Part One: Peter Nygard: The Epstein of Fashion

for our dear friend, Margaret kill Joy. Mars people right, this this is a nice one, kind of not really, Um, Margaret, you know you you're, you're, you're, you're, you're familiar with a friend of the pod Jeffrey Epstein, Right, I am aware of this person. Yeah, yeah, Um, everybody is real bad. Um, not great, Um, not not very well, although by some judgments, better than ever because he's dead. Um. That might be my attitude towards how Jeffrey Epstein's doing. Um, a pretty

bad guy. He's kind of become like shorthand for a specific kind of monster, like a man who traffics women and children. Um, and is like fucking child sex trafficker to the rich and famous and powerful, just like this embodiment of corruption. And I'm here to tell you today, Margaret, I found a guy I think might be worse. Um, goddamnit. Yeah, um wow, this guy real, real piece of shit. Have you heard of Peter Nigrid? I have not. Okay, well, put on your I once again, I'm saying, how could

you do this to our dear friend. I'm not sure what you what? You put on? Strap on your anti pedophile cream, vote up your anti garment industry monster fashion demon hammer, and get ready for an episode behind the Bastards. Just nine mill I feel like a nine millimeter might work out great. I keep one in my desk in case anyone involved in the fashion industry comes to my house. I do. I do sincerely look forward to the point where I get to show Margaret a picture. Yeah, this

guy looks incredible. Almost. I almost brought our good friend Tom Ryman onto the podcast, who we had on for our episodes on right wing media Grifters, just to react to this man's appearance and then leave. But I DESI had not. Um Pecca Juhani Nigard was born in Helsinki, Finland, on July nine. His mother and his father ran a bakery, or maybe it was just his dad. Sources I found her a little bit unclear. Now you might guess by the year that this was not the easiest period in

history to be a finn Um. Some real the late thirties early forties real rough years for the Finnish people. There's for a lot of people in that region to be fair, not just some good decisions and some bad decisions and rapid succession. It was a complicated time. No one was going to handle it perfectly. Um. And after the war, his family were like, maybe this chunk of Europe is not the best place to raise a child. I don't I don't know, if I don't know, if

the bad stuff is done happening over here, you know. Um. So they moved to Winnipeg, Canada, where they lived in They get hired by a bakery, and the bakery kind of moves them in to some land that it owns, which means that they take up residents in a fifteen foot by thirteen foot converted colbin um. So that's also not a great place to raise a family. Not a

great place to raise a family. Although if you've just lived through several both the invasion of Finland by Russia and then World War Two, you'll be like a coalbin where nobody is shooting at us. Sounds dope, yeah, let's get the funk out of Finland. Probably would stop some bullets. I probably would. There's a good chance that was on their mind. How big is this Cobin? Oh yeah, no, absolutely yeah. Um. So they lived there for a little while.

Peter was about or Pecca at this point was eight or nine years old, maybe eleven when he moved again. Sources are kind of unclear, and it's not entirely clear to me. If he was born at a time when everybody who got born in Finland got up an accurate birth certificate, right like the forties, you still are kind of in that that period. Um. Now, since Finnish names are simply unacceptable in English speaking nations, he began going by Peter instead of Peca and substituted the Johani for

a j um. Now we have a lot less to tail about his early life than I would prefer. And because he becomes basically a billionaire, Peter was successful for many years and limiting the scope of inquiry that reporters could could delve into his past. I did find it right up on celeb family dot com, which is a clearly credible source by someone I think was either Peter

Niagart or someone he had paid to write it. Um and that source notes quote er Nigard credits his vast success to three things genetics, his finished roots, and perseverance. He is immensely grateful to his parents for having immigrated to Canada. He remembers never having to go without the basic necessities, even though money was often scarce in his household.

And I think actually is probably more just based on some things he paid other people to write on other websites, and then he gets it wounds up getting filtered to these kind of clickbait sites after some stories break about him. But whatever, the person he is about, how good of a person he well, yeah, that's early on. Yes. Um, So his mother and his father opened their own bakery soon after arriving in Canada. Um, they move out of the coal bin pretty quick, so they're doing good. They're

doing good. Uh. They wind up in the big city, which is Winnipeg, so not really a big scene, a moderately large town, birthplace of Winnie the Pooh. Um, he was a meeting, Yeah, Winnipeg, that's yeah. Does hear one lie? It might be crap. There's no way to know. It's impossible to say. Um, but Yes, the city where Winnie the Pooh lived briefly before going to die on the Western Front. Look it up. You you'd be surprised at

how accurate that one is. Um. So, yeah, they open a bakery and uh, they things go well, you know, they wind up kind of It's kind of hard for me to tell exactly, but I would probably say upper middle class ish or maybe at least solidly middle class. Right, they're doing fairly well. Um, And yeah, they seem to have a lot of gratitude to their adopted new home country.

Once Peter gets rich, his mom's going to use some of his money to create a park in Winnipeg in their father's armor honor, where the coal beIN homestead they've lived on is featured. Uh. I don't know that they keep that cold been around anymore. After the stuff that happens in this story. But now again Peter becomes almost a billionaire, close enough that it doesn't really matter all that much. The internet winds up littered with all these weird little websites that he paid to create and have

someone right nice things about him on. There's like a bunch of websites he makes. We'll be talking about this more in part two. Because it's part of a a kind of rich guy battle. He winds up and and what'll do this for? Like ten dollars that much? Right? You get some people in other countries to write some nice stuff about you. Yeah, use like a task rabbit style app to get Yeah. Yeah, um, it's not a bad idea, right, Margaret. We could, we could, We could

