Posts Tagged ‘sweatshops’

Book Review: Globalization and Cross-border Solidarity in the Americas

Posted: December 10, 2012 in Books, Consumer campaigns
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Mujeres saharuis en la maquila

Mujeres saharuis en la maquila (Photo credit: gaelx)

I’ve written a few times about Latin American workers (see links below). Here at last is a broad description of attempts to cross-border advocacy in Latin American apparel-producing countries and North American apparel-consuming countries.

The book uses four 1990s campaigns as case studies:

  • Guatemala: Phillips Van-Heusen
  • El Salvador: Gap supplier Mandarin International (Taiwanese-owned)
  • Honduras: Kimi (Korean-owned), supplier of retail store-label clothes
  • Nicaragua: Chentex (Taiwanese-owned), another supplier of retail store-label clothes

The picture is not a pretty one. These four campaigns attained the rare victory of union recognition but, after that, their companies invariably relocate. The wonders of Capital Mobility. It makes me think of trying to stop a vacuum cleaner by holding its nozzle; it can simply detach the nozzle and use another (I’m sure there are better metaphors … suggestions are welcome!) Even so, the author writes, capital is not omnipotent and with better co-ordinated campaigns could be held to account. The world is only so big and brands in this day and age should have nowhere to hide.

The author, Ralph Armbruster-Sandoval, explains how pressure in each case was applied across borders, at both ends of the supply chain. He calls this the Keck-Sikkink or Boomerang Model (p. 22). Mis-coordinated boomerang campaigns, he argues, keep allowing the ball to be dropped after a short-term victory.

He sets out the history of overlapping pressure groups, something I’ve noticed before. Apparently the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) was set up in 1999 specifically by people unhappy about the compromise-solution of the Fair Labor Association (FLA) which, among other things, does not insist on a minimum living wage (p. 12). The FLA are now famous as Apple/Foxconn’s inspectors (more on them next month). Likewise the IGLHR, formerly NCLC, was set up in 1981 by people unhappy with the AFL-CIO‘s pro-US foreign policy approach during the Cold War (p. 82). The AWU-APHEDA spat in Australia is another symptom of the same division. People have long memories.

Even allowing for these historical differences, there is a recurring difference in approach between groups that push the need for independent unions, and groups that push for independent monitoring (p. 13). I wish I’d learned this sooner. Throughout this blog I’ve looked at campaigns run by both camps and I’ve been somewhat biased towards the AFL-CIO approach. As a union official, it’s hard not to be. I just don’t see how you can have a successful campaign without involving the people who stand to benefit from it; you’ll end up with a result on paper that is not enforced.

In Keck and Sikkink’s (1998) model, domestic non-state actors establish ties with NGOs, creating transnational advocacy networks (TANs), who, in turn, put pressure on their respective states to bring about social change. This model [...] is quite useful but it inadvertently places too much emphasis on TANs, making them seem like they are the “saviors” of the “poor, downtrodden masses” …

[T]heir model gives one the impression that domestic non-state actors cannot independently determine their own fates without “outside assistance”. (p. 103)

and again:

[W]omen maquiladora workers have often been framed as “victims” while U.S.-based consumers and activists are seen as “saviors”. (pp. 149-150)

However you need the consumer advocacy to open up the space for organising; it’s not often there as a given. Indeed weak labor regulation is usually one of the reasons production has been moved to these countries to begin with. It’s all very comforting to prefer organising over distant advocacy but it might not always be practicable. Consider the IGLHR report into the KYE Systems factory, maker of Microsoft peripherals (which I covered here). The only options for a local partner are the Chinese state union or unrecognised local NGOs whose leaders risk prison.

