Grubstakers - Episode 145: Haas Family (Levi Strauss & Co.)

Episode Date: March 3, 2020

This week we are sad to end our run of billionaires endorsing Pete Buttigieg. We cover the billionaire Mimi Haas who married Peter E. Haas a heir to the Levi Strauss estate. Find out how your boomer relatives’ favorite garment is directly connected to 30 years of labor abuse, slavery and sex trafficking. We spend a few minutes up front discussing SF social elite Nellie Bowles, and a bio on how Levi Strauss bought his empire. Lastly this episode does deal with people being sexually abused so Steven mentioned there should be a TW.

It's the kind of thing that makes the average citizen puke. I look at this system and say, yeah, you know, what's going on? I don't know anything about this man except I've read bad stuff about him. And I don't like, you know, I don't like what I read about him. We have more than just one coin. We create the world around this coin. Come. Invention.

Come. Come. Come. In 5, 4, 3, 2, the evil has gone. Hello, you're listening to Grubstakers, the podcast three, two. The evil has gone. Hello, you're listening to Grubstakers, the podcast about billionaires. My name is Sean P. McCarthy, and I'm joined by my co-hosts. Yogi Poliwalt. Andy Palmer.

Steve Jeffries. And so, we're coming to the end of the road here. We're recording this March 2nd, 2020. Tomorrow, the time that we release this episode, it will be Super Tuesday in the Democratic primary. That's right. 14 U.S. states will vote. One U.S. territory, American Samoa, will also be voting. And, you know...

Democrats abroad? Yes. Democrats abroad will be voting, and we will know tomorrow whether or not we get to have high, high hopes for a living. I got high hopes right now. I don't care what happens tomorrow. It's so insane.

We were saying... I've become a master of my own instrument. You're like innovating now Yeah We were saying we should play that song And then just have a solitary gunshot And then the music ceases immediately Because we got the news that Pete Buttigieg

Of course of the High Hopes song fame Has dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden Aww I'm so happy that we get to play this song for another month this is biden's informal soundtrack riding with that long live the drops motherfuckers but yes the uh the democratic establishment is blunting bernie sanders anti-establishment momentum by having the entire Democratic establishment endorse Joe Biden.

So we got Harry Reid endorsing Joe Biden. We got Pete Buttigieg. Amy Klobuchar has dropped out and endorsed Joe Biden. The Klobes. Endorsed Joe Biden. Mellie Bowles. Yes. Beto O'Rourke.

Also Flava Flav. That's right. Chris Matthews. They have everybody Just all coming together to stop Bernie Sanders It's devastating that now Now that Public Enemy fans will no longer Be able to know when they're at a Public Enemy concert

What time it is He's become the Public Enemy Chuck D's like Doing nine hour sets because nobody's giving him The light They're like thrown off Because there's just like way more lights in the audience He's like doing nine hour sets because nobody's giving him the light. They're like thrown off because there's just like way more lights in the audience from people checking their phones to see what time it is. But yeah, so you listening to this, you might already know what has happened with the Super Tuesday.

By the way, can I just say it's already like five news cycles to go, even though it was two days ago. But can I just say that it is bullshit how Nellie Bowles wrote a hit piece about Choppo Trap House without even mentioning that she did preliminary research here in Grubstakers North. Yeah, and didn't even fucking mention us. And when she said another show that can't be named, people presumed it's Comptown, it might have been us. You don't know. Yeah, I do want to give a Nellie Bowles anecdote for when she was interviewing us. For the most part, it was just like bullshit. Like, oh yeah, so what brought you guys out to New York? That kind of thing.

At one point, she was like, so, you know, who are you supporting in the election? And just, Stephen wasn't there, but like Sean Yogi and I immediately just go, Sanders, Sanders, Sanders. And then she looked concerned she went into my room she was like can I see this room and I'm like alright

sure oh yeah it was my bedroom she wanted to see if we had bunk beds she was like what is this outfit doing she wanted to know yeah she was like how many people legally live in this space she went into Yogi's room and took a shit and went this is why they call me Bals.

I shit everywhere I go. She comes out and is like, here, let me show you something. That's what I think of you. That's what I think of all of you. This poop distinctly smells like San Francisco oligarchy.

She smears all the shit that's fit to smear on yogi's wall i guess we should say nelly bowles is the new york times reporter who wrote that uh chapo article if we didn't mention that and if people listening to this have no idea what the fuck we're talking about yeah apparently they use uh violent rhetoric uh which just the amazing double standard of obama making a joke about drone striking the Jonas brothers while he was killing thousands of civilians. That's fine.

But a joke about guillotines is scary. But yes. So, and you know, I guess it has been mentioned that she's descended from California, oligarch wealth. Yeah. Like agriculture,

farming, landowning, San Francisco. what's even just the land baron yeah i don't know what it was but like her family like they received like a million dollars valley was it yeah yeah something like that yeah right her uh jack nicholson tried to stop her family in the movie china town yes and that's her origin story um but yeah no I mean she seemed like a it was actually kind of funny because like when we first talked to her we got an email and then we were like discussing it like do you think this will be a hit piece because we were like could we just like we'll answer written questions but we don't really

want to chat and then she's like I'm just trying to get a sense of this and we're like all right fine we'll chat and I even joked I was like, so you're doing like a hit piece on us? And she's like, no, no, it's just a profile. No, not on you. On Chapo Trap House. She did that thing where she messaged me, hi, Yogi, but then added like six I's to hi and Yogi. And I know when like a woman's trying to be flirtatious. So I saw through that shit immediately.

And I was like, uh-uh, this lady's a fucking CIA op. Immediately, I was a suspect of her. When she messaged me, my name on Twitter at the time was Hefty Curves Andy. So she messaged me, hi, Curves. Really? Yeah. This is bringing back my memories of thinking, why does Yogi care that she put six I's in the fucking thing?

Because you were really animated about that. I was really fucking mad about this. Because a person that's trying to be like, hey, I want to do a profile on you, they don't come in all fucking casually like, hey, hey, what's going on? No, no. They're fucking business casual. They're hello. Too familiar.

Yes. And my friend, I remember I told another guy about this, incidentally, a skinny white guy. He's like, no, she's just being friendly. I'm like, you don't fucking know how women act when they're trying to get something from you i do because it doesn't happen to me nearly as much as it does to you so yeah i was really thrown by that multiple eye situation and i'm i'm still bothered that you don't believe me about this thing no yeah i get you it is kind of funny because she also told us that i guess uh the red scare ladies were bitchy to her which at the time was like well that's kind of fucked up with them and then in retrospect

she's like no I guess they treated you the way you deserve to be treated but it would have probably driven a bit of anger traffic our way had we been able to get in there I told so many people and it didn't happen and all of them called me a dirty fucking liar it does kind of suck that like the only thing I've been in the New York Times for is bombing at a

roast battle and I was really really hoping to get like one for two not garbage write-ups but no dice still just for that roast battle I bombed at. When was this? Whatever his face Jason Zineman the comedy guy at the New York Times went to a roast battle at the stand and saw me first act bomb my ass off. that's fucking great yeah who's your opponent i battled ross parsons it's uh it is it is bittersweet uh to i guess rail against the establishment but deep down kind of kind of want to have something to show your boomer parents who don't use the internet that you're not completely wasting your life over here i mean yeah i was i was actually like

admittedly we were all pretty pumped that someone from the new york times was in the grub tower uh talking to us like it was right after the epstey episodes so it felt uh extra serious because it was like oh shit shit's fucking happening it's too bad we didn't do our research before she got here because we could have been like all right turn on the mic surprise interview about your family so we prepared an episode about the Bowles family and we thought you could be here and just answer some questions we have. It'll be our first interview with the billionaire.

But yes, so, you know, Nellie Bowles, liberal political journalist at the New York Times, writes this article against Chapo, gets shared by David Frum and a bunch of other, you know, anti-Chapo Iraq war architects.

