Sewing hope : how one factory challenges the apparel industry's sweatshops /

This is the story of Alta Gracia Apparel, a factory in the Dominican Republic attempting to be a profitable, sustainable business that--unlike most apparel industry factories in the global south--pays its unionized workers a living wage and provides safe, comfortable working conditions. The authors point out that Alta Gracia's living wage (literally salario digno, or "wage with dignity") adds only 90 cents to a shirt's production cost. The buyers for its customized t-shirts and sweatshirts are primarily college and university shops whose customers are willing to pay a premium price to support the anti-sweatshop movement. The book's eight chapters trace Alta Gracia's transformation from a sweatshop owned by a large corporation to its current status as an independent company, albeit one into which its founders have put considerable personal resources. The last chapter suggests that the Alta Gracia business model can serve as a blueprint for others determined to counter the "race to the bottom" model that still characterizes most of the apparel industry. However, this reviewer could find no data to prove or disprove the authors' 2015 statement that Alta Gracia would be profitable by 2017, so the last chapter of this noble experiment has yet to be written. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. --Mildred S. Myers, emerita, Carnegie Mellon University