at least take down one enemy. I feel like if we if we wrangled together six to eight writers, Yeah, that could be the end. That could be the end of of Will Wheaton. Oh sure. Uh So in one of these, uh these random little websites about him, which was titled the Real Peter Niger dot Com, I found this claim that's again incredibly incredible. Yeah yeah, well, wouldn't say real if it wasn't, Margaret. It's like being a cop. You're not allowed to lie about that. No, absolutely, not

so quote. Peter excelled at school and received recognition and awards for both academics and athletics. During his secondary school years. He constantly contributed money to assist his family through varied and multiple jobs. He concluded, and he concluded his high school years as the most accomplished student in the graduating class. Peter was later asked by the school to return and deliver a speech to the graduating class. This speech provides a roadmap to his success in business in life, and

was still being quoted fifty years later. Now I haven't found a copy of this speech, Margaret. I don't. I don't. I don't know that it's still being quoted fifty years later, unless it's by people Peter and igerd paid to write articles about him. Um. But yeah, there there you go. That's his claims about this period. We know that he goes to the United States, you know, basically as soon as he graduates high school. Um. And he graduates from the University of North Dakota a couple of years later

with a business degree. This is in nineteen sixty four, when he is twenty three years old. Would go on to praise one of his professors, Tom Clifford, as a mentor. Now Tom round Up went up running the college, and he seems that I found like his You like obituaries and stuff, um, which obviously aren't unbiased. But the obituaries make him look like a decent guy. He killed a Japanese soldier during World War Two with a shovel, but that's you know that happens, also pretty rad. I gotta

get anyone who kills a man with a shovel. That's pretty badass. Yeah yeah, not boring, um, not boring um. He was also apparently pushed for more recognition of Indigenous people on campus, which is nice. Um. There's only one detail from the obituary that gives us maybe some insight into what niggards saw in him. Quote in the preface to Good Medicine, a two thousand three account of intrigue

behind the creation of the four year medical school. He created a medical school at the University of North Canada, Clifford told how we cut corners, sometimes at blinding speed, and got around red tape in many cases by simply ignoring it. Right. So Clifford Clifford is kind of an education Asian. And again I haven't really run into terrible criticisms of this guy, but he's he's Peter's mentor, and he's a big if you've got to cut corners, cut

them kind of guy, right. Um, So that might that might have an impact on the man that Peter becomes a little bit late. Right corners like getting consent from your workers and consents. Not something Peter is going to grow up to be great at Margaret In a number of ways, He's not. That's not a strong suit of his. Um. Yeah, his other strength he I mean, he does have other strengths. Uh, we can debate whether or not they're good ones. So Peter spends very little time working for anybody else in

his life. He returns to Winnipeg right after graduating. He gets hired by the Tea Eaton's Company, which one of his websites describes as quote the premier and most sophisticated department store chain in North America. I have no way to to judge those claims, three of them, and they had like a yeah, yeah, it's some weird little Canadian like I haven't heard of Tea Eatons. It sounds like

it's a it's like the Tim Horton's of clothing. Um. Anyway, he was part of their young executive program, and Peter is very careful to let us know that quote. He worked side by side with the Eaton brothers and was identified by the Eaton family and their executive management team as having the potential to eventually run the entire Eaton's operation. But he doesn't do that, Margaret. He doesn't do that,

and we don't really know why. Although it's possible he's just lying about this and he wasn't really very good at that job, we have absolutely no way of I mean, theoretically, if I was to make an article about him, I could try to track down people in the Eaton's management team, but they're all probably dead now because this was nineteen sixty six. Um, he was really the most accomplished student at a school in all fields or whatever. He was

probably the one who made the most money. I have not I can't tell you off the top of my head, and did not find in limited research at University of North Dakota graduate who I'm certain made more money than your niagred. So he makes a lot of an okay. In nineteen sixty seven, he gathers up his life savings and receives an eight thousand dollar loan to purchase a steak in a woman's garment manufacturer called Nathan Jacobs. Now kind of unclear to me whether the loan came from

a bank or his family. Uh Niagard does not specify on any of the defunct websites I found and I haven't really found clarity anywhere else. Um. It's noted in several sources that he quickly came to own the business outright on one of his websites. Niagard says the speed with which Niagard claimed his number one position in the industry has attributed to the uniqueness of his business decisions and his work ethic that includes fourteen to sixteen hour days,

seven days a week. But then, as Niagard says, the only time you are working is when you wish you were doing something else. And that's, uh, that's gonna be good. When we have our podcasting seminars. I feel like that's going to be a that's right, that's gonna be at You all got that for free. Yeah, you got that for free, but if you I mean honestly, I do feel like we should get a collections agency to just go around and crack a couple of kneecaps of some

listeners until they pay up. That was worth just random three or fifty dollars. You feel like that's a three fifty margaret, Yeah, I think so, as long as it's enough people, well ten ten people, yeah, at least ten of you better send us some fucking cash or um, it's it'll it'll be bad. That's a threat, that's a legally binding threat that that I'm party to somehow that you cool, Zone Media, Sophie, the I Heart Radio Corporation. We're all all making it anyway. On one of his

personal websites, Nigard describes this process differently. Rather than buying into own part of a company, he was quote recruited to become an equity partner, which makes it sound more like the company brought him on to buy them out. He makes sure to let you know that he was recruited quote despite having no direct knowledge or experience. And the ladies apparel manufacturing industry, do you think it's just like going out of business and they're like fun, fun fun.

I kind of think it was. I kind of think that's what happened. That he was not recruited. They thought they were pulling over one on over on him. Um, but that's not how things are going to work out, because this is the thing he's actually good at in anyway, He by gets enough money together one way or the other, by hook or by crook over the next year or two couple of years to buy a majority stake in the business, which he renames from Jacobs to tan J

Fashions um now. He would later market the products under his own name, Niagard, and eventually expand to produce products under tinned brand names. His clothing was sold in Niagard stores, but also in major department stores like Sears and Dillards. Remember Sears and Dillard's. I remember Sears. I feel like Dillard's missed me. I mean, I can picture it. But yeah, if you want, right today, if you want to encounter very large rats, find your nearest Dillard's and break in.