You know, Max Boot, another one. And so, you know, this kind of shows you that there is a liberal establishment coalescing against Bernie Sanders and in this case his proxy, the podcast Trap House. But, you know, we talk about this establishment and and what it looks like this actually does bring us to our subject today which is the haas family that's right uh the haas family um are the uh the owners or the primary owners of levi strauss company it's the gene company and unfortunately the last billionaire we are going to be covering that are donors of the booty jays campaign yes for this election cycle at least yes so it's possible that they uh attended the debutante ball with nelly bowles in san francisco that's right that

is true uh there's actually a very good chance that that might have happened yeah yeah very likely i can't believe she went to a fucking debutante ball i i can't believe they they kept doing those after we abolished slavery yeah that is the reality we live in. A person that interviewed us may most likely be connected to the billionaire's recovery journey. I really wish we knew that when she got here. We could have just been like, so before we answer any questions, what's a debutante ball like? And how many people on the Epstein flight logs attend them? Also, another thing that I noticed is that when she was interviewing us

she had clearly just been roasted by the choppo guys for not having any student debt oh right like she was like yeah you know they were saying that you know they pointed out that i didn't have any student debt and i guess um i mean but you know i'm going horse riding with tulsi gabbard yeah i remember that horse riding article came out i was like wow i'm not shocked that the equestrian article came up before us yeah uh but the haas family uh you know uh let's say social neighbors of nelly bowles and her family uh the haas family it's interesting to come back what you think she'll come back to talk to us we we could send her an invite like we've got an episode on your family queued up uh we're giving you this request

for comment now in true new york time style uh but so the haas family uh they're the descendants and i think this is important to stress well first of all we should say that uh they are supporters of the democratic establishment by you, donations and this kind of stuff. But second, I just wanted to say the family majority owns Levi Strauss, the jean jean company. And you might think, OK, so these are the descendants of the guy who met the guy who invented denim blue jeans and had money while the guy who invented denim blue jeans did not have money and this is the story of you know american capitalism a true grub striker right at least grub staker adjacent yeah i mean but like as about as close as you can get without maybe fitting the exact definition yeah like in a grub staker fashion it it's about getting, you know, funding the mining. This is funding the clothes for mining.

So it's like it's grub stake adjacent is the correct way to put it. And yeah. And we'll go through the story in slightly more detail in a bit. But just to give you the CliffsNotes version, Levi Strauss moved. He set up a dry goods company in San Francisco around the time of the gold rush. So he was selling, you know, tents and clothing and these sorts of things to grub stakers. He saw children going into the mines and thought, you know what, you can use them to do work. Yeah, he had a older brother.

Chinese children. That had a Strauss goods store on the East Coast and Levi was the younger brother setting up a store on the West Coast. Yeah, so he would import dry goods from his brothers on the East Coast, on New York City, and then what happened was, he's doing this throughout the 1850s, 1860s, but then one of the people that he's supplying cloth to actually invents the denim blue jeans. Jacob W. Davis. He has a customer come in and say that my...

He notices that the jeans keep ripping in the same place around the pockets and the crotch. My balls keep popping out. Around the pockets and the crotch area. And he popping out. Around the pockets and the crotch area. And he gets the idea to... I keep getting gold on my balls. But a customer does come in and say that

my heavyset husband keeps ripping their pants. Can you make them a pants that's got a stronger... I lost my life savings because I got all the gold on my balls. But yeah, because of that customer saying that they needed a stronger pair of overalls uh that made jacob davis create the idea of adding rivets to a jeans right so he yeah he has copper riveted jeans and he reinforces these areas where it's most likely to rip with copper uh he does this in 1871 he's selling a lot of the jeans by 1873 he gets the idea to patent it by the way they took out the balls ribbit

they did yeah i actually i do have an answer to that they took out the balls ribbit in 1941 because of because of uh war because the war well it's just stock up on metal they're like we gotta put it in the bullets we gotta shell the jerrys i'm sorry but your balls are gonna have to breathe free so like the early adopters of denim come back and they're like hey man it's still actually ripping like right down there and he's like i can't do anything it's scientifically impossible right right yeah this is a bring back the balls rivet podcast so the story about the balls rivet uh that i heard in some youtube video i'm spacing on basically in 1941 what would happen is cowboys would you know go out on the range and it would

be cold so they would uh set up a campfire so they're'd huddle close together in the tent, do some wrestling. Wish they could quit each other. Wish they could quit each other. Those rivets would just pop after a couple of minutes of wrestling. They needed something stronger to keep their... To keep their urges down. Oh, yeah, so it'd be cold out on the range.

The cowboys would sit around the fire, and if you have these little copper rivets around your balls, they get heated up very quickly by a campfire. And it gets uncomfortable on your nether region. So in 1941, they stopped with the balls. Hot balls. Basically, yes. But, yes. So the inventor in 1873, he doesn't have at the time.

I love it when a topic we're covering has an actual ow my balls story well mr levi my balls just keep getting so warm around the campfire and sure my horse doesn't might want to take my pants off but i'm just shy but yeah so jacob w davis is the inventor of these pants he's's getting his cloth and his denim, his cotton denim from Levi Strauss. In 1873, he wants to get a patent, but at the time it costs $68, and he does not have $68. So he writes his supplier, Levi Strauss, and says, hey, you want to go into business together? And Levi Strauss says, sure. And that's the story where you don't have to invent an idea. You just have to have money and be around somebody who invents an idea,

and you're going to get the vast majority of the profits, and your heirs will today be worth, according to Forbes, about $4.7 billion. Right, and the lore that Levi Strauss created these jeans and warm is so far-fetched. He never would wear the jeans he created. It's so funny, because I'll also see articles will describe Levi Strauss as the co-inventor of the jeans.

Like, no, you just had the money. It's literally that meme like, we invented this. I invented this. But yes, the Haas family. Today, Forbes puts their net worth as of the March 2019 IPO of Levi Strauss Company, puts their net worth at $4.7 billion. It's bounced around a bit since then, but 4.7 is a good benchmark net worth. And it should be noted that the wealthiest member of the family is a lady named Mimi Haas. Mimi Haas estimated net worth as of march 2020

about 1.1 billion dollars right so majority of the family is millionaires 100 millionaires basically all together they're about 4.7 billion but most of them just have you know only a few hundred million dollars to their name uh but it is just interesting that it's like this fortune that dates all the way back to the fucking san francisco gold rush in the 1870s you know they just inherit it and you just pass it down from generation to generation and that's just the way capital works and this idea that you know that because levi struss uh co-created this amazing jeans company that their his descendants and heirs and heiresses would become great benefactors and accomplish amazing things with this wealth. And it's like, no, there's barely any information on these heirs and heiresses.

Even the age of Mimi Haas is kept private from the internet. So all of their heirs and heiresses have just become aristocratic, philanthropic, bullshit, multi-millionaires. Some of them invested in horses, but most of them probably not. And you can't find that much information on the family themselves because they've remained in private isolation in their rich San Francisco lives. Yeah, she's only worth $1 billion

because she spent the other $3 billion suppressing her birth date. But it is weird. You can't find her birthday or the year she was born anywhere on the internet i found that she graduated high school in 1964 and that she married her first husband in 68 but yeah and as mimi haas is the wealthiest member of this clan it is notable to look at

who she supports in the political establishment just according to open secrets mimi haas has made three different uh in 2019 she made three different two hundred thousand dollar donations to pacronym the super pack run by tara mcgowan who you might be familiar with helped develop the disastrous app that crashed the iowa caucuses that's right so the levi strauss heirs uh are donating six at least six,000, just one of them, to this weird group that seems to be controlling the Democratic primary in Iowa, the caucus. And this is a group that has lots of people

plugged into the Obama and the Clinton campaign. So this is very clearly a person trying to peddle influence within the Democratic Party. Mimi Haas is also a maxed out Pete Buttigieg donor. And the fact that she is trying to peddle her influence within the Democratic Party is kind of scary because Levi Strauss, as with basically every other garment manufacturer

in the US and the EU, is all sorts of linked to child slavery, slavery, child labor of the not slavery variety. Sex abuse. Sex abuse, worker abuse, union abuse. Still slavery, child labor of the not slavery variety. Sex abuse. Sex abuse, worker abuse, union abuse. Still slavery, but yes. Yeah. You know what?

