How do these sub-contractors get away with paying their employees so little? For one thing, many garment workers are undocumented and don’t realize that they have a right to the minimum wage. Factory owners have been know to threaten to terminate their jobs — or even call U.S. immigration enforcement — if they demand higher wages. When workers do seek help from the Garment Worker Center, which helps them file formal complaints with the Labor Commission, employers usually get a month’s notice before they’re required to show their records to the commission. That gives owners time to temporarily shut down, or to close up shop and reopen under a different name.

“We had one employer just go to Korea for a month, and then reopen under a different name or a relative’s name,” Martinez says. “And it’s like, same factory, same workers, same machines.” But because the ownership is technically different, it's not accountable for the prior wage complaint.

If the brands themselves are often willfully ignorant about the conditions in which their clothes are made, how are individual consumers supposed to figure it out?

“You have to really think about it when you’re buying something,” Martinez says. “If you’re buying a shirt that’s $7, for example, and you know that the minimum wage is $9, you’re saying this one $7 garment probably took at least 30 minutes to make, plus travel to get here, and there’s a lot of people that worked on that garment.” The numbers really don’t add up.

That’s where you come in. You can choose to be a conscientious buyer. You can choose to understand what goes into making even the simplest of garments. You can choose to think about the true cost of a $7 shirt. It might be a bargain for you, but not such a good deal for another woman out there who’s struggling to support her children. Only you can say if it’s worth it.