willing to pay the extra cost for a knit shirt, the staple of many wardrobes, even if it were made in the USA. Some of us can no longer afford it, even if we wanted to.
Used to make tee shirts for the guys in my family but even decent material is getting hard to find.
Worst case scenario we open the factory in New Jersey and pay union workers $40.00 per hour, how much would that move increase the labor cost and by how much?
Let's say for argument that is takes 5 minutes to make one shirt(probably less time than that but we will go with 5 minutes of labor). the labor per shirt in Bangladesh is basically free. The labor per shirt in out New Jersey union factory per shirt is 1/12 hour times $40.00 = $3.33 per shirt.
So now the shirt would cost about 3 dollars more. Approx $17.00. OK that sounds like a lot but if you reduce the duties and shipping costs that would reduce the price a dollar to $16.00 per shirt. To me the 15% increase is offset by the decrease in social costs of the lower IQ chronically unemployed....