If it were ever used properly, the boomerang model would actually render the dilemma moot. Successful campaigns draw on moral and material leverage (p. 59). As one wit (@WithoutDoing) recently put it on Twitter:

For something to be changed it must be both pushed and pulled (12 Oct)

This is absolutely not a theoretical debate. The two camps need to have more than a passing regard for one another, they need to actively co-operate. Using the example of the Salvadoran maquila (garment) industry, the author notes:

Consensus between the NLC, AFL-CIO and UNITE existed, on the surface, during the Gap campaign. In reality, tensions ran high. It should be pointed out that all three groups did work together, but their strategic and historical differences generated unnecessary conflict. The NLC distrusted the [local peak groups'] involvement in the Gap campaign because of their previous ties with AIFLD [the pro-US foreign policy outfit which generally sought to undermine leftist regimes in Latin America]. AIFLD’s uncritical stance towards El Salvador’s human rights abuses generated dissent within the AFL-CIO, sparking the establishment of the NLC in 1981 [...] The NLC rejects working with all “corrupt” centrist unions like the CTD, CTS and CNTS [...]

The ACILS, AFL-CIO and UNITE also claimed that the NLC’s campaigns are too “media-driven” and that they leave workers defenseless after they are inevitably fired. These organisations suggest that the NLC should work towards empowering workers and making them (rather than consumers, students, or [NLC leader] Charles Kernaghan) the primary agents of change, on the ground, through unionization.

These perspectives highlight a crucial, though unstated point: officials from the NLC, UNITE, the AFL-CIO and ACILS generally mistrust each other (p. 82).

Touchez!

People need to focus on this bigger picture, an awful lot depends on it.

As to the issue of Capital Mobility, Armbruster-Sandoval suggests region-wide organizing as a means of limiting companies’ tendency to ‘cut and run’ (p. 133). It had not been launched at the time this book was published but the Asia Floor Wage campaign does exactly that.

Related posts:

Social entrepreneurs and sweatshops

Posted: August 12, 2012 in Consumer campaigns, Site announcements
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[These were my comments at a screening of two documentaries, Behind the Swoosh and Tejid@s Junt@s ("Stitched Together"), held at my alma mater UTS on Thursday night. The two films are included as embedded links]

My name is Michael Walker, I am an alumnus of the UTS Law and Social Sciences schools and am now working for a union just one block from this building. I am also the author of the blog Fair For All dot org.

To begin tonight, I’ll briefly explain what Fair For All is about.

Unions, including mine, have over the last century improved living standards in this country out of sight. To earn the cost of a loaf of bread, a shop assistant of a hundred years ago had to work for two hours. Today: only about five minutes.

When you walk into a shop you don’t have to be too troubled about the working conditions of the employees … not usually anyway.

What you should be troubled about is the working conditions of the unseen people making the stuff on the shelves.

In decades past – take Darrell Lea Chocolates as an example – in decades past the workers in Darrell Lea shops were protected by the Shop Award safety net. Workers in the Darrell Lea factory in Ramsgate, which is just down the road from my house, were protected by the Factory Award safety net. Delivery drivers were covered by the Transport Industry Award.

This is still how it works in Darrell Lea. Those three awards guarantee a reasonable rate of pay and conditions of work for everyone making Darrell Lea chocolates, including rest breaks, sick leave, four weeks of annual leave, and overtime payments.

In the last thirty years or so, this has become the exception rather than the norm.

Contrast that with Masters Home Improvement.

Masters opened up a very large store out near Narellan just before Christmas last year. If you walk through, you will be hard pressed to find any goods made in Australia whatsoever.

The products sold in Masters are mostly made in factories in Asia – very often by people who are not paid enough to support a family, who are docked their pay if they are sick and who are often working exposed to hazardous chemicals. Because their regular rate of pay is so low, they work long hours of overtime, often 70 or more hours per week, to provide for their families.

They do all this to make our t-shirts, our jeans, our sneakers, our phones and our iPads.

These people, who feed and clothe the world, deserve the protection of basic labour standards, regardless of where they live.

So Fair For All is my project to raise awareness about the crucial need for improvement. It’s not part of my day job; the union I work for is essentially a mutual society for the benefit of its members. It’s not an NGO and it doesn’t exist to roam around solving the world’s problems, so Fair For All is something I work on in my own time [see related post on national self-interest].