Stephen's right. Yeah. Well, I mean, you could say that influence peddling and child slavery is in her... Not her genes, because she married into the family. Oh, yeah. is in not her jeans because she married into the family. Oh, yeah. Yeah, mind you, this is a woman that not

direct descendant from Levi Strauss, but she married her husband in 1981 and that's how she got into the family. So you know she eats butt. Just fucking your way into the slavery fortune. It's like America is like the wire. You know, on season five, it's like things change,

but really they stay the same. You can just marry your way into the fucking slavery fortune, and that's a good way to get ahead in this country. Things change, but they stay the same. But really they weren't as good as the previous seasons. She married Peter Ehas in 81 until he died in 2005. It was her second marriage, and in 2004, she would take over his role as Levi Strauss.

And so we're not going to go through all the family members of the Haas family because, again, there are too many, and Mimi Haas is the only one whose Forbes net worth, anyways, is over a billion. Again, combined, the family has about $4.7 billion net worth as of March 2019. But there's also her son, Peter Haas Jr. There's Margaret E. Haas, who's her stepdaughter. And there's Robert D. Haas, who's a cousin of Margaret and Peter Haas. So, you know, and you can find lots of other Haases.

It's spelled H-A-A-S. So if you see that name anywhere, just know you're dealing with plantation money. But what I wanted to mention here is just the Forbes article about the IPO, the initial public offering in Levi's in March 2019. It was a public company that— Not plantation money. Slave factory money. Okay. Words matter.

Important distinction. words matter important distinction uh so uh in march 2019 uh forbes wrote an article about their ipo and i just wanted to quote uh very quickly patient is pre-industrial the post-enclosure slavery you are right i should i should uh clarify uh forbes wrote an article about the ipo and i wanted to quote from it. After the initial public offering, the Haas family members will own 75.5% of the company's shares, and they will control 74.4% of the company's voting rights, thanks to a dual-class stock structure, according to the public filing. So why that's important is the Haas family controls 74.4% of voting rights at Levi Strauss Co. So when we talk about, you know, slavery, child abuse, union abuse, pollution, rape in the supply chain, when

we talk about these things, this is the Strauss family running the company. It's not even just that they're just collecting the checks and looking the other way. They run this fucking company. And, you know, that's very disturbing to say these are the people funding your Democratic Party and unifying with all the other patriots to stop Bernie Sanders. Yeah, it'd be bad enough if they were merely passive owners. But these guys also have, at least in theory, complete control over to change the situation in their supply chains where they don't use slavery. Well, I mean, we'll talk about it in a moment moment but for 30 years they have been complicit in various labor abuses and slavery

all over the world and you know i watched uh like bullshit you know levi jeans 501 documentary and it was 18 minutes made by levi's and it's it's such a uh made by a child slave in south north korea it was such like a uh delusional grandiose the american rebel that loves the levi jeans all white people by the way has made it a brand to be reckoned with around the world we've never allowed slavery to profit our margins you know they just bring the the microphone to like the starving kid and the kid's like the fit's just so great but yeah on that actually i kind of wanted to start with uh a cn talking about the ipo i wanted to play a bit of cnbc because you know if you watch these business networks uh the the fact that there's slavery in the global supply chain right now shouldn't really surprise anyone but it's it's so internalized and ignored that, let's say, our business press in particular just kind of passes over it

and really even mentions it and almost in their own little language acknowledges it, but never sees anything wrong with that or anything that can be done about it. And I think for most consumers who, you know, get jeans for $10 brand new, they probably just put it out of their mind. They think, I don't want to think about how this is so cheap. So on CNBC, Rick Helfenbein is the CEO of the American Apparel and Footwear Association. And this is the trade group that represents Levi Strauss, among others. And he's on CNBC on March 2019. This is the day of the Levi Strauss IPO that makes a bunch of money for the family. And I just wanted to play, you know, about 40 seconds

of his comments on CNBC and see if you can pick up maybe the coded language. Rick, we generally have you on to talk about all the problems that we're seeing right now. I can do that too. In retail, in brands, not so much in IPO. Yeah, no, this is really exciting. A piece of Americana. Unfortunately, it'll wait 166 years for it. But, you know, how often do you get a chance? How often do you get a chance to buy something as potent as a piece of the Statue of Liberty? I mean, think about it. A global brand represents the global value chain around the world, yet everybody believes it's totally American.

So this is a chance to get a piece of the rock to buy into Americana no matter where it's made. Levi makes in 25 countries. A little bit more on a couple of those countries in a bit. Yes. You heard that phrase, the global value chain, which when it comes to garment manufacturing is no values. But yeah, and it's like he talks about this being an American brand. And again, it does go back a long time. But in 2004, Levi Strauss closed their last American factory. They totally outsourced production of this. They're made in China.

They're made in Lesotho. They're made in Bangladesh, they're made in Vietnam. And if you want, we could spend an hour, two hours going through in detail every single child labor, slavery, abuse case against Levi Strauss. And so when he says, you know, the global value chain, and he says they're not i forget the exact phrasing he just used there but he didn't say he said they're not made in america but they have like american values or this is like the statue of liberty and all this shit he said everyone believes they're american yes he basically said these fucking rubes think they're buying an american-made product because levi strauss is so associated with america and

i'm sure some people do buy the jeans and think I'm buying an American product. You can't even warm your balls with them anymore? Wow. My wife was telling me though that her friends from Australia when they came to the US bought as many Levi's as they could because they sell them at a higher

price in other countries because it is such an American icon that they can afford to sell them at an absorbent price in other countries even though they such an american icon that they can afford to sell them at an absorbing price in other countries even though they're not even manufactured in the u.s anymore by the way i think that removing the um ball rivet is kink shaming and cbt erasure talking about torture but yes and this you know global value chain is such a fucking oxymoron because the thing that has happened with all u.S. manufacturing, or not all, but the vast majority of it, is that it's been outsourced to countries like China where now there's just a big scandal about Uyghur Muslims have been enslaved and forced to make products for Nike, among others.

Levi Strauss was not explicitly named in that, but you have to imagine— But we did check. Yes, we did check. And the thing is, those supply chains are so intertwined that just because Levi Strauss is not explicitly named as using Uyghur slave labor, that doesn't mean they are not using Uyghur slave labor. They are sourcing from China, where

a country with zero independent trade unions, so we just don't know. And, you know, we'll go... Well, they don't need them because they're a communist nation. And, you know, we'll go. They don't need them because they're they're they're a communist nation. And, you know, we'll go through and study Karl Marx in schools. We'll go through in exhaustive detail all these different or at least some of these different scandals. But I guess that's just something to put a pin in is that like this is where this money comes from.