Don't worry. There's no security guards there. Um, there's no people there at all. It's it's it's the Boulevard of broken dreams. A Dillard's in two serious security guard uniform, like you'll find the desiccated remains of a security guard with rats kind of filling out the uniform in a sort of body shape. Yeah. They left him there when they when they locked the doors from the outside and they said they'll be right back. Yeah, and now the rats inhabit his soul um, but they don't know about

cell phones, so they can't reach his family. He had a six month old shot I don't know why I'm making this so sad. One early strength that helped Nigart expand beyond the bounds of the business he'd invested in was a focus on the growing field of information technology. Peter, and again, this is like the fucking seventies that this is all starting to come together, invested in software that linked manufacturing with a network of retail stores to keep

them fully stocked. Peter expanded his business from Canada to the United States. He did this by again investing in an existing company, a sportswear designer run by Nancy Ebker. She claims Peter came to her and agreed to split profits fifty fifty and kicking seven hundred thousand dollars of her own money to finance the production of two new sportswear lines sold out of her showroom. According to Ebgar, Niagard smooth talked her out of putting any of this

agreement down in writing. He complained that bringing lawyers into the situation would make everything a big mess. As soon as the deal closed, Niagard fired Ebger from her own company and took over the offices. Um, yeah, he is, he is. He is a cool customer. I'm going to quote from a write up and form and that's the worst thing he did. M Well, yeah, Edgar is still fuming. He literally ruined my life, she says. Ebgar claimed in court testimony that in their heated final conversation, Niagard told

her I have all your patterns. I have everything, I own everything. I never intended to put anything in writing. You have nothing and I am a millionaire. Yeah, that's straight up. Um, he's the one who locked that guy into Dillard's. He's dead. He did. Oh my god, of course he did. Um, why wouldn't he. Let's try to reason, she interjected, to which Nagard responded, if you don't have one million dollars by Friday, I'm going to see to it that your name and reputation are totally destroyed in

this market. Um. Just a cool guy. Now. Niagard tells the court a different story, saying the two had a calm conversation in which he suggested the amicably part ways. The judge found Edgar to be highly credible and deemed Niggard evasive, insincere, and utterly lacking incredibility. We deplore the unseemly conduct of Niagard. Judge Irving Cooper wrote but ultimately ruled that Edgar failed to prove she was damaged by

his actions. Nigard's counterclaim was also dismissed. Edgar, who calls him a true villain of the world, is writing a book about the case. I don't think she ever did. She did. I'll read it, um. So his business takes off in the years that follow Niagart hires his mom, He brings his sister on a spokesman for the brand, and he's building this clothing building he's making is really tailor made for middle aged women. This is not high fashion. I don't mean that as an insult, but he's not.

He's not building this is like, this is the Paris Runway kind of stuff. This is like clothing for women from like thirty to fifty, um, who have a couple of kids. It's meant to be like affordable, have like a wide selection, and he's trying to both make it kind of something that's attractive to them but also something

that they feel good about buying from. So he makes sure that, like his sister is the spokeswoman, he makes sure to bring his mom on so that he can talk about how while he treats his mom um, he emphasizes his annual two million dollar donation to breast cancer research. He claims makes big claims about having an ethical supply chain. Uh. Niagard's former website bragged as achievements to be the number one the first manufacturer to have air conditioned factories. Um

and in the real Peter Niagar dot com. He also claims, quote Peter was always committed to the health and comfort of his associates. He was the first company in Canada to ban smoking by associates or visitors in the buildings or elsewhere on the premises. He created the first air conditioned manufacturing and visitors Yeah, well he banned them from smoking. Oh yeah, and he he created the first air conditioned manufacturing plants, transforming the industry from sweatshops to fashion houses. Uh,

this guy's fucking clever. Mhm, Margaret, you want to guess if they weren't sweatshops anymore? Uh? Was this his one lie? Yeah, this is the only one. So um, we'll get to that in a second. Obviously, top reviews for Niagard clothing on Amazon include praise that their polyester pants are quote very comfortable and wash well. Um, so it gives you an idea of kind of like what people are looking

for in these right, Like I want something comfortable. I want something that's convenient, Like I'm a busy mom, right like that? That that's like what this is angled at um And it's a good strategy. In very short order, his clothing is in more than thirty states. Sixty of his corporate revenue was soon coming from outside of Canada, and it spreads to other countries too. It's not just

the US and Canada's all over the place. And as you might have guessed by now, the reality of niagard ink labor practices did not quite matched the rosy claims made by their old website. And I'm gonna quote from Forbes here. In late April, the National Labor Committee n LC, a private group in Pittsburgh, issued a report claiming that Niggard pants from its Alie line were being sewn in

a Jordanian sweat shop. The factory in al Zarka. The report says, employed guest workers from Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and India who had quote been trafficed to Jordan's, stripped of their passports and held under conditions of indentured servitude. According to the investigation, women were forced to work fifteen hour shifts seven days a week, and we're paid half the

wages they were owed. A Niagard spokeswoman says that a government inquiry found no truth to the allegations, but since the report, the NLC says factory conditions have improved significantly. Passports have been returned and workers now get Fridays off. Wow, and they get their own passports back. They get to keep their passports while they're working fifteen hour days, six days a week. Um, and six days a week. Yeah, that's that's not as many to days as there are

in the week. That's not that's not that's a whole day they don't have to work. Other cool fact. The factory is in al Zarka, which is also the hometown of Abu Musab al Zarkawi, the founder of al Qaeda in Iraq, which is kind of the group that immediately led to isis Yeah, okay, cool guy. Anyway, that has nothing to do with Peter Niagard coincidence. It's just a fun well or does it. Did Peter Niagard uh create isis in order to sell more comfortable, easily washed polyester sweatpants.