So, how do we feel about this? As consumers we are all participating in an unjust system, whether we like it or not.

We are all participating in an unjust system, whether we like it or not.

It’s true that the problem is big and complicated and has no easy solution but that’s not to say that we should throw up our hands and say that nothing can be done.

Tonight we are going to view two short films about people who have done something about it – college students in both cases. Many of you here tonight are college students and I think I can assume because you are here that you don’t need persuading about this issue and want to do something yourselves. Sit tight, we’ll come to that at the end!

Also on your seats you will find a pamphlet for the Playfair 2012 campaign [the pamphlet can be downloaded here], which has been shining a spotlight on the working conditions of sportswear makers in the lead up to the London Olympic Games. The campaign co-ordinator from the global garment and textiles union has kindly agreed to join us by Skype during the break between the films. She is actually in Geneva – fortunately it is only about 11 o’clock in the morning there!

This first film we’re going to watch, Behind the Swoosh, is about conscientious objection and the power it can have if done effectively. One athlete refused to wear the logo of a sportswear maker associated with sweatshops until it cleaned up its act, and his stand has had a large impact at his college and even on the company. Beyond that I’ll let it speak for itself.

One thing this film brings home is how tenaciously companies will fight to protect their brand. They will stare down strikes if they can but they will not allow their brand to be trashed without responding.

This is what Playfair2012 is striving to do. Playfair has the same agenda as Team Sweat: ensure that workers are:

  • paid enough to live on,
  • provided with ongoing rather than short-term employment contracts, and
  • allowed to establish and join trade unions without being victimised

This second film we’ll see takes a different approach altogether. It is about Alta Gracia, a former sweatshop in the Dominican Republic that has been reopened as a workplace that pays its employees a living wage and – and this is the most important bit – connected to a reliable market for ethical apparel. Alas, it’s not enough to rely on people’s goodwill to pay above-market prices, you need to supply them with something unique [see related post].

I took the liberty of touring the UTS gift shop earlier. As expected, the branded apparel is made in China. Nothing wrong with it coming from China per se, it’s just that this tells me that no one has ever pressured the university over its apparel procurement.

Ethical procurement policies are not all that difficult to have put in place, it’s been done successfully down the street at the University of Sydney. Two Victorian campuses are completely Fairtrade. Dozens of American universities source from Alta Gracia.

So why not bring them to UTS too?

Book Review: No Choice But to Fight

Posted: July 27, 2011 in Books, China
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Anyone remotely interested in workers’ rights in the developing world should get this book! Because it is self-published by Globalisation Monitor it does not appear in Amazon and probably few people in the big developing economies have seen it. It is really easy to get a copy – GM sells it for a song or you can simply download it in PDF format off their website.

Clearly this is not a book written to make a profit; it’s been written because the story is just so extraordinary and needed to be told.

The book describes the appalling neglect of the operators of the Gold Peak battery factory in Huizhou in China’s Pearl River Delta Manufacturing area, whose workers suffer cadmium poisoning after coming into direct contact with the poisonous chemical. The workers largely self-organise to find justice, bypassing the official union and going directly to the authorities and to the press. Only very late in the game do they receive support from groups across the border in Hong Kong. It is all rather tidy: The owners of Gold Peak and their major customers are in Hong Kong, only a few dozen miles away from the factory.

I finished the book feeling upbeat for the future of China’s workers. Injustice transcends cultural barriers, and they weren’t going to take it laying down.

The site management had poor health and safety controls from the beginning. Rather like big tobacco, they did not respond to it and tried to duck the issue when workers began to realise something was wrong. For a considerable time workers attempted to obtain cadmium blood level tests only to have the results altered or not released at all. At one point the factory owners even go so far as to conspire with local hospital officials to thwart people attempting to have tests from a third party.

