Fruit of the Loom?

In 1998, Fruit of the Loom moved it's production facility from Campbellsville, KY, to Export Salva, a 70-acre industrial park 15 miles from San Salvador, El Salvador. Although the company had noble roots, it had become a chip in the pile owned by various conglomerates by this time. Outsourcing United States jobs to Central America was one method that the directors of the company decided was prudent to cut costs and save money in order to generate larger revenues. This was in an attempt to dig themselves out of an ever growing ditch of profit loss.

It didn't work. In 1999 Fruit of the Loom filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Eventually the brand was bought by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway Corporation in 2002. While the profit situation turned around, the jobs stayed in El Salvador.

Now, due to the economic crisis confronting the entire planet, El Salvadorians are worried that the same thing that happened to the original Kentucky workers will happen to them, that Berkshire will move the production to Asia in order to further cut costs. The irony is both tragic and laughable.

I chose a Fruit of the Loom shirt because people really don't know any of what I just explained, they just think it's a cheap clothing brand that you can get almost anywhere. As such, I bought my shirt at WalMart, itself an evildoer of ignoble proportions. I painted on a slightly altered version of the brand logo in bright acrylic paint, and wrote in two tones the words “FROM KENTUCKY/ TO EL SALVADOR/ Outsourcing American Jobs Since 1998” on the front of the shirt. Then I heat pressed the paint into the shirt so it wouldn't wash away. Then it was simply a matter of taking the shirt to WalMart and placing it on a prominently displayed hanger. No one noticed or even if they did, they did not seem to care. Apathy in America is alive and strong.