This is slavery. And, you know, women in Lesotho have reported you know being raped being uh their bosses demanding that they have sex with them in order to keep their job in a desperately poor country where you don't have a fucking choice and it's just so horrifying that this is all over the fucking global supply chain and also if you were to just google say levi strauss slavery levi slavery you're not going to really see anything until the second or third page of Google results. You can't find Mimi Haas's age. I mean, they've hidden their details so succinctly that the labor violations are so deeply hidden as well. But even minor details, it shouldn't matter, like a's age or or where they're i mean it's such horseshit how

the elite have have cleaned the internet of anything and everything that they don't want the public to see well if so if you want to get like a a visceral sense of what the uh not even technically slavery conditions are in making these jeans i highly recommend this documentary called china blue that was on pbs um where they they go it's an investigative report inside of an actual sweatshop in china and it's not it's not technically a um uh a levi's sweatshop though if you uh levi's does uh provide a list of their uh global providers and out of the 25 pages in that list uh nine of them are chinese um locations uh the chinese ones are a little thicker but the only other uh country with a full page is india and so it's they're mostly in china

and the part of what this documentary drives home is that this is these these are kind of epistemic problems in all textile manufacturers. Right. And so some of the the main points about these are like one thing that is pretty common is that manufacturers will send quote unquote inspectors to these, to these sweatshops to what they'll tell people is like, oh, these people are like, you know, making sure the conditions are humane. And then they interviewed actual workers there and they're like, yeah, we're told to lie. Yeah. Oh yeah. Like even to the inspectors.

And then they'll say that even, even though we're, they're told to like the inspectors, all the inspectors care about is the quality of the product. Sure. They don't give a shit about labor conditions. The only reason that the labor condition situation is there or that that's part of it is just because of consumer outrage. And so they kind of put on the face of like, oh, we're inspecting labor conditions when really they're just looking at the products. One worker said that she was told to lie about her breaks when in reality they only get about two bathroom breaks per shift and these are like you know 12 to 17 hour shifts

she also said that she had to sign a paper saying she was paid 800 yen or 800 yuan which is about 97 dollars when her actual pay was 300 which is which is about $36. And also, this is a manager, so that was actually higher than usual. I remember when we did the episode on Lawrence Stroll, there were some labor violations with the sandblasting of the jeans. And it wasn't the companies Lawrence Stroll was connected to, but it was the Chinese factories

and the factories all around the world, but these specific cases were about the Chinese factories and how when they were making the like worn jeans, they have to blast sand and the like microscopic particles were going into the bodies of these Chinese employees. Oh, yeah.

And so, you know, we don't even know how fucking poisonous that's going to be for those employees. But nobody wants, you know, microscopic particles of anything inside of them

that isn't supposed to be there. Well, one of the managers was saying that one thing she would do or basically have to do is she would have a this kind of two-foot long screwdriver that she would use to thwack employees who were falling asleep cool some employees are even falling asleep with their eyes open they were even clipping their eyes open to try to stay awake. There is... Your American Labor Party, ladies and gentlemen.

These are the people who represent the unions. I just want everyone to know that Andy's wearing jeans right now. Listen, all of our pants. If you're listening to this and you're wearing pants, this is what's happening where your pants are made. No, no, looks like you're the only one wearing jeans, Andy. I think all of ours are actually pretty humane. We have khakis.

I had to get into character. Andy's wearing an old Navy shirt with an American flag on it. Andy, how could you? He's wearing a jeans jacket too. I got it from my sister's family-in-law. I'm just imagining the fucking 13-year-old making Andy's American flag shirt being like, boy, I'm doing irony here, aren't I? This is pretty ironic.

Land of the free stuff, isn't it? On my 18 hour shift where they make me lie about my pay. There was there was actually a great moment where they they just had like candid scenes inside the workers dorms and on these kids. Also, by the way, they generally they they profiled uh one girl who was working there who was 17 and she was talking to a friend who also worked there who was 14 and they said that uh fake ids are very common oh sure in order for kids to get jobs and of course they look the other way uh but there's one candid scene in the dorm where um they they were just joking about how fat all the people they make the jeans for are.

They're like, yeah, their waists are like this big. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'm wearing them. You know, I've always thought about like a person in China making an XXXL shirt, just being like, who the fuck lives in this? While being fucking slapped across the head with a fucking metal screwdriver. Some other things, they have a two-time card system. The real one, to make sure that

employees are working the right times, and then the fake one for the inspector's records. They do a similar thing at Walmart. I mean, when they do wage theft. They just have fake fucking time records so they don't have to pay you overtime. They don't pay.

They actually explicitly break Chinese overtime laws. And if someone complains to management about it, what they'll do is they'll decrease because they kind of individualize the orders that go to people who are either sewing things or cutting things. They will decrease the orders going to that person so they make less money at the end of the day basically to starve them yeah they'll also take someone's um first uh first uh paycheck at well not paycheck i think they're paying cash but like their their first payment as uh they'll keep it as a deposit oh interesting uh and only give it to someone if they're allowed to leave the factory. But since they never grant anyone a release from the factory, most people don't get their first paycheck.

Let's see. Oh, at one point in this documentary, the owner was bragging that the factory pays workers in total for all the work that goes into one pair of jeans. One dollar. Now, this is in 2005. So I did the conversion. jeans uh one dollar now this is in 2005 so i did the conversion um that's one dollar and 32 cents in 2020 numbers um so yeah that's out of you know a 40 pair of jeans the people who actually made it in total all the work that went into that one dollar in payment um see i'm sighing because when we get to the Lesotho factory, it's even more depressing somehow.

It doesn't get better from here, people. Clothes seem like such a scam when you realize that a small and an XXL shirt all cost the same amount. Like, in my head, I remember when I was like, wait, shouldn't the larger one cost even slightly more? And they're like, no, that is how much you're being hosed in the long run. They're charging you that much for it anyway that they're like, we, that is how much you're being hosed in the long run. They're charging you that much for it anyway

that they're like, we don't need to give a fuck about this. And this isn't even fast fashion. Jeans are relatively durable material. So these are, these labor conditions are fucking horrific. This is actually a quote from, or this is a clip of the owner through a translator at the factory in this in this documentary to get workers more motivated we educate them through slogans we shape their

basic thinking like jesus did and so uh right after that it goes to a slogan that they see. And it cuts to a slogan, like some people reading it. And the slogan says, if you don't work hard today, you'll look hard for work tomorrow. Jesus Christ. Some of the other slogans that I found were, had to have high, high hopes for a living. Didn't have a dime, but I always had a vision. Always had high, high, high hopes for a living didn't have a dime but i always had a vision always had high high high hopes well it is yeah it is just like manifest destiny i wish we had a way to set that to music um and so so the the the big takeaway from this and the reason i'm bringing all this up is that there's also a scene where the factory owner is talking to a purchaser

who's ordering the jeans from this factory. And it's very clear that the person purchasing it, who's buying them for about, it looks like, $4 a pair, they're the ones who are driving down the prices. And the factory owner is is throughout this like he's objectively evil he's a complete piece of shit but um but he's not the one gouging the workers it's the guy buying it is that what you're saying well he's the one he is gouging the workers but um i mean for you know the difference between one dollar and four dollars of course obviously Obviously, most of that's going into his pocket.

But the fact that it's driven down and causes psychos like that to rise to the top of that system is entirely because of external pressure. And that external pressure goes, you know, that's a direct line to corporate at Levi's. Yes. And, you know, I mean, something you were talking about just there that we should mention is with these factories, it's entirely about Levi's just responding to public pressure and, you know, a news article being written because there are, in my opinion, very heroic human rights groups that will look at labor conditions in the third world and they'll you know send undercover investigators who you know are putting themselves at risk of arrest or beatings or whatever else oh yeah these these documentary filmmakers they were thrown in jail yes um yeah they they actually i i mean i i do highly recommend this documentary china blue yeah and you know it's like these are very heroic people. And it's only because-a-mole where one of these things will come out and you know so again we'll go through a few more of these stories but these are just the ones we know about there are hundreds of others just horrific things that we don't know about and it's so fucked up with levi strauss because these go back to i found this um article

from the washington post in 1992 uh levi strauss to drop suppliers violating its worker rights rules right and that's exactly it because it goes back to with levi strauss at least 1991 where they get busted you know doing fucked up slave-like conditions to make their jeans and then they say we're gonna stop this we're gonna crack down and then the cycle repeats every five years yeah in some cases which we will say which we will go through the same supplier where the same supplier they're using them again 10 years later and they get busted doing something even worse than they were doing the first time oh one one other thing too that was in this documentary that was uh just a great touch is that they got the uh

factory owner on his own time and he was like i like to do calligraphy i find that they got the factory owner on his own time, and he was like, I like to do calligraphy. I find that it clears the mind. And he's clearly using calligraphy to come up with his slogans, telling people to work harder. What's the name of that dog? China Blue. Oh, that's great. He's using, like, really fine parchment.

