[GPSCC-chat] FW: [gpca-forum] Why is the traffic here so thin?

Sun Jul 26 09:00:16 PDT 2015

Here is a cross posting from Occupy Eugene (OE).  Enjoy.

John Thielking

Interim Report On My Article On Fair Trade for the OE Newsletter and
Informal Contact Point for Saturday 7-25-15

I'm starting the process of writing a research article for the next issue
of the OE Newsletter.
Today I started on the interviews of the vendors at the Saturday Market in
downtown Eugene to see how their experiences with their crafts businesses
compare to the production environments in the US and the crafts and
production environments overseas.  In general, it seems that the people
selling their wares at the Saturday Market are often not getting a fair
rate of return at anything close to minimum wage for all of the hours that
they put into both producing and selling their wares. The exception to this
general rule appears to be the cases where production of the items are
handled mostly by machine and when the item sold is fairly popular.  For
instance, I was able to make a profit of about $9 per hour selling my
Peacestickers(dot)net bumper stickers in front of the library for a couple
of Saturdays in February.  One of the vendors at the Saturday Market
claimed that she sells a whole bunch of her electrical switch plate covers
that have high quality artwork prints on them. The prints are in the form
of stickers and are made by machine as are the base plastic switch plates.
She says that she has had a steady demand for those switch plates for the
past 15 years.  Week to week sales performance at the Saturday Market is
spotty, however, even for this vendor. Weather and competing events
randomly add or subtract from the usual number of customers week to week.

I did a little more research to follow up on the one article I read about
sweatshop labor that claims that even if you double the wages of t-shirt
production workers in the US or Mexico the labor cost of producing a
typical shirt is only 6% or less of the retail price of the shirt. One
article, located here
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2013/02/focus-3  claims that
the productivity of workers in China and India is only 17% and 10% of the
workers in the USA respectively, as of 2012. China has gained massively in
productivity over the years, but even after all those gains, they still
come in at only 17% of USA productivity as a GDP per worker figure. That
makes me even more interested in proving my preconceived notion that there
may be some reason other than (at least next quarter) cost savings as a
reason for why companies are moving production to low wage areas such as
India and China. I need to examine the figures in more detail before making
too many conclusions as I'm not sure if the relative GDP per worker figure
is an appropriate apples to apples comparison of the actual production
output of workers in different countries when the value of the same items
or services produced in each country also depends upon which country the
items or services were produced in.

I also attended the OE Saturday informal gathering spot today. I talked
with three 'customers' today. One was saying that the Hare Krishnas are
cool because they claim that people can be enlightened simply by hearing
their chants/vibrations. I also talked with an old OE person named Martin
Williams. He went on for a bit about how he was the sole protester to
oppose the construction of the ugly Lane Community College building across
the street from the library. His claim is that the building was built
without proper authorization of the use of bond funds by the voters.  He
also claims that Rosa Koire of Democrats Against UN Agenda 21 provided him
with a key piece of the puzzle about why the building was built. He also
recommends the web site www.divulgence.net.
Another thing that was going on at the same time was the effort by several
people to gather pledge cards to support calling for Oregon to have a $15
per hour minimum wage.  I had a conversation with one of the pledge card
gatherers about my awkward misgivings about the consignment contracts I
have with vendors at Indoor Marketplace in Springfield and Crafter's Alley
at Gateway Mall.  I asked him what he thought of having a contract of 10%
commission plus $200 rent for 144 sq ft of space for one contractor at
Indoor Marketplace who makes most of her money (presumably at or above
minimum wage) by running her own vending space selling snow cones and DVD's
inside the same store. She does a brisk business most of the time, so I'm
feeling confident that she is likely making a living wage return on all of
her work at the store, taken as a whole. However, it seems that it is
difficult to avoid the typical case of a fair trade crafts store that is
run essentially by volunteers, at least on a marginal compensation basis as
is the case here.  I'm also paying the Indoor Marketplace vendor an extra
$20 per month for 3 minutes of work per day to put my A-frame advertising
sign out in the morning, take it inside in the evening and to restock the
block of ice in the wine cooler unit that holds my free cold water
dispensers so that it runs 10 deg cooler than without the ice on a hot
day.  She took that deal ($20 extra per month) instead of increasing her
commission to 15% instead. At the rate that I'm not selling stuff at Indoor
Marketplace, she will make out like a bandit on that deal, comparatively
speaking.  At Crafter's Alley, I'm paying $65 per month for a 5 sq ft x 7
ft high space plus 15% commission. Each vendor is required to help staff
the store for 3 hours per month in the off season, 6 hours in November and
9 hours in December. I'm still not clear how much the cashier is being paid
or if that person is also a volunteer.  At both places, I do all the work
of restocking products and putting pricing labels on products. All the
sales are handled by the vendors.

The $15 per hour petitioner guy I talked to didn't have a definite opinion
one way or the other about paying people by contract the way I'm doing it
instead of hiring dedicated people at $15 per hour to monitor tiny spaces
52 hours per week that so far generate less than $100 per month in sales.
He claimed to be a Communist who thought that Capitalism was in its death
throes.  He said that he didn't like the CP USA because they were too
reactionary, but when I asked him about Bob Avakian and Rev Com he couldn't
clarify for me the difference between Rev Com and CP USA.

If anyone here has an opinion about contract commissions vs minimum wage,
I'd love to have your input.  I figure that paying only 10-15% commission
plus rent will result in the vendors getting far more in total earnings
than the typical 50% consignment commission with no rent, in part because
at 10-15% commissions I can afford to lower prices 50% or more which
results in 4x or more total dollar volume in sales.

John Thielking

On Sat, Jul 25, 2015 at 5:59 PM, Brian <snug.bug at hotmail.com> wrote:

> I know we're not supposed to cross-post from the gpca to the local list,
> but it's not like we're being buried under emails
> in either forum, and I've seen Gerry cross-post frequently and nobody has
> severed his head yet.
>
> A couple of weeks ago I supposed I must have been kicked off the gpca list
> because I wasn't getting any emails from it.
>
> Can we have some vision and optimism please?
>
> Is it time to have a discussion about burnout?   It's been ten years of
> full time activism for me now, and what I've
> accomplished is pretty much limited to helping to take down a few 9/11 con
> artists, doing what I could to promote
> 9/11 activists with whom I don't always agree, developing some video
> skills I no longer have the energy to use, and
> running up many, many thousands of dollars in credit card debt.
>
> I could really use a pep talk and I'm not hearing much from people (you
> know who you are) who might have the
> capacity to cheer me up.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> sosfbay-discuss mailing list
> sosfbay-discuss at lists.cagreens.org
> http://lists.cagreens.org/listinfo/sosfbay-discuss_lists.cagreens.org
>
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