Did a world will never know. There's no babe that it didn't happen. Maybe it's possible, but that's not a legally binding allegation, so it gets worse. The one detail I did find on his website that actually surprised me was this tidbit. Nothing has made a bigger impact on the Canadian fashion industry than the NAFTA agreement. The seeds of this agreement were sewn in nineteen two when Peter Nyagard wrote a strategic position paper to initiate free trade.

This paper resulted in his appointment to chair in the Advisory Committee on Future Canadian Long Term Industrial Strategy. From that committee grew Niger's recommendation to negotiate a free trade Agreement f t A first with the United States, which ultimately became the foundation agreement from Mexico's entry in d e c. Ninety two, nor known as the North American Free Trade Agreement or NAFTA. No other person in the apparel industry has played a more significant role with the

creation of NAFTA than Peter Niagart. Holy sh it right, Yeah, now, okay, Well that means the zapatista. We get the Zapatistas out of him. We do kind of get the zapatistas out of him. Um, it's now obviously this is a claim being made on his website. He thinks of his personals and he is taking personal credit for making it. I

think he is overselling his role here. But he winds up on a couple joint Canadian US like government panels, like several a number over the years, like a number of pretty significant positions that he holds, like helping to carry out aspects of like what's going to become NAFTA. So he's not entirely lying here either. We're going to get into this in a bit. But he is not an insignificant part of the creation or the establishment of NAFTA,

although he is a little bit over selling it here. UM, he's definitely one of the people in the apparel industry who's most involved in the creation of NAFTA. That's probably fair to UM. So we're gonna talk about that and why that's not entirely a good thing. But first, Margaret, you know, people don't like about NAFTA the fact that it strips resources from developing nations to fuel the lifestyles of the wealthy that are destroying the earth exactly. You

know what doesn't do that? Potatoes. Potatoes don't. But let me let me paint a picture of you, Margaret. Want you to think about the Great Lakes superior the other ones, shining out beautiful, surrounded by basically Hanada, Canada, which is

the bad guy of this story. Now imagine, now imagine Margaret, a beautiful sheet of I C. B M s coming down over the Great Lakes, and instead of robbing poorer and low income nations in order to finance the lifestyles of the rich and the famous, we irradiate fish in the Great Lakes to provide the world with fish. That's huge, because whatever, probably who knows what happens. I just think we should do it. Ylvie, how are we doing here?

I'm so tired that I'm like, let's let me show you some pamphlets while while the listeners check out these other ads. Okay, oh we're back. And you know, I think if the US has six thousand nuclear weapons, we can spare a handful. Convinced. The pamphlets had lots of charts, yep and it and uh warning labels that have been scratched out, so they probably don't matter. They probably don't matter. And several times I repeated the lyrics to the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to remind you of all the

brave men who died in those lakes. Yeah. Absolutely, So I looked at your many personal websites, and I have hired to we have a lot of websites made. I cross referenced from one of your personal websites to the other, and they all checked out. That's right, that's what we

call research. That's nocent um. Yeah, you know, people, look, Sophie has driven a hard line that we have to stop the blue Apron child island bit um because it's it's just it's just creates so much work on the bleeping end um, and then when we don't bleep it, people are like is it real, which is a question we've had to deal with a lot lately. So now we're going to talk about nuking the Great Lakes for a couple of months and then I'll figure out something else.

Because you believe, mistakenly that if you go all of the producers and go more and more drastically absurd, that people will stop believing you I do hope because it will be really funny. It'll be the end of life on this earth, but it'll be really funny that like this bit ends with me being elected president in a landslide with a mandate to deploy nuclear weapons to the Great Lakes. Yeah, I mean you don't have zero Mostel, so off. But anyway, back to NAFTA. Speaking of bad things, um,

not bad things like zero Mustel. He was rad didn't name names anyway, Sorry Jesus, this is going off the rails a little bit. Let's talk about NAFTA. So Peter n Iagart, obviously he's a narcissist. Take what he says about being like integral to the creation of NAFTA with a grain of salt. But it's not an invented claim.

It's probably fair to say that niagard strategic papers were less the inspiration for NAFTA than one of a number of people with influence who were pushing for trade liberalization to allow US and Canadian companies to do their manufacturing overseas, particularly in Mexico. I found a right up by the makila Uh Solidarity Network, which is a Canadian organization promoting solidarity with laborers in places like Mexico and other parts of Central America to improve conditions and win a living

wage for workers. Right at the beginning of NAFTA, they published a position paper analyzing the trade agreement and it's likely impact on laborers and the manufacturer they chose to highlight in order to analyze this was Niagard. So whatever he's saying, and however much he kind of exaggerates things

this organization. When they were like choosing to like look at a garment manufacturer to see what NAFTA was going to do in Mexico, they picked Niagard because he's it was a really big deal and he was a big part of it. Ums, just like the obvious where are we at? Timeline? Yeah, this is this is like the late eighties. I think when kind of this gets I can I can actually look this up? Um don't. I'm just trying to figure out why I've never heard of

this brand before. Is it because I'm not Canadian or is it because I only became a middle aged lady more recently. Yeah, I think the second might be a bigger and you're you're not like a suburban like mother of three, which I think is primarily kind of who he was angled at UM. But yeah, so obviously mckiela is also a Canadian organization that may also be part

of why they pick Niagard. But Niagard was one of the largest, I think at it for a time, the largest garment manufacturer to invest in Mexican factories and kind of the first days of nafta UM. The writers of that Makuela Solidarity Net Network paper did not consider this to have been a good thing, and they wrote quote from the research that has already been done on the ground. However, working conditions in areas where Niagard has produced and is

currently producing in Mexico are less than ideal. While management at the Majelosa factory in Tahoakan, Mexico, insisted that they paid premium wages, workers disputed these statements. Low wages are a common complaint of garment workers into wak Been. Many are forced to work several jobs to meet their families basic needs. It is not uncommon for children to work in smaller makilas and workshops to complement the very low

wages their parents are making. In Quahuila, where Niagard is currently contracting work there, are similar reports of low wages, long hours, and forced overtime. Since the signing of NAFTA, union representation has decreased significantly in this region. Force pregnancy testing and sexual harassment have also been reported. Further research needs to be done to document the working conditions at niagard owned factories in Guadalajara and Guernavaca, Mexico and Canada.