Yeah, yeah, he's got this brush, and he's, like, you know got this brush and he's doing it meditatively, writing out the letters. This is perfect. Your success is built on failures because you're a failure. Now he actually just lost his job writing slogans for the Pete campaign. And with that, we're going to circle back to more labor violations in just a second here. We don't want to give you too much depression all at once. We did think we would just spend five minutes

kind of going through briefly the cliff note story of Levi Strauss himself because he was a real man and his heirs are still cashing the checks that he put into circulation. And, you know, it's interesting where you can only really find the official biography stuff. Apparently, Levi Strauss, the factory, it was based in San Francisco, burned down in the earthquake and fire of 1906.

A lot of their records were destroyed, which, very convenient. Oh, sure. I'm sure. Conspiracy, if you ask me. An earthquake caused a fire in San Francisco in 19 1906 what is this a cow in chicago uh but yes actually it was a uh 6.8 quake that uh disrupted a lot of the uh early gas lines in the city uh but yes the man levi strauss himself 7.2 i don't remember exactly the man levi strauss himself was born in 1829 in bavaria according to pbs.org uh he came with his mother and three

sisters at age 18 to new york city in 1847 his father was a dry goods salesman might have been abusive or might have just left the family but for whatever reason he just he leaves Bavaria for New York City in 1847 just with his mother and three sisters and according to pbs.org he brought as much as 100 pounds of sewing goods blankets and kettles and he met up his family met up with his two brothers who were already in New York City and they set up a dry goods shop in New York City, basically selling things like we mentioned, you know, clothing for the most part. It was a general goods store. And Levi was going to set up the Strauss store on the West Coast. He was going to go West and take the advantage of the gold rush.

It was actually one of the worst natural disasters in American history. Levi, incidentally, I found out he took a boat through Panama and then rode either a donkey or took a train to the West Coast. Interesting. Yeah, I guess that makes sense. Well, before the canal, because it was either that or you go all the way around. It was also before the Transcontinental Railroad. That's right. But yeah, levi strauss

he goes to set up the family shop in kentucky it's you know it's kind of like a family business where the different brothers wait hold on yes how how did they um how did they get around the continent all around they went around the uh panama But yeah, so it's sort of like a family business where Levi Strauss goes to Kentucky, and he imports the family supplies from New York, and he sells them there, and his brother-in-law goes somewhere else. I think Minnesota or Montana or one of these places sells the family supplies there. So it's, you know, I mean, it works as kind of a networked family business for a while and then in 1853 levi strauss gets u.s citizenship and he goes to san francisco which we mentioned earlier coincides with uh just about the end of the peak of the gold rush he goes

out to san francisco to sell supplies to the gold rush prospectors originally going out there to become a dead head yes uh but so you know uh strauss is i don't have them on the drop board strauss you don't have a 40 minute drop strauss is over there in san francisco in 1853 um he's uh selling dry goods to the man we mentioned earlier jacob w davis uh davis we we already told the story, of course, invents the denim jeans and... Drink theory. And let me just see, just this, so Jacob W. Davis was kind of an itinerant tailor who set up a small shop... Drink theory.

Set up a small shop in Reno, Nevada. And he wrote Levi Strauss a letter after we mentioned he had customers coming in very much in demand for the new kind of reinforced seams, jeans that he had invented. Right, specifically one woman saying that her heavyset husband needed a pair of pants that wouldn't rip on him. And I want the world to know,

fat people getting shit done time and time again. Without fat people, you got nothing good in life. Drink theory? Yes, it is very much true. They don't have to mention that the dude's fat, Sean. They could have just said that a woman wanted to get some pair of jeans that don't rip on her husband. They mentioned several times,

heavy set husband. Fat boys for life. My husband is so tired of people showing up and filming him for black and white comedies. They keep filming his daily life as he falls down the staircase every morning and putting him in silent films.

I think it's because his balls are too cold. Heavyset man tries to warm balls. That was one of the earliest black and white films. We bought your pants and then he sat by a fire. And this is now the number one comedy movie in America. And my husband is humiliated. Please, sir. His job of having a cannon fired into his stomach makes his pants

rip every time we need a pants that can survive a cannon to the stomach he started rolling around trying to put off the fire on his balls and he rolled for 15 straight minutes and then he rolled towards the theater audience and they ran away because because he thought he was coming right at them. In like a 1950s documentary, like Levi Strauss is in a lab like, I've got to get, I've got to find a way to channel the heat energy to the balls faster. The fabric's not cutting it. He just wanted to have an all metal crotch for a while. For the jeans.

But yeah, so Jacob W. Davis, you know. And he looks out at a shit building and they're using rivets. And he's like, my God. A shit building? That's it. For the rivets, there's rivets. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so these copper riveted jeans that Jacob W. Davis invents.

He doesn't have the money. He doesn't have the money. He doesn't have the $68 to patent it. And then PBS.org has the quote of the letter he wrote to Levi Strauss. I'm going to quote from it. The secret of them pants, he spells pants P-E-N-T-S, is the rivets, he spells rivets R-I-V-I-T-S, that I put in those pockets and I found the demand so large

that I cannot make them up fast enough i don't think he's right english spelling is stupid uh but yes so i mean it just kind of shows you where um i guess if levi strauss was a total piece of shit he probably could have just fucked this guy over completely but he at least cut him in on some of the money you know 10 or 20 or whatever it was for inventing this thing. And, you know, so they make these pants. They have a patent until like the 1890s. And then, you know, they make the Levi's 501s in the 1890s.

This is, you know, their iconic brand that they're still known for. But, you know, once their patent expires, a bunch of other competitors kind of come into the market. Yeah. And I'm not sure if this is completely correct correct but i'm pretty sure that had they invented these jeans like i don't know 25 30 years later because of the mickey mouse patent stuff they could have been able to hold on to it longer because we talk about how because of mickey mouse the patent laws changed in this country and i think that the levi jeans was created just slightly before all that shit happened yeah it was like i mean by like five decades i'm not gonna pretend like it was like fucking the next day should change but you

know i mean yeah we talked about it a lot on the disney episode but it is pretty interesting how patent law works in this country where well that was copyright law too copyright law is slightly different but it's the same kind of it's intellectual property right but yeah yeah yeah you're right it was copyright it wasn't patent law okay uh but yeah the uh the way copyright law anyways worked was essentially everything before 1922 i think that was the year is in the public domain and uh please don't pay attention this is right before they invented mickey mouse uh yes but so um the levi's 501s are invented in the 1890s uh levi strauss himself dies in 1902.

