From American Public Marketplace:
Still, the global worker oppression argument — linking low-wage Walmart warehouse workers in Southern California or shelf-stockers in Maryland to grossly-underpaid garment workers in Bangladesh — can seem like a rhetorical stretch. “Is there some stretching that goes on? There’s always some stretching that goes on,” responds David Meyer. He’s a sociologist and political scientist at University of California, Irvine, and author of the book ‘The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in America.’ Meyer says labor has always used workplace tragedies and outrages — like the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (1911) in New York — to organize. Nowadays, it’s not so much about starvation wages or deadly factory conditions. It’s more often about living wages, the right to organize, legislative attacks on collective bargaining. “In the United States, labor is fighting an uphill battle -- right-to-work laws are coming in in places where they’ve never been before,” says Meyer. “Activism about the garment industry — even if the garment industry is abroad — is meant to connect to activism for public sector workers, like teachers and firefighters.”

Audio link available at http://www.marketplace.org/topics/wealth-poverty/will-bangladesh-factory...