This Jezebel article details worker unrest and changes at American Apparel in the wake of CEO and founder Dov Charney being ousted from the company.
Certainly you don’t want to see anyone lose their jobs, that is a reality that too many Americans have already experienced all around them. However, the question can also be, who loses their job in tough times?
Some change at American Apparel is necessary. The company need to make changes to become profitable, but having models that look like everyone else’s models, by taking out some of the creative folks that gave American Apparel its mojo, and any backing away from the effort to be anti-sweatshop? That would just be wrong, but some signs are strongly there about the company heading in that direction.
I didn’t like the sexy ads that had underage looking models (and told Dov that to his face on several occasions) but that doesn’t mean I think they should change to traditional looking models (who don’t look like traditional looking people…) or certainly not photoshopping the reality out of them.
The article talks about unions at American Apparel. I literally have considered writing a book about that aspect as I was personally the CEO of a union garment factory down the street from American Apparel during the time that UNITE made an unsuccessful and I would say unfair and stupid attempt to unionize American Apparel at that time. That ill advised attempt will unfortunately make it more difficult to do now when such an effort might be a good move.
In the world of worker’s rights there have been very few success stories as corporate America in too many cases grind their workers into the ground. The SEIU union has done some great work organizing service workers, but other stories of success have been few and far between. American Apparel was making sometimes imperfect efforts to treat its workers fairly, but they were certainly both making a real effort and also raising worker’s rights issues to customers and the world in a big way. It would certainly be a terrible shame if they backed away from spearheading those efforts.
No offense but that happens when a company is publicly owned. That said, the root of the issue is that Dov took AA public aka Dov.
It certainly didn’t help that AA went public. However, I think it was what had to happen to finance expansion.
Im sorry to hear this, but Im not surprised, I guessed after the last article about Dov getting ousted that the core vision of this stellar business was going to be diluted and dismantled until the revolution this company caused in the printable apparel world was a dream. I didn’t like the barely legal ads either, but I don’t see a public outcry over Victoria’s secret, it’s downright salacious to walk past thier store at the mall. They however play the game the right way, where as Dov, with all his flaws created a bit of light in the weary world of apparel. And very few people liked him for it. They did however rush thier white asses to copy him without shame! Thanks for the coverage of this. It has everything to do with us printers where and how the pieces we are printing on get made. Peace everyone.
Thanks Donna. Extremely good point about everybody copying AA. Other companies copied their garments, marketing, and even their trade show booth often utterly shamelessly. I also agree that it is very sad, as much of this revolution was extremely positive.