The San Francisco earthquake and fire that destroyed their records is in 1906. They, you know, on their company history, they talk about, like, they were so good to their workers that they, like, paid them to rebuild the factory or something really stupid like that. Bunch of mooks. But, like, but I guess what I wanted to mention here

briefly is an important transition point in american capitalism is the transcontinental railroad oh yeah there's another part in that documentary where the owner was like the workers they just take advantage of like if they work past midnight we give them a free snack they get half a kind bar but um what i wanted to mention about the transcontinental railroad and you know it's it's something very fascinating where you know noam chomsky talks about this or or you can even just read the words of abraham lincoln or newspapers from that time there was a lot of talk about you know wage slavery and and this sort of stuff as people were being forced into working

for these large corporations because what happened in the U.S. before the Transcontinental Railroad is every town would have their own artisans. There would be a guy in the town who made shoes or a person or people in the town who made pants. But once you have the Transcontinental Railroad, you can just have one company that makes pants that ships them all over the United States. So you go from these companies that have, you know, 10 or 20 employees to companies that have literally thousands of employees. And this creates, you know 10 or 20 employees to companies that have literally thousands of employees and this creates you know labor violence modern factory conditions and wage slavery wow what a proud and long-standing tradition with levi's at uh exploiting chinese workers yes and and that's literally it where it's like okay so convenient for them that their fucking records burned down in 1906 so we can't see that they were

paying you know half a cent to like a nine-year-old from fresh off the boat from china that wasn't a major national tragedy that happened in san francisco yes conspiracy damn it i'm calling it yes they they set the fire themselves for posterity's sake everything in san francisco was made of brick they They said it themselves. They blame some Chinese workers. It's all conspiracy. But yes, so Jacob W. Davis, I guess he manages the San Francisco plant for the family, and then he dies in 1908.

Until his death, he supervised up to 450 employees at Levi Strauss and Company, producing a variety of riveted denim clothing that became an industry standard. And that's from a write-up in OnlineNevada.org. But you can just imagine at the turn of the 20th century what supervising 450 employees

looks like. And this is, you know, again... You'd think that 6-inch wrench from the Chinese factory was long. Great theory. This was before they had regulations on the length of the wrench

you were allowed to hit your employees with. The screwdriver? I said wrench, my bad. They reduced it down to six inches, but he had the three-foot screwdriver. He would just go to town on the Chinese migrants. It's like the origin of the term rule

of thumb. Yeah. You know, it is full circle, though, because it used to be the Chinese migrants would come here to make the pants, but now we send the pants back to them to be made. So they just can't escape sweatshop conditions. Incidentally, there's like a handful of Levi's stores that have been shut down because of the coronavirus.

Yeah. And one of the largest Levi's stores in China is in Wuhan. That's right, oven the coronavirus headquarters and levi china is all in the same town they're like uh no you you're fine just get back out there i think you can uh i think you can crank out a few more pants in the next 12 hours i mean you guys see that the new york post in their announcement that the first case of coronavirus was found in manhattan they the picture that they used for it was a picture from chinatown and queens oh yeah oh yeah i saw that shit and then under the caption it says on his way to work at the levi strauss factory uh but yeah and you know honestly that's all thank you new york post reminding us that you're owned by rupert murdoch but like honestly that's's all. Thank you, New York Post, reminding us that you're owned by Rupert Murdoch.

But like, honestly, that's really all of the Haas family biography you need to know. I mean, we can mention just with Levi's jeans and denim jeans in general, they spread in popularity into Europe during World War Two because American GIs would wear them during their casual hours while they were occupying the formerly fascist nations. So, you know, they spread into, and then of course there was Rebel Without a Cause, the John Wayne movies. These kind of spread them into high fashion, or I guess high fashion, yeah, because then you have the 60s, the counterculture movement, all the hippies are wearing jeans. So it is something where...

And even before that, marilyn monroe sporting jeans uh women wearing pants was such a revolutionary rebellious move for uh feminist ideals of that time period as well and women wearing pants that's why the cia hired zoe deschanel to to put that revolutionary movement to rest for good yeah. Need a woman with bangs to fuck this shit up. The CIA is like, look, our venture capital fund has made some big investments on spring dresses. So we got to put this pants shit to bed. Ben Gibbard's like, babe, come on. Don't work with the CIA.

Sorry, Ben. That's my soy dish. But yes, so, and you know, that kind of brings you the story up to the modern day. Pants have gone through various cycles, but it is important to note that our denim jeans, they go in and out of fashion, you know. I think they're dying. I feel like people aren't wearing them as much as they used to. What do you think?

I mean, I know Palmer's wearing one right now, so one out of four in this room is. But I do feel like the popularity of jeans is not nearly as high as it was when I was growing up. Well, that's also because you're surrounded by people who have to go to jobs now. That's fair. That's a good point. And like New York jobs. Yeah, that's true. But even still, I do feel like when I was in high school, so like 2004 04 to 2008 jeans were fucking hot and uh they're not

nearly as hot as they used to be but yeah and so basically that's all you really need to know about the haas family story is that levi strauss not the guy who invented the fucking pants the guy who had the money who met the guy who invented the pants dies in 1902 he has the bulk of this pants fortune according to the wikipedia it was about six million dollars in 1902 which wikipedia says is 174 million in 2018 dollars uh yogi i think you found a stat that said it was more than that even but the important thing is whatever chunk of money it was you just get your standard return on capital even if they weren't doing they're not doing anything with the money. It just kind of multiplies, you know, 5 or 6% every year all the way down to the present, which gives you $4.7 billion.

That's socialism for the rich. Yeah, and they benefit from these trends we mentioned of, you know, World War II and the counterculture all wearing denim jeans. But, you know, so Levi Strauss himself doesn't have any children, but he gives his entire fortune to his sister. Wait, hold on. Yes. Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Das ist mein Teil! Mein!

Sorry, that's for three people who listen to this. Am I keeping that in? That's Rammstein and Hammerstein. All right. Yeah. Incidentally, whiskers is what they call the fraying of jeans like on like when you like bend a whole bunch so when he said whiskers I was like this does actually apply to the episode but so Levi Strauss doesn't have any children but he gives his entire fortune to

his sister Fanny her her husband, and their four children, or their kids. I think it was, yeah, four nephews. And so, you know, and that brings us to the modern day where, you know, we mentioned Mimi Strauss is... Mimi House. Mimi House, excuse me, is the widow of... Peter E. Haas. Yes, his great grand nephew. Correct. So she married his great grand nephew, which is how she got the money, and then most of, or the rest of the heirs for the most part, are either married in or they are descended from his nephews.

And that brings you up to the present, which is basically the Haas family has done nothing with this fortune except sit on it and transition it to slavery-based. Yeah, there's a reason you know the name Levi Strauss and not Haas family. And it's because they don't do shit with this money.

It is like kind of a going back to tradition thing, though. You know, like, we have to go back. Because the fortune was built by sweatshop factory labor. And then, of course, you know, with the New Deal, there was a union movement in the United States. So many of these factories unionized and there was, you know, minimum wage and 40-hour workweek laws. And so these factories were being built under American labor union conditions. And then they outsourced the entire supply chain. And in 2004, of course, the last American factory closed. So this American brand is entirely built overseas

with all of the global supply chain abuses we are so familiar with. Bootcut jeans with Chinese characteristics. Well, now they're still innovating, you know. Like now they got distressed jeans. Oh. Like distressed like the working class. Yeah.

They rolled out the new brand that has the word SOS on the levi's logo i did i did one point i found because like their logo is two horses and a jeans in between and the horses are pulling the jeans to show like the strength of the jean and there was a conspiracy that snopes had to shut down which was that that somebody there's a viral uh like article going around i don't even know it's an article but it was a viral image that the logo is based on slavery torture where they put a slave

in between two horses and tear them apart. Oh no, no drawing and quartering. Right. And the like Snopes article was like, I mean this isn't

technically true because if it was a slave the like, the horses tied on the pants are too low. Like it literally went into the logo

being mis- It's minutiae. Yeah, right. So um. It literally went into the logo being missed. It's minutiae. That's some Neil's Grass Tyson shit. Yeah. Well, turns out that's what was in those 1906 records. Snopes doesn't know for sure because they burned down the factory that had the records proving it. But I think to close out this episode, we're going to talk about some of the labor and slavery abuses

that Levi's has done. One of the earliest ones being in Saipan in 1991. Gap and Levi's and a few other clothing manufacturers was using Saipan to make their clothes, and they were making them work 11 hour a day seven days a week for as little as a dollar 65 with no overtime pay the minimum wage in Saipan at the time was 215 an hour and the reason that they were doing this in the northern Mariana Islands is because they were allowed to claim that the goods were made in USA. And after this incident, Levi's canceled their contract.

