Out of Sight

American author and history professor Erik Loomis’s non-fiction book Out of Sight: The Long and Disturbing History of Corporations Outsourcing Catastrophe (2015) examines the dire consequences of a century of American outsourcing and capitalist globalization. According to Loomis, these consequences include not only lost jobs but also lost lives due to lax safety regulations as well as devastating environmental damage, the true cost of which is still yet to be calculated. In a glowing review, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) says, "The arrival of Out of Sight could not have been better timed. Erik Loomis prescribes how activists can take back our country—for workers and for those who care about our planet."

The author traces much of the Western Hemisphere's current problems of labor outsourcing and exploitation to March 25, 1911: The day of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire in New York City. Like many American factories at the time, the doors to the exits and stairwells were kept locked to prevent workers from taking breaks. Moreover, the factory sat on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floors of a high-rise, making a safe, unassisted exit via the windows impossible. At 4:40 p.m. that day, a fire broke out in a rubbish bin, likely caused by a discarded cigarette. Despite the fact that the fire started out small and triggered a fire alarm within five minutes, the premeditated lack of egress in the factory caused the workers to be trapped. By the end of the workday, 143 garment workers had perished in the fire. According to recent research, most of the dead were young immigrant women from Europe, between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three.

While this may seem like a strange place to start a narrative about outsourcing and globalization, Loomis argues that the same dangerous race-to-the-bottom corporate practices of today are in the same spirit of the cruel, compassionless, cost-cutting efforts of Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the men who owned the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Moreover, the 1915 factory fire is significant because of the labor laws and organizations that arose in the tragedy's wake, drawing a connection between labor and humanitarianism.



Loomis also traces the impact of labor activists on passing environmental legislation, suggesting that labor may be the missing ingredient in today's current political fights over climate change. Since the 1910s, labor activists like Jane Addams and Mary McDowell advocated for better cleanup standards for Chicago's stockyards, which frequently dumped animal waste into the Chicago River creating a vile smell of decay throughout the surrounding neighborhoods. However, despite sensory conditions that most modern Americans would find unacceptable, Loomis writes that early-twentieth-century Americans "equated pollution with progress."

Over the next several years, the scientific evidence proving the dangers of pollution increased significantly. Nevertheless, it was less the evidence, Loomis argues, and more the "greater political voice of the working and middle classes after World War II" that most contributed to making pollution a major issue. After all, corporations did and would continue to deny the evidence. It was the political will of the working class populace, led in spirit by the labor movement, that helped lead to the founding of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Clean Water Act, among other landmark developments of the early 1970s.

Loomis ends with another devastating garment factory accident, only this one took place on the other side of the world in Dhaka, Bangladesh. On April 24, 2013, a day after cracks appeared in the Rana Plaza building causing most floors to evacuate, a garment factory continued to employ its workers. That day, the building collapsed, killing an estimated 1,134 workers and injuring 2,500 more. Meanwhile, the factory produced clothing for brands located throughout the world, including Versace, Gucci, Prada, Benetton, and Walmart. Moreover, the top four floors had been built without a permit. By outsourcing labor to countries with not only looser regulations but also fewer enforcement options, Western corporations jeopardized thousands of lives in a single day, Loomis writes.



When asked in an interview at Salon why corporations "continue to operate like a parody of some Dickensian overseer?" Loomis responds, bluntly, "Because no one is making them stop."