Three of Niagard's Manitoba factories are certified by UNITE, the North American Garment and Textile Workers Union. During union drives in the nineteen eighties at his plants, Peter Niagard placed full page ads in Winnipeg newspapers stating his anti union position. At that time, the Manitoba Labor Board ruled that the company had committed unfair labor practices, including the refusal to deduct union dues to allow the union access to the plant and to pay into the union's retirement and health

and welfare funds. Niagaret was ordered to pay the union and illegally laid off employees a hundred fifty dollars in money owed and fines um. So yeah, he's cool, Do

you ever like? Is there ever a bastard who's like the shining prints of everything and then secretly has the like murder basement or always just these people where you're like, of course, this person doesn't respect fucking anybody except like, I mean, we didn't portray it this way, but a lot of people, Georgia Tan, the woman who invented adoption by kidnapping a lot of babies, a whole bunch of people thought she was wonderful because she's running these adoption

centers and stuff, you know. Um, so I should probably say a little bit about naft to here as well. We're not gonna go a lot into nafty here, because that's a subject that deserves more than just casual coverage on a podcast. Um, but it's fair to say that rather than inspiring NAFTA, Nigaard's primary contribution was to be one of the first guys to use the trade agreement to escape unionized labor and forced workers to endure privation for the enhanced profit of his company. This pattern was

repeated on a large scale al by other businesses. I want to quote now from a writ up by sociology professor Robert Ross from Clark University. Uh, it is a long quote, but I think that it's necessary to do that here. On August second, nineteen, labor officials in the state of California rated a garment manufacturing shop twelve miles east of Los Angeles and the town of El Monty.

The shop was located in what had appeared to be a residential condominium complex, but this one was surrounded by a barbed wire fence and a six foot brick wall with metal spikes. Dangerous and unsanitary, the Carmit Factories was

worse than substandard. Its workers were virtual slaves. Held in the condominium complex were seventy two laborers who were first to work as much as seventeen hours a day, seven days a week for one six In some cases, the sixty seven women and five men worked up to twenty two hours for as little as fifty cents an hour their which is varied therefore between about one third and one tenth of the U S legal minimum wage. The

condominium was also a major fire hazard. There was no rear exit and only small windows with thick iron bars. A gain of eight smugglers had paid the workers air fair from Thailand, promising them a bright her future in America. Upon their arrival, However, the new immigrants were forced into slave labor, working day and night to pay off their passage fees. The fees ranged from forty eight hundred dollars to twenty five thousand dollars. They were also threatened with beatings, rape,

and even death. Following the discovery, all seventy two workers were arrested as a legal alien held by federal immigration officers, but conditions had been so bad. One of the women said, the day I was arrested, I was very happy. Budparangmak, one of the people forced to stay at the compound, claimed that a year ago, two people who tried to escape were severely beaten and sent back to Thailand. He also stated that workers were frequently beaten in the compound

to prevent escapes. Another worker from the al Monti sweatshop claimed that she was told it would take three years for her to pay off the forty eight hundred dollar traveling fee. She was forced to pay three hundred dollars a month. According to federal officials, threats against the workers children or family members in Thailand were used to make

sure their parents continued sewing. Immigration officials had been aware of the al Monty operation for three years, but the local authorities acted only when they heard the testimony of a woman who escaped through a ventilation shaft just weeks before the raid. The eight time nationals who ran the ring and its businesses were convicted of harboring and transporting

illegal immigrants, kidnapping, peonage, and other serious charges. A few weeks after the discovery, over a million dollars of their assets, including over eight hundred and sixty five thousand dollars in cash, were distributed to the seventy two workers found in al Monty and a thirty nine others who had worked in

the Los Angeles installations controlled by the ring. The smuggler owners have been imprisoned the illegal immigrants, who do approximately three point five million in back pay in penalties, The Labor and Occupational Safety agencies of the State of California asked for five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in penalties

from the sweatshop owners. Compensation has also been collected from the garment manufacturers who con commissioned work from the man from the contractor Major American Retails Change, which sold clothing made in the swaves. The slave sweatshop include and even

Marcus Montgomery Ward and Sears. Stories such as these about the Thai slaves of El Monty, California, symbolically represent one of the main tendencies of contemporary global capitalism, the tendency to level workers conditions down to or below a global standard more like that of today's most vulnerable Third world workers and that of yesterday's organized workers and the developed industrial social order. This is the concrete meaning of the

race to the bottom. While the Thai slaves represent the unusual worst case of the problems of labor in the apparel industry and in other low wage industries in North America, the rise of the new sweatshops is widespread. One responsible estimate, often used by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, is that up to half the entire apparel workforce of the United States, potentially half a million workers, labor it below the legal minimum wage or without legally entitled premium pay

for overtime hours. These workers also suffer unsafe and unsanitary conditions. Such conditions include as many as fifty thousand workers in New York City and seventy to ninety thousand in Los Angeles, the two largest centers of garment production in the country.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, dissolving barriers to the movement of goods and capital between the United States, Mexico and Canada, is like the European Union and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, part of the project of global capital and a very successful one. In thirty years, a new form of capitalism has been borne out of