And the one thing that's so frustrating about the Levi Corporation and these labor violations is that after this, they created a pamphlet of a code of conduct. And people, if you look at Levi's abuse, they're like, uh-uh. In 92, they created a code of conduct that let everyone know that they won't be using sweatshop labor or abusing people and it's like yeah they did that because they got found out that they were doing that exact thing but the one thing i found that was even more distressing was that in 2003 there was a 20

million dollar settlement that was approved for the garment workers in saipan and gap ink and jc pennyco were going to be paying it and levi was nope, we're going to keep fighting this fucking thing. We're not going to contribute to this 20 million. We're going to lawyer up and take out these fucking workers in Saipan. So this is the same place. This is the same place from they were busted doing this shit in 91 and saying,

now we have a code of conduct. So there's also just a 2015 Wall Street Journal article and it should be mentioned that the conditions at these Northern Mariana Islands plants were described as, quote unquote, slave-like conditions. They were about at least 3% of all U.S.-made Levi's jeans were being made there. And I just wanted to quote from the Wall Street Journal. After the company issued this new code of conduct uh levi says it was working on the code of conduct before the incident happened so they were like oh we we just hadn't we we were

putting the finishing touches you know we were we had the rough draft ready to get this right yeah you know you know what they definitely were working on before that came out the denial you know they say you uh you write drunk yet it's sober so we uh we had our no slavery code of conduct ready to go but we were just grammar checking it and and then this incident came out and we had and we put it out but boy is our face right but yeah so they put out this code of conduct and then 10 years later get busted doing the same fucking thing uh yeah they Levi's code of conduct stop purchasing clothing made in saipan in 2000 i mean but in 2003 they're like oh we don't want to pay

you for this lawsuit that we're clearly losing fucking snakes um the if you want to look at it the smith's american history smithsonian national museum of american history website has a uh a jpeg of the pamphlet that was written in 91 the terms of engagement and it's it's like every every terms of engagement starts with this very very beautifully bullshit phase we will not initiate or renew contractual relationships in countries where sourcing would have an adverse effect on our global brand image. Their brand image. Not like where fucking children are getting trafficked. Just if it makes us look bad, we will not renew this.

So it's brain image, health and safety, human rights, and they all start with, we will not initiate or renew contractual relationships in locations where there is evidence that company employees or representatives would be exposed to unreasonable risks i like how exposed is the word not that they're doing a hidden they're if they're doing it and we know about it first people have to find out about it right and then it can't be like if it's like not extreme but it's still pretty bad it's fine and so this leads uh me to this incident that's happening in Lesotho. Actually, before we get there, I did just want to quote. There's a 2015 Wall Street Journal article, China, Levi Strauss and the Long Simmering Battle over Labor Rights. And I'll just quote a little bit from it because we mentioned, you know, this incident at the Mariana Islands in 1991 is at least the first public exposure of slave-like labor conditions for Levi's. So something the company has been very good at, and even today, if you Google or

Bing or whatever Levi's, there's so much stuff about their humanitarian sourcing and supply chains. Something that they've been very good at is laundering their public image. So whenever one of these scandals comes out, they go on a full-on PR offensive, and they say, we're dealing with it, we're investigating, and they donate a bunch of money to charity. And, you know, they've actually, I know Levi Strauss, the company has launched like a gun control campaign. And these other kind of like general liberal causes,

I think, you know, some LGBT supporting stuff as well, because they're san francisco based uh they they launched these liberal causes to launder their uh public image by the way i want to take any guesses on where the whistleblowers and the marianas islands are now yes uh but so what i wanted to to quote from this Wall Street Journal article in 2015 is that after they're busted in the Marianas Island, they actually do a quote unquote phased withdrawal of their manufacturing in China in 1993. This is, of course, after Tiananmen Square, after they just got busted with these labor conditions. And then it says the Wall Street Journal says Levi still bought fabric from the country in 1998. The year after Hongong reverted to china levi loosened its restrictions on investing in china china's low-cost wages were a big lure too

we went back to china we went back when china was a low-cost provider said david love a levi executive vice president we wanted to capitalize on that announcing the end of its ban in 1998 its ban on manufacturing in China, the company said it was confident that it can do business in China, unquote, and find and monitor, quote, unquote, responsible business allies who would comply with Levi's standards. And, you know, they also say, quote, they will only pursue business activities in China that will allow the company to operate in a socially responsible manner, unquote. And as we just played clips from that 2007 documentary, these people are fucking lying through their teeth.

Yeah, of course. You know, this is all just PR speak. And so there have been two major incidents that have happened in Lesotho, Africa. The first one was in 2009, and this is from Dan McDougall of Times UK. And it's talking about, so the Lesotho factory for textiles is for Gap, Levi's, and a few other companies. But it's run by Nianxing and Formosa Textile, a Taiwanese company. And in 2009, this article was written about that they were dumping harmful chemicals needles and razors in a statement yesterday dan hankles gap seniors vice president of global responsibility said the company had

ordered an investigation as soon as it learned of the allegations levi strauss also sent an investigator to lisato said it was disturbed to see the local water is polluted so this is what andy was referring to a moment ago where the investigators go out and not to check on the actual labor violations, but just make sure that the product is still maintaining the quality that they want. And so this was in 2009 in Lesotho. And we should also mention not only were they busted dumping dangerous chemicals in 2009, this Hong Kong manufacturer, not only were they busted dumping dangerous chemicals but they were also busted using child laborers and mistreating child laborers physically abusing child laborers

by the way they interviewed in this documentary one of the inspectors it was this French guy and he one of the things he said is you know one of the most important ways to tell you know what a what one of our partners is going to be like when we're working with these factories

is where they take us out to dinner. Wow. What fucking crooks. Depressing detail from, and this is a write-up in business-humanrights.org about the 2009 bust. Because they were dumping these illegal chemicals, dangerous chemicals,

they were, quote-unquote, endangering the health of the numerous children who prowl the landfills daily in search of used fabric which they can sell. So you can just imagine these conditions. Yeah, from that same article in 2009, it talks about how the dark blue effluent from the factory of Nian Hsing,

the Taiwanese firm, was pouring into a river from which people draw water for cooking and bathing. So people are showering and cooking with this water that has been literally poisoned by the the gas factory and Levi factory that's using this Taiwanese firm. And as fucked up as that is, you would think that, OK, well, they cleaned up their act. That was 11 years ago. They said they did an investigation. Yogi, what's been going on with this same supplier

and this same factory in this same country of Lesotho? You poisoned drinking water. This was from August 17th 2019 by Tobias Carroll in Inside Hook. On Thursday the Workers' Right Consortium

released a report documenting the harrowing working conditions that 10 000 women encountered while working making jeans in a group of factories in masuro this article talks about managers and supervisors forced many female workers into sexual relationships in exchange for job security or promotions the report says in dozens of interviews the woman described a pattern of abuse and harassment, including inappropriate touching, sexual demands, and crude comments. When the workers objected, they faced discrimination and retaliation, the report says. The factory managers also fought union organizing, it says.

While most of the employees are from Los Altos, managers were both locals and foreign. And female workers told investigators even male colleagues were molesting them. Male workers like touching females in a way that is not appropriate, one worker said. The foreign national managers slap women's buttocks and touch their breasts. They sometimes take them home for sex, another worker said. Their testimony in the report is anonymous to protect their privacy. In this report, you look at it some more, and basically the women workers have essentially alluded to, like, we know this is going on, and if we stop it, we'll get fired.

