Women Who Make Ivanka Trump Clothes Don't Earn Enough To Live With Their Kids

The champion of “working moms” uses factories that don’t pay women enough to live with their own children

Ivanka Trump, who just published a book entitled, “Women Who Work” gets clothing and shoes made for her Ivanka Trump line from overseas factories that don’t pay working women enough to afford to live with their own kids.

The Guardian spoke to more than a dozen workers at a factory in Subang, Indonesia, where Ivanka Trump items are produced. “Employees describe being paid one of the lowest minimum wages in Asia and there are claims of impossibly high production targets and sporadically compensated overtime,” the article reports.

Now, you may say, “So what. It’s how a lot of American companies do business.” Only, her father ran on a platform of “making America great again” by bringing jobs back to this country, and Ivanka touts herself as a champion for working women.

“The harder you work, the luckier you get. I’m a big believer in that.” – Ivanka Trump

The stories from the workers who produce her wares solidify what we all know: that Ivanka comes from such privilege, that she thinks of these “workers” as merely something to reduce her costs and increase her profits. The woman who’s full of advice for how working women should handle themselves clearly doesn’t regard the working women in her factories as important enough to consider.

One worker they spoke to, Alia, works at the PT Buma Apparel Industry factory in Subang, West Java. She and her husband are in deep debt after years of work. They live in a boarding house they rent for $30 a month, decorated with pictures of their children because “the couple can’t dream of having enough money to have them at home. The children live, instead, with their grandmother, hours away by motorcycle, and see their parents just one weekend a month, when they can afford the gasoline.” She makes the legal minimum wage for her job, about $173 a month, which is among the lowest wage in Indonesia.

“Our brand, Ivanka Trump, is committed to celebrating women.” – Ivanka Trump

“When Alia was told the gist of Ivanka Trump’s new book on women in the workplace, she burst out laughing,” The Guardian reports. “Her idea of work-life balance, she said, would be if she could see her children more than once a month.”

Her idea of work-life balance would be if she could see her children more than once a month.

“I want my children to see me first every morning, so I wake up at 5 and make sure to shower and exercise before they get up.” – Ivanka Trump

There are currently 2759 workers are Buma. About three-quarters of them are women, the majority with children who they devote all their income to but cannot afford to live with.

Carry Somers, founder of the non-profit Fashion Revolution said: “Ivanka Trump claims to be the ultimate destination for Women Who Work, but this clearly doesn’t extend to the women who work for her in factories around the world.”

Ivanka exploits cheap female labor in the name of the almighty dollar, and at the same time dares to posit herself as the poster girl for the working woman.

Some clichés are just too perfect…

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”