by Rachel Wolf:
Whirring looms beat the factory’s leaden air as sheets of organic cotton flow off the machines. Elias al Arja, general manager of his family- owned factory, strolls among the workers who produce 3,000 pieces of clothing a day, his thoughts turning from the business’s latest endeavor to its biggest threat: Chinese wholesalers. Right now, Arja’s main advantage is that his factory responds more quickly to local demand than do overseas producers. Rising Chinese manufacturing prices have also made Arja’s own textiles more competitive.
Employing 100 in-house workers and subcontracting 70 more, the Arja Textile Company is a typical small business in every aspect but one: this factory is located in Bethlehem, in the West Bank. Although the factory is by Arja’s measure the biggest in the Palestinian territories, its location can be a liability. Security checkpoints make transportation difficult and costly, while the volatile political situation remains a constant threat to operations. Nevertheless, one of Arja’s clients hopes to make the factory’s location its greatest asset.
American and Jewish businessman Adam Neiman, a self-described “peacenik,” is the founder of Bienestar International, the company behind a label of union-made apparel known to American customers as “No Sweat.” Neiman heard about Arja’s West Bank factory in mid-2006, just as he was developing a new line of organic t-shirts and looking for a manufacturer. Intrigued by the company’s resilience in such a difficult environment, Neiman flew across the world to vet Arja’s company as a possible supplier.
Looking back on the trip, Neiman remarked: “I landed and the war in lebanon had broken out. I had to be the only Jewish businessman working in the West Bank that week.”
Neiman was impressed by what he saw of the factory and by its workers’ affiliation with the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions. He commissioned Arja to manufacture a new line of fair trade t-shirts that would both meet ethical labor standards and foster peaceful development in the embattled region, a goal reflected in the designs and slogans on the t-shirts. Unlike the 80 percent of the factory’s output sold in the West Bank and 13 percent in Israel, this new line of organic t-shirts would be sold to American consumers who cared as much about where and how the product was made as they did about the product itself.
Neiman’s idea was far from conventional: fair trade is not an easy business, and, according to sociologist April Linton of the University of California, San Diego, creating a market for fair trade products requires intensive marketing to educate consumers about the issues at hand. Although linton mentioned studies in which buyers paid more for ethically labeled products, she had never seen a product designed to foster peace.
The concept is new to Arja as well, and he largely ignores the messages used to sell his t-shirts abroad. “Mr. Neiman is better than me at marketing,” Arja said. He doesn’t know or judge Neiman’s methods. To Arja, the project simply represents more business, something always needed in the West Bank.
That’s good enough for Neiman. “Everyone I talked to agreed on one thing: that good private sector jobs for Palestinians in Palestine would help,” he said. “And I thought, okay, you’ve got one thing everyone agrees you should do. Well, you do that one thing.”
In October, Arja sent Neiman $50,000 worth of t-shirts unsecured by collateral, an act Arja considered normal practice but which impressed Neiman as an act of faith. Neiman now stands pressed to sell them but is having difficulty securing capital for sales staff, inventory, and marketing costs. Amid an economic crisis involving abstract financial derivatives which, in Neiman’s words, people “can’t understand or believe in,” he had thought it would be easier to find backers for his own concrete project. For Neiman, the sale of these shirts has become a personal mission: “I’ve got to come through for these guys,” he said. “I’ve got to.”
In Bethlehem, Arja employs workers from a Palestinian union. In Boston, Neiman strains to sell harmony in a recession. Both men know that sympathy does not buy bread, but the question remains: Will solidarity sell t-shirts?
Rachel Wolf is a sophomore Political Science major in Saybrook College.