Not directly relevant but one snippet was a revelation for me and may be for other Western readers: Did you ever wonder how China’s one child policy is enforced? It is done through the employer. The paperwork associated with employment includes family planning permits(!) Anyone who has more than one child suffers demotion or dismissal. This is why people in rural areas are less affected – they don’t work for registered employers, they just work their own land, thus the Central Government has no means of interfering.

Astonishingly the mainly female workforce are undeterred by management’s continued ducking and dodging, first striking and then presenting their case to all who will listen including several ministries in Beijing. Their case attracts media attention and thus the assistance of Globalisation Monitor, who organise direct action against Gold Peak and its chairman.

Gold Peak protest postcard

Protest postcard addressed to GP chairman Victor Lo

While GM’s involvement was helpful I was pleased to see that the most effective action occurs when the company is taken to court (in Mainland China, not Hong Kong) and many of the workers receive compensation settlements. It may not be well known outside the country that China actually has comprehensive health and safety laws – they just don’t have many occupational lawyers! The struggle continues though, with many workers still uncompensated, however I’m heartened that it didn’t endwith them being “rescued” by rich-world NGOs. They are finding their own path.

I’ll finish with an extract that I was particularly touched by. It doesn’t relate to the cadmium issue per se but speaks volumes about daily life in the factory:

Just after I put on the face mask given to me by the line supervisor, I saw that my workmate sitting across from me was crying. I was shocked and asked her what was wrong, but she just kept crying and didn’t say a word. Then a workmate nearby told me what had happened.

After SARS broke out in 2003, we were each allocated two 3M masks per week by the line supervisor. When this workmate got her mask, she found it was a little too tight and tried to loosen it, but the tie broke. She asked the line supervisor to trade it for another one, but the line supervisor said, “I don’t have any extras. Go ask the general line supervisor for another one.” The general line supervisor was a well-known grouch, so the workmate was afraid to ask for a new mask. Later, the general line supervisor passed by, saw that she had not started her machine and asked why. When the workmate said that the tie to her mask was broken, the general line supervisor yelled at her, “How could you be so careless! Do you realize that these masks cost money? And you think you can just waste them!” The workmate then started crying. I felt bad for her, went over to wipe off her tears, and said, “Don’t cry over this. If you cry, people will look down on you. Let me see if I can take care of it for you.” I went over to the general line supervisor and said, “Ling, would you do me a favor and exchange this for a new one?” The general line supervisor looked at me and said with a sigh, “Look, I can’t do anything about it. You know the higher managers are stingy with the masks – the line supervisors get one mask every four days.” I said, “Well, you shouldn’t be so harsh. We’re all migrant workers here. You don’t have to act so severely.” Later, the general line supervisor went to console the workmate for a while. As for the mask, I came up with a solution – we made a hole in the edge of the mask and strung it together with a piece of elastic.

Earlier post:

Poisoned Battery Workers Seek Justice

Posted: April 18, 2011 in China
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Ni-Cd batteries

Image via Wikipedia

GP (Gold Peak) is a brand of nickel cadmium battery sold in Asia.

Like many light manufacturing exporters, the company is headquartered in Hong Kong but the batteries are made in the Pearl River Delta. GP owns two factories in Huizhou.

The workers at these factories have been exposed to unacceptably high levels of cadmium in production of the batteries. Unsafe work practices include handling cadmium with bare hands. Several employees were poisoned by their exposure to toxic chemicals.

The company at first refused to reveal the results of medical tests which revealed that workers had excessively high levels of cadmium in their blood, and only did so after 500 workers went on strike. Even so, privately-arranged tests showed cadmium levels up to 86 times higher than the ‘official’ results.

Advocacy group Globalisation Monitor has assisted individual workers in obtaining press coverage and taking legal action against the company for improved practices and compensation. GM asserts  that the poisonings occurred as a result of:

  1. ongoing managerial negligence,
  2. noncompliance with Occupational Health and Safety laws, and
  3. failure to provide adequate training

A