Spotlight on Sweatshops

Re “Kathie Lee and the Sweatshop Crusade,” June 14:

I believe that Kathie Lee Gifford knew nothing about the working conditions in the sweatshops which manufacture her clothes line. But, incredibly, a television host who doesn’t know anything about such a well-documented, ongoing labor-exploitation issue is watched by millions of viewers. (No wonder most of us don’t know anything about these conditions, as she suggested.)

Yet anyone with a modest interest in world conditions who has read a newspaper in the last 10 years would have read about sweatshops and made the connection to the clothes on our backs. The truth is out there.

RICHARD BAKER

Beverly Hills

Three cheers for Charles Kernaghan! He is a true hero of our nation for his endless voicing of the atrocities in the sweatshops. Years ago when a Wal-Mart opened in our area, a friend of ours who is also a “pleader for workers’ rights” informed us not to purchase clothes from Wal-Mart due to the sweatshop problem.

SHELLY McCARTHY

Ventura

Both Labor Secretary Robert Reich and Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary were covered in separate reports by The Times on June 14. Reich announced with Kathy Lee Gifford that he plans to hold a forum to look into sweatshops producing consumer goods. O’Leary was defending her expenditure of $4.57 million for trade mission trips to India, South Africa, Pakistan and China--all of which have sweatshops and exploit children in the job market as a normal course of doing business.

Am I the only person who observes conflicting goals by these two Cabinet-level government employees?

TIMOTHY KING

Lomita