the crisis of mid century capitalism. The mid century type of capitalism, known variously as monopoly capitalism or later ford is um, was characteristically associated with the Kingsian welfare state, but many of the characteristic forms and achievements of that variant of capitalism have been superseded by a new one,

global capitalism. This, then, is the context of NAFTA, a world project of capitalism to dissolve barriers to investment and to lower cost of production in te lingibso facto a systemic attack upon and loss of working class power and social protections in the older industrial nations. Yet paradoxically, the same world context makes more concrete than ever the rewards of solidarity and the necessity of internationalism. Anyway, I mean was a long one and it talks about the necessity

of something. Uh, like when I only a couple of things. When I think about the compensation as people are deserved, Yeah, I mostly think about like I don't know, ears and pieces pieces of bodies, yes, um, but it is like this is this is the thing that igerd was was a huge part of. And we can tell from the way he treated his workers in Canada and the way he treated his workers in Mexico. This was exactly what

he wanted to happen. Like he saw he was one of a number of people not to put too much credit on this guy, but he saw the people who made his products as a barrier to his profits. And before NAFTA happened, he was working to do what he could to ensure that they could not cut into his profits. And he backed NAFTA and took advantage of it as soon as it happened in order to cut the ability of other people to make money off of the company

that he owned. Right, Like, that was the thing. The people who made the products he wanted he was willing to, you know, force him to take pregnancy tests, beat them, um, lock them up for dayson and take their fucking passports. Whatever it takes to make sure that like he gets every dime he possibly can that anyway, I'm sure he used for good and noble purpose, like I just I can't even Yeah, that's that's what we're about to talk about. Yeah, what he does with all the money he makes doing this?

Um so uh. In nineteen eight seven, Peter purchased land in the Bahamas, where he soon began construction on a sprawling estate. We will discuss this later, um. But in two thousand three, an American couple sued him in Florida for allegedly tricking them into accepting jobs managing this estate. They further claimed that Niggard ignored Bahamanian immigration laws and failed to obtain work permits for employees, which you may notice is something of a pattern for him. You're gonna

need to give me those. I'll make sure you don't lose them now. They also alleged that he find workers for petty infractions, which Nigard conceded to doing during a court case. He claimed this was done in cases of quote lateness and poor quality work. Such penalties under law are only allowed to be deducted from quarterly bonuses, but

Nigard illegally deducted them from weekly pay Forbes rights. Twenty five dollar fines were common for such offenses as leaving a dirty glass on a beach cabana, not having Niggard's room enough when he arrived, and for the presence of house flies in the grand Hall. Executives at Niagard corporate

offices lived under a similar threat of penalties. For example, the employment contract of Norman Neil, a former vice president, advised that after receiving full indoctrination, including so called basic policy framework training, you would be septed to a fine equal to five percent of his bonus for violations of company policies. Neil was fired and he later sued for breach of employment contract. Niagrid countersuit and the case was settled.

So this is just kind of the way this guy rolls, and it is, I guess interesting that he treats his

vps kind of the same way. Um that that's honestly the most house thing so far, like you'd think, I mean, maybe it's just like all of the Hollywood indoctrination about like even the evil capitalist rich people at their house on the beach are like really into like seeming really cool to the people who are around them, including like the higher up people who work for them or whatever, like, no, this guy is, it's amazing, it's it's yeah, he's comprehensively

a piece of ship. Now there's more things we could say about Peter's treatment of his employees, but I think we have now covered the most consequential cruelties. So it's probably time to discuss the primary group of people outside of laborers that he targeted for horrific cruelty, which was any young woman who happened to be anywhere near his orbit. Often the employees he abused where were obviously, as this

excerpt from The New York Times makes clear. A nineteen eighty news article described an area of his office in Winnipeg, the city in Manitoba where he built his company, as a passion pit, with a mirrored ceiling and a couch that transformed into a bed at the push of a button. This is his office in Winnipeg. Um, if anyone calls your boss's office a passion pit, it's time. That's not a place. That's not don't go don't go to that's

not a good place. Don't go to the pack. Don't go to anything called the passion pit unless it's like a like a juice restaurant that that focuses on passion fruit and like peaches a lot, and I guess it might be okay, or like a kind of if you're into the kind of sleazy swinger club that we call

itself the passion Pit. Obvious, no judgment. Look, if there's if there's like a dirty bar in an industrial part of Philly that promises key parties and like sixty five cent rum and cokes and it's called the Passion Pit, of course I'm going to go there totally. Yeah, that's just a good time. Um, that's just a good time. And then a number of doctor visits afterwards, but most of that stuff anyway, whatever, Yeah, they got fucking things now, So uh boy, I shouldn't lead directly from that to

this next paragraphs. You know we're gonna to Margarets Is, We're going to roll to ads and just try to let let a little bit of capitalism cleanse our palates. This is our palate cleanser, little little little bit of an ad break, dabble off down the shopping pause. Whoa, it's all bad except for these ads. Oh we're back over the years. Peter Nigard was repeatedly accused of demanding for that female employees satisfy him sexually. Uh. There were at least nine women in Winnipeg and Los Angeles who

accused him of sexual harassment or assault. Um. The New York Times spoke to ten other women who said that he had proposed sex, touched them inappropriately, or raped them. Um. Since he sold fashion for women, Peter worked hard for decades to maintain the image of an eccentric playboy. But when it was basically good at heart, right, he would

dress ostentatiously, he would have this. He was always photographed with models and stuff, and there's even photos of like his passion pit and his like living room and stuff and all of his fancy things. But his whole attitude was that like, well, yeah, I'm a little bit of a play with but look, you know, my mom and my sister helped me run the company. Like I'm a