And so in a region where this is the only work for them, they are being sex trafficked for a job where they make jeans. So, yeah, sure, you may look hot in Levi's, but somebody's being raped so that you can look good in 501 jeans. Yeah. The Workers' Rights Consortium quotes one female worker as saying, quote, all of the women in my department have slept with the supervisor. For the women, this is about survival and nothing else. If you say no, you won't get the job or your contract will not be renewed. The Global Fund for Women reports that 80% of garment makers around the world are women. And something that pisses me off, you know, in addition to everything else, is that these sweatshop defenders you will run into will occasionally make the argument that if they're not in sweatshops, they'll be doing prostitution.

Or if those children are not working in sweatshops, they'll be child prostitutes well the fucking labor conditions in these sweatshops they are forced into prostitution all the goddamn time anyways because they have no union protection it honestly sounds worse than some of the conditions that uh these people say they're trying to like allegedly escape right i mean trying to like the capitalists say they're like oh we're lifting these people out of precarious sex work. And like, I don't know. That sounds worse almost. Yeah. Lastly, from this article, it talks about how the companies have manufacturing facilities in Mexico, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

So, you know, this is happening in Lesotho, but there's a good chance that it's also happening in these other countries as well. And there's a Fortune article that talks about how, and I had to use, because it's under a paywall, but if you click reader view quickly, you can actually see it. And essentially it alludes to the fact that, well, Levi Jeans has dealt with this, but they've shaken things up in the past by making sure to inform their workers about HIV and AIDS

because they're from San Francisco and stuff. I mean, essentially, Levi gets busted for being horrific, mongering dictators, basically. And when they get called out on it and they go, we'll clean this up, then they get praised for the fact that, wow, look at this company doing the right thing. I mean, it is just horseshit that the company of levi jeans can profit from slavery and then act all indignant that they are doing their best to make sure these labor violations don't happen in the long run when the reality is for three decades this shit's been going on from saipan to uh the fucking toxic chemicals in 09 to now in 2020. I mean. These are just like the well-documented cases of the last 30 years that we know about.

Like that we were able to find in our research for this episode. Exactly. And like, you know, this episode came up originally because we wanted to do a booty gig, Toners, and I found Mimi Haas and I was like, all right, you know, we've done like seven white dudes in a row. Let's do Mimi Haas. And then when I found out she was Levi, you know, heiress, I was like, oh, we we've done seven white dudes in a row. Let's do Mimi Haas. And then the moment I found out she was Levi Eris, I was like, oh, we might need more time on this one.

But we couldn't find anything on Mimi Haas. I mean, all we could find were her Jewish roots and the fact that she married someone else before marrying Peter E. Haas. And Sean has something to say about that first thing. But other than that... We're saving the worst for last, people. And the worst thing about Mimi. No, but I mean, you know, it took us.

It took us digging on various search engines to find these labor violations. And they don't even have Mimi Haas's fucking age on the Internet. Like that's how fucking corrupt these pieces of shits are. They haven't been able to completely hide their labor violations all around the world, but they have hidden the birth date of the CEO, Mimi Haas. Yeah, my favorite thing about Google is if you search any company and slavery,

the first 50% of results will be that company's official statement on slavery, which is always, we do not do slavery. And it's not really that true all the time um but yeah no i mean it's fucked up uh just to mention one more thing this is from a uh dw.com write-up of the workers rights consortium in lesotho the garment garment manufacturing with a focus for denim export has been the largest former formal sector employer for the last 30 years so this is the fucking industry.

And we're talking about, again, this Taiwanese supplier, Ni Sing Textile, that in 2009 was busted. Levi Strauss said, we're investigating 2019. Same fucking supplier, same fucking country, and worse violations. And this is August 2019. This is the same year as their IPO. So the family's getting rich the family's cashing these checks and it's you know these fucking poor laborers who are desperate do not have a union do not have rights who are being exploited and work to the bone and abused uh to make these these people well i want to directly quote that fortune.com thing that I mentioned

because I kind of butchered it earlier, but this is a direct quote from the article. It wouldn't be the first time Levi's shook things up. Sustainability has been part of their fabric since its founding in 1853, as have the progressive values that came to typify San Francisco, the city it calls home. Privately held and family-owned, Levi's was one of the first companies to desegregate factories, to

embrace same-sex marriage, and to educate employees about HIV AIDS. For years, it has worked to reduce its environmental pant print, pioneering ways to wring water and chemicals from the jeans-making process, yes, and into the cooking and bathing of the people on Lesotho. But if there's a pin

Levi Strauss wears more proudly, it's probably the one for its standard- role in the garment industry the company began moving production abroad in the early 1990s around the same time that brutal conditions in overseas sweatshops starting to make headlines in parentheses levi's figured in some of them due to a scandal in saipan this prompted the company to create a code of conduct for all its suppliers whether wherever they were in the world they would rise above weak labor laws. No! They wouldn't rise above them. They'd fucking subvert them and

make people raped so that they could sell jeans on a discount. It wouldn't be the first time Levi shook things up. After it came out that their workers were being raped, they rolled out the dockers line. We need like a trigger warning before this episode. Yeah, I think so so by the way uh

i got roasted for wearing jeans the rest of you fucks are wearing dockers uh these are uh duluth trading co pants yeah well these are leaves who gives you guys you guys are socialist where you're wearing shit that was made by capitalism so i wrote the word union made on my pants so i've got nothing to apologize for here um but look uh we've gone long enough i think uh and we could spend all day i did just want to mention respect international took a look at some of their uh respect international uh respect dash international uh they took a case study in 2014 of child... Legitimate case study company, Respect International. They took a look at child labor in Bangladesh in 2014. It was a case study of Levi Strauss and Company,

their factory in Bangladesh. When the corporation was... I'm quoting from it. When the corporation was confronted with the problem of child slavery and its factors in Bangladesh, Levi Strauss and Co. decided to continue paying the already employed children their salaries while they attended school after having realized the scope of the problem of child slavery in bangladesh levi strauss and co implemented a

policy that required potential employees to present school certificates to certify that they were of working age and um and you know i mean and, and of course, you know, in 2012, Greenpeace named and shamed Levi's for a connection to dangerous water pollution in Mexico. You know, and they, of course, put out a statement pledging to reduce the hazardous chemicals used to dye and treat their clothing. Oh, so when Boston dyes their river green for St. Patrick's Day, no one gives a fuck. But when we turn all of the Mexican water blue, which, by the way, that's the color water is supposed to be. They say don't trust the water in Mexico.

I don't see what's wrong with putting a little food inside this water. I'm quoting from goodonyou.eco. Goodonyou.eco writes up an ethical thing on Levi's. Levi's put out a statement aiming for, quote unquote, the elimination of hazardous chemicals by 2020. And something we've talked about with the chocolate industry is they aimed for the elimination of child slavery in their supply chains by 2020. And then put out a statement this year like, we're not going to quite make it there so uh i'm going to guess that levi's is not going to eliminate hazardous chemicals by this year but we'll see and uh i guess the last thing i wanted to mention is uh good on you.eco that website's great by the way uh rating the uh the ethical labor standards of Levi's, they rate it, quote, it's a start, unquote.

Which is apparently not their worst rating. But yes, they say Levi's still does not pay living wages to the people making the jeans. And these are why the Haas family is worth $4.7 billion. And you have a parentheses. It was not a start. Just thousands of nameless workers

all around the world being ground into dust uh we'll never know what happens to these people we only get little snippets here and there the worst stuff is always going to be a secret and it'll it'll die with these people it'll it'll take it to their graves and these are the people your democratic party who are trying to stop bernie sanders with pete budieg and Pakranim and all of that. They had high hopes. Yes. So we'll know by the time this episode is out, but hopefully we can make a dent in that

Democratic establishment. And hopefully your Tuesday is super. And with that, this has been Grub Stickers. I'm Yogi Paiwal. I'm Andy Palmer. Steve Jeffers. I'm Sean P. McCarthy. Have a super Tuesday.

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