Photo Essay for Group - March 30th

By: Gina Jensen
My assignment was to look into our tour at the sweater factory we attended.

Most factories are endless rows of machines and workers, struggling to make it through the day making precise stitches and dodging angry and ruthless managers who only aim is to increase productivity at any cost.

This is what I expected to see when hearing we would too get to visit a factory and see what it looks like on the inside.
Instead I was happily surprised to walk into a very modern looking building that was immaculately clean. As you walk into a small hallway there are garments and pictures on display from the brand called Love and Hope, a member of Li & Fung's suppliers.

Here is the entrance to one section of the factory. They have strived with their investors to partner labor with technology to increase productivity in their output.

Here is the first thing we saw as we entered the building lobby. Behind us here is a lounge area with comfy and chic chairs in bright colors with a attached kitchen area for the workers to take their lunch break and hear from speakers on friday that the company brings in to teach them about expanding their skills and helping with their outside lifestyles.

Here is a station that women work at to do QA on all of the small garments coming out of the machines in the other side of the factory building. They go through all the pieces to find ones with mistakes or errors and then try and correct them as to not waste any of the product.

This is the new machine that they leased and now own from another investor. It actually creates garments with no seam! It it all one continuous stream of stitches and loops from strings in the machine that produce the seamless parts of the clothing. We even got to see a dress made of cashmere that had no seam in it, it was amazing quality. This machine costs around 150k they told me.

This is one of the stitching machines that they own at the factory. Women use this to piece together the garments by looping the stitches into it one by one. My eyes would never be able to handle this job thats for sure. They also have Italian machines for this job that are much more expensive and used only on the high end brands that come through.

Here are two of the workers putting together the garments in the factory machines. It is a hard and skilled job but the company always puts it's workers first and they all seemed to be very happy and gossiping with each other as we toured around them.

China on the whole seems to be improving with it's factory standards from our experience touring some over there. This factory was exceptional in the way it cared for their workers and how they acted not only at work but how they were dealing with the hardships of their family lives. Many have trouble some pasts and children or spouses and need help dealing with financial problems daily. Having a job that provides them not only a salary but also comfort and friendships that continue to improve their lives is something that China hasn't seen in the past. Hopefully this factory is on the forfront of changing the workers lives over there, but this is only a high end one. The ones that produce billions of exports are still large. Culturally this factory is a unique example of how China could treat their employees. I enjoyed hearing from them and learning more about the company and factories around the area. I have never seen anything like this in the States.