good guy at heart. I just like to um. Anyway, when he wrote about his one brief marriage to a model in the nineteen seventies, he refused to name her and claim that she had left him after three years because quote, I worked too hard, which is again you see what he's doing here is He's like, look, yeah, I had a marriage break up. It's because I worked too hard. But like, that's not done me. And I'm a bad guy, you know. I just that's what I do. Yeah, Um,

it's it's it's it worked for a while. In other interviews, Niagret would bemoan that he had given up on the concept of marriage. He claimed that in his youth it had been about finding a partner you wanted to stay with for life. Quote. It doesn't mean that anymore, he said, claiming he was disillusioned about what marriage has turned out to be. People aren't necessarily happier when they get married. I think you can be a very good partner to someone if you have to earn that partnership every day

rather than be legally bound to do it. Um. So another good. Yeah, that sounds that's like fine, Like, but that's not what he does. Um, that is very much not what he does. Um. It certainly does not jell with the picture of the man's relationship styles painted by this Forbes profile quote. Niagard went on to have seven children with four different women Karina Paca, and eventually gets

up to ten kids. Karina Paca, a former steward, has fought him for years in Ontario courts for child support for their then teenage son, and I could argue the amount she saw it was excessive and would destroy the child's work ethic. Give him a case of affluenza. I know, right, what a what a cool guy? Um? Yeah, he's just such a slee's ball. Um. But it works really well. He's making fucking bank. He's like one of the biggest

names in fashion. Allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace have flittered out around Peter for most of his career. We know that. In nineteen eighty, the Winnipeg Free Press reported that he'd been charged with the rape of an eighteen year old girl by local authorities. Those charges were dropped when the complainant refused to testify. I'll give you some guesses as to why. Niagard claimed the police had

used poor judgment in investigating the case. He told the Free Press that he planned to finance the creation of a foundation to improve the Canadians audicial system. Never happened. Look, I want to fix this. We all want to get to the bottom of this problem, right, investigating us poor innocent men. Yeah, it's poor innocent multi millionaires with at this point twenty or thirty sexual assault and rape allegations

against them. A CBC investigation in the late two thousand teens found Forbes says dredged up claims by former employees that he'd abused In the nineteen nineties, It's alleged Niagard paid to have three sexual harassment complaints settled through the Manitoba Human Rights Commission. Since the cases did not go to court, no records exist about what these cases were about, but the Winnipeg Free Press published articles about the complaints.

One was from a twenty seven year old travel coordinator who claimed she repeatedly brushed off Niagard's touches and sexual advances. Another claims Niagard added skinny dipping to the agenda of a business meeting. Business events were often held on his Bahamanian compound, well Niagard would, according to one employee, frequently

grabbed himself while wearing a small aithing shoot suit. She complained, I would find him in a state of undress, pants open, no shirt, or with his hand down the front of his pants fondling himself. Gus really subtle, Yeah he's you will see a picture. You know what, Sophie, it's time to show Margaret a picture of Peter Niard. This count time for Margaret to see this man. Yes, this this violates. Actually all of us have have have grounds to sue.

Now sue him for his photo. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm trying to side which I'm gonna I'm just gonna go to Google images he's he looks, and then just share my screen because I can't. I can't pick one look like Ethically, I can't suggest that like people get charged with sexual harassment just based on their physical appearance. But if you were going to do it, Peter Niagard would be the guy. He looks like how Trump thinks he looks. Yes, yes, that's exactly how he looks. And he has his hair

is sucking amazing. No, like um, he's got the like silver fox thing down, but in a like creep Yeah, like you could. Yeah, he wears. We'll talk about the v NEX in a little bit really deep. He he was jacked at one point, yeah, but he did. He was. He was muscular at c He does look like he looks like the bad guy from a Paul Verhoeven movie. Like he looks like someone RoboCop would shoot at like the like the hour and twenty five minute, or the

androids will hold over and be like I want more life. Yeah, yeah, the androids will accuse him of sexual assault. Incredibly, Um he's he's he does also look and this is bury inside Baseball for people who live in's name through the weather map, Dallas rains. I want that guy to be good in every way because if so, yeah, from a

big dominative determinalists, so I can't imagine he's bad. But okay, okay, no, See he looks nice, Peter Niagard, Peter n he looks rich in all of his photos, but also like he would leave a film if he sat in your car, you would have to scrub it, and not just with like a spray bottle and a little bit of like like a paper towel, Like you need to actually get like one of those green scrubby things to really get in there, because it's going to get in the crevices.

The Niagard goo. So when the Free Press reached out for comments on the case of him pulling down the pant fondling himself in front of an employee, Niagard threatened a defamation suit against the paper, the reporter and another employee. He was accused of rape again by a Los Angeles employee who he later fired. The case was eventually smissed.

Now none of these all again, this is the eighties through the nineties, that none of these allegations do more than cause mild talk, right, like, this does not harm him in any way. There's not a lot of way to search things on the internet, so unless you're really paying attention to his life, it's not something you're gonna just like drum up the fact that there's these stories in fucking Canada about him. Um so now you've got

to live a life of opulence and semi glamour. He co hosted an annual Oscar party in Los Angeles, which he build as the Night of a Thousand Stars, actual Hollywood in crowd, people knew it as the Night of a thousand has Beens because no one but B listers tended to show up. It was at one of these parties that he may yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a real

Hollywood burn. And again, the people burning in here are probably the people using Epstein as like him, So let's not yeah anyway, it's at one of these parties that he met Anna Nicole Smith, who he dated from two thousand one. After she died of an overdose in two thousand seven, he went on Montell Williams to claim that he'd tried to get her off drugs, which based on some things we'll talk about in a bit, I don't think it's likely. Come on, it's very sad. It's a

real bummer, real bummer. Uh. Now, he had a private plane where he did the normal rich guy stuff. They put a bar in there, he put stripper poles in a bed in there, and like, look, you've got a private jet, which you shouldn't, but of course you're gonna do some like wacky S seven ship like that. All that is worth noting. He's doing this in like the eighties and nineties. Um, this is all anyway. Whatever would

be like it's like led Zeppelin ship. Um. And at least one instance, Nygard's seventeen year old girlfriend was filmed dancing on one of the poles. So again, Epstein E we're not yet getting into the stuff. That's yeah, but we're starting to get into the Epstein stuff. Right. Flying around children on your your sex plane, that's that's that's abstain territory. We're in there, you know, we're we're running deep.

