I did a quick survey of the Bonds product in our household - predominantly my son's underwear - and found that every single item was made in China.

This prompted a little more research, and I quickly found a 2007 paper from Victoria University's Centre for Strategic Economic Studies...

www.cfses.com/documents/wp29.pdf

...that provides a little more perspective, with less jingoism.

According to the report, full-time employment in the broad category "Textiles Clothing Footwear and Leather Industries" fell by 60% in the twenty years 1985 to 2005, from 104,800 to 42,800 workers.

More sepcifically, the local garment and garment-related textiles production industries in 2007 employed 29,748 people, a 25% fall from 2002.

I guess that these figures take on a fresh perspective in the face of an economic downturn, but it is a bit precious to turn on the advertisers and the talent they employ, when a trend that has been in place for decades, simply continues.

Did anyone complain that they were selling Chinese clobber before the latest round of sourcing adjustments? Don't recall any.

Incidentally, I found this to be one of the more thought-provoking statistics from the report:

"Household expenditure data (ABS 2006b) reveals that the three lowest income quintiles spend respectively AUD$12.75, $19.50 and $30.68 per week on clothing, whilst the upper two quintiles spend AUD$46.40 and $67.07 per week. Only in the highest income quintile does weekly household expenditure on clothing exceed expenditures on alcohol and cigarettes."

Imagine the outcry when we find ourselves drinking Tsingtao and smoking Jingjieyuxi...

"Nobody objects to a smart man earning money from his natural gifts."

Society should be just as critical of a man's worth as a woman's. Just in case people think I'm picking on her because she's a she, I'd say exactly the same thing about Ian Thorpe or any other male in the stellar celebrity category.

I'm not from A Current Affair and I'm not in a union.

These issues are not new, but the Bonds example just provides a lightning rod for years of frustration of ordinary people.

Come on you guys (apart from Pelican), you know what the issue is I'm trying to raise here. Is it actually fair that the people who do the work and get their hands dirty only receive the measly crumbs off the table? Deep down I think we all know the answer.

"I guess that these figures take on a fresh perspective in the face of an economic downturn, but it is a bit precious to turn on the advertisers and the talent they employ, when a trend that has been in place for decades, simply continues."

Sounds like a bit of a wimp-out, Pericles. So, if some people have disproportionally, and in some cases unfairly, profited from ordinary workers before, that makes it OK for it to continue? It still doesn't address the issue of why people who only HAPPEN to be sitting at the top of the pile get the lion's share of the rewards. You wouldn't be one of them by any chance?

It would be a fitting gesture if at some point in time Sarah, Thorpie and all the rest that have been given armchair rides to the top redress the ledger with the society that put them there.

Armchair rides?

I'd love to see you put in the hours and hours of training it takes to be an olympic gold medalist swimmer. When your average factory worker turns up to work Thorpie has already done 4 hours of physical labour.

What's it do for anyone, other than to entertain them.
He's effectively getting very rich for getting very fit!

*Is it actually fair that the people who do the work and get their hands dirty only receive the measly crumbs off the table?*

It seems to me RobP, that you have no idea how the world works.
CEOs are simply workers whose hands are closest to the cookie
jar, so they get a bigger slice. Life is not fair, get used
to it.

Fact is that its consumers who decided that Bonds would have
to take their manufacture offshore. The company involved
hasn't been making any real money, has its arse full of debt
and has to make its products at a price that consumers are
prepared to pay. Clearly that is not the case, or they would
have no need to go offshore.

I would dispute the fact that workers get crumbs. In relative
terms, Australian workers get life on a plate. Overtime payments,
long service leave, holiday leave loading etc. Conditions that
few in this world can even dream about. I gather that one of
those workers is in line for 200k$ worth of "entitlements". Hardly
crumbs.

Fact is that Australian workers would have to be some of the
most mollycoddled workers on the planet. I don't blame entrepreneurs
for taking work offshore, for it is the electorate who showed in the
last elections, that they seem to think that they should insist
on all this mollycoddling.

Fair enough, if that is what people insist, don't blame entrepreneurs for going elesewhere.

The question is why the system creates the celebrities and give them so much money?
Why they pay more money to celebrities than to persons who improve the conditions in our world, save or extend our life?
BUT the REAL question is why they pay money to celebrities?
The big problem for the businesses is not how to produce a product, a top quality product with very low price BUT HOW TO SELL IT!
Advirtising TAKES A HUGE PART of the total cost of the products, some times may be 80-90%.
Studies found that we (the customers) like and remember and run back from celebrities than from any one else.
Because the customers, (most of them are low income employees) prefer celebrities, the businesses have no other way than to pay million of dollars to celebrities to attract us and sell their products.
THE REAL, THE BIG PROBLEM IS IN CUSTOMERS HEAD!
When we do not use our brain then not only we buy expensive products but even worst, WE LOSE OUR JOB!
Antonios Symeonakis
Adelaide