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A relatively weak 119,000 jobs were added to private employers' payrolls last month as federal spending cuts and tax increases began to bite, according to the latest ADP National Employment Report.

And there was more potentially troubling news about the health of the economy in Wednesday's data: ADP, which provides payroll and other services to companies around the world, revised down its estimate of U.S. job growth in March. It now says private employers added 131,000 jobs to their payrolls that month, not the initial figure of 158,000.

In the ADP report, Moody's Analytics economist Mark Zandi says:

"Job growth appears to be slowing in response to very significant fiscal headwinds. Tax increases and government spending cuts are beginning to hit the job market. Job growth has slowed across all industries and most significantly among companies that employ between 20 and 499 workers."

Look at photographs from the Bangladesh garment factory collapse, and you can see clothing in the rubble destined for a store called Joe Fresh, one of the many retailers using supercheap fashions made overseas to keep shoppers buying often.

But in the aftermath of the tragedy, would customers pay more if they knew the clothes were made by workers treated fairly and safely?

At the Joe Fresh store on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue, customers are bombarded with pastel polo shirts, button-down shirts and chino pants. On one shelf, you might find clothes made in Peru, Vietnam and China. Toward the back, there are piles and piles of shorts, just $19 each, and each made in Bangladesh.

Outside the store, Reene Schiaffo emerged with a bag full of Joe Fresh merchandise. She says she knew about the Bangladesh factory collapse but gives the company the benefit of the doubt.

"It didn't affect my sale, because I know a lot of times these retailers don't exactly know where the stuff is being made," she says, "but they have to pay attention more because that's not acceptable."

Of course, Joe Fresh has many competitors. Nearby Herald Square has become a kind of mecca for what the industry calls fast fashion — clothes so cheap they are almost disposable. On a block with Zara, H&M, Gap and Uniqlo, I asked shoppers if they'd pay more if they knew the clothes came from safe factories that treated workers well.

Most, like Ingrid Lelorieux of France, said yes.

"If it's between 5 and 10 percent, I will," she says.

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On cable TV, there's a whole truckload of reality shows that make fun of working class, white Southern culture. They are some of the most popular and talked about new shows, too, such as Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty.

MTV tried cashing in on the redneck TV trend with its own hyped-up platform for young Southern kids behaving badly, Buckwild. It played like a Southern-fried version of Jersey Shore. Its stars were a dimwitted crew of young people in West Virginia drinking hard and riding pickup trucks through ditches filled with mud.

Then, one of them died, along with two other people, in a vehicle stuck in mud. The show wasn't shooting at the time, but Shain Gandee's death was enough to make MTV stop production.

Still, there are plenty more places to see blatant stereotypes of white subcultures, beyond the hicksploitation served by Buckwild. Over on VH1, Mob Wives are the cliche in-your-face Italian mafia matriarchs. AMC has backward, barely educated rural kids wandering around New York City in Breaking Amish. And barely legal prospective brides brag about marrying their cousins in My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding on TLC.

That's a big pile of the worst stereotypes about white, working class people around.

And here's the thing: There aren't nearly as many new shows like this about African-Americans or Latinos, especially if they are working class. Shows like Real Housewives of Atlanta and Love and Hip Hop Atlanta, show off more lavish lifestyles and have been around longer.

Late last year, the Oxygen channel tried to create a new one, developing a pilot featuring rapper Shawty Lo bragging that he had 11 kids by 10 different women. It was supposed to be called All My Babies' Mamas.

The backlash against this travesty was immediate and powerful. Radio personalities complained on air, harsh coverage came from CNN and Fox News, and more than 30,000 protesters signed a petition against the show on Change.org.

It worked. Oxygen announced it wouldn't develop the series.

So why haven't these other shows stereotyping white people seen protests just as strong?

I suspect it's because too many folks see stereotypes as a problem mostly for people of color.

We've got lots of practice criticizing degrading images of black and brown people. Activists know how to gather the news stories, book the media appearances and assemble the petitions to press their case. Advertisers get nervous and programmers think twice.

What many forget is that it can be just as easy to stereotype white, working class folks, and just as hard to scrub those stereotypes off your TV screen.

Eric Deggans is the TV and media critic for the Tampa Bay Times, a freelance contributor to NPR and author of the new book, Race-Baiter: How the Media Wields Dangerous Words to Divide a Nation, published by Palgrave Macmillan.

This week, major retailers including Wal-Mart, Gap and others met with labor activists in Germany, hoping to hammer out a deal to improve working conditions in Bangladesh.

The meeting came less than a week after a devastating building collapse in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, killed more than 400 workers. At the meeting, activists pushed retailers who use factories in Bangladesh to start spending their own money to make those workplaces safer.

The proposed deal would have an enforceable arbitration clause, would require the use of highly qualified fire and safety inspectors — and require those inspection reports to be made public. It would also mandate that the Western brands pay for any needed repairs. Workers would also have the right to refuse to enter buildings they believe are unsafe.

Tchibo, a large German retailer, and PVH, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, signed onto the agreement several months ago. But because the deal requires four signatories, labor activists need two more companies to sign on before it could go into effect. They've set a deadline of May 15 to strike a deal.

According to some of the meeting negotiators, among the U.S. retailers in attendance, Gap is probably closest to the labor activists on the details of the deal. A couple of European retailers caught up in the recent scandal surrounding the building collapse are now under a lot of pressure and could also end up signing on.

But Wal-Mart, the 900-pound gorilla in the industry, is still pretty far away from making any such detailed commitments.

What Auditors For Wal-Mart Found In Bangladesh

Most factory audits are never made public. These — paid for by Wal-Mart — were salvaged from the site of the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh, which killed 112 last November.