We've made a first down. That's a basketball term, right, So if he's moving right along, Um, I'm gonna quote from Forbes here. A former stewardess on his private plane told of one incident in which Niagard was accompanied by a bevy of topless women. At one point in midflight, she recalls Niagard, wild haired and with his bathrobe open, began berating her coworker, yelling, you are nothing, you are garbage. When the stewardess tried to calm him down, he screamed,

I am God. Do you not understand. Even after the security director intervened, she claims, Niagard continued to rage, shouting, this is my plane. I could do whatever the hell I want. That's that's the way the rules work. Cool guy, Cool guy. I mean they do for him for like decades. So that's why he feels that way. He's not like making He hasn't like invented this out of peer like that would normally be evidence of delusion, but for decades,

that's the way the world works for Peter. Like, not that that's good, but that is the way the world works for him because he gets away with all of this for an extremely long time. Also, I should note, for legal purposes, he denies that story above um, although I don't think he'll be suing us anytime soon because of where he's located. By far, Peter's most beloved possession. Yes, yeah, um, By far Peter's most beloved possession, and the center of

his image is a care free playboy. Fuck Monster was nigred k a chunk of the coastline of New Providence, which is in the Bahamas, that he renamed after himself. The compound was Mayan themed and it had the look of a tropical temple city. I described the build no, just just that that way just I have nothing to add to that, but that stands for its own. It does say a lot, right when you have built your own Mayan temple city to yourself in the Bahamas, like

sovereign country that you have just bought an ignored. Um. I would describe the build quality based on what I can see is like Disney World quality. Like it looks like it was. It looked pretty cool. I'm not gonna lie. The Mayan temples didn't look bad. The grand hall was thirty two thou square feet with a hundred thousand pound glass ceiling. Uh Nigred k was featured on Lifestyles of

the Rich and the Famous. It hosted celebrities like Oprah, who claimed I'm not living large enough after seeing it for years. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Of course, Oprah constantly, like a little D level villain in like seven or eight of Art, moves through it. Yeah, just a little thread, just like what's going on with her? She kind of seems like she might be up to some evil stuff, but also everyone loves her um fun stuff. Anyway. For years, the compound was one of the most infamous examples of

wealthy access on the planet. I want to play a clip for you, Margaret from a two thousand four show called Life of Luxury. Now. The woman you're gonna hear talking first is Bianca Nigred, who's his daughter and at this point is the chief of operations for his compound. Hi, welcome, nag Key. We have anything you could possibly imagine. Champoline out on the water, tennis courts, basketball court, beach, volleyball, pool, volleyballs.

Every Sunday we have a paper party with nanicures and pedicures and massages for I guess this highway of Heathenism boast a hundred and fifty thousand square foot wonderlander of excess, the ocean, the water slide. There's even a human aquarium that's not crazy. I need to pack your back. Sorry. The slice of having anchor rent it's the private, utopian bachelor pet of this man Canada's clothing magnet. Peter and

I guard and entry is by invitation only. Personally, I enjoyed the electric best when I have friends here with which you shareff. It certainly is bigger enough with its twenty two mem rooms built without walls, so that last bets a little creepy, right without walls, built without walls, and the human aquarium that does a shot. It's a gross tank in as with a person in a bikini in it. It is pretty fucking, pretty fucking Nardi and

we have not really started into the gross stuff. We've started into the gross, but it gets a lot worse. For now. You're not going to be surprised to learn that a lot of those so called friends that he likes to share his compound with, the ones who are not celebrities, were extremely young women. Some of them were children. A lot of them were children who were trafficked, sometimes allegedly against their will, and systemically abused, systematically abused by

Peter Niagard. We're going to tell that story, and we're gonna tell you a lot more in part two. But Margaret, if you had tens of millions of dollars compound based off of the stolen artistic style of a Central American civilization on a Bahamanian island, where you committed a raft of felonies, what would it be and what would the felonies be? Well, the felonies is that people like that would be in the aquarium and they would be in there for just long enough to before we lift them

out again. It's just kind of a perpetual dunking tank and anyone who comes can can dunk them in. Um. That is that is what I would build. Yeah, yeah, I think I would do like a Khokey amount, But the mound is just a mass grave of guys like that my throne of bastard spells. Yeah, I think the I think the people of the Cookey Amounts would be okay with that. Um anyway, Margaret, you got that's that's all for part one. You got anything to plug? Well

after that? Enjoyable? Uh yeah. I have a book that is probably out by the time you hear this, called we Won't be Here Tomorrow, which includes such stories as people programming drones to murder people like we're discussing the show in a fictional s because it's fiction. Um. And that book is out. And I also a host of a podcast called Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, where you can hear um ban things that are sort of like this, Um, Margaret Banger, we won't be here tomorrow,

but we will be back on Thursday. Part two, well done. I just thought of that one. Also, I have a book called After the Revolution. Find a K Press or a K Press has a bunch of indie bookstores you can order from. You can also get it from all of the regular bookstores. It's it's all over the place. Just type the words in and you'll find it. All right, everybody, alright Margaret, alright, alright, Sophie, Off we go to Nigrid but like in an i R kind of way. Yeah, there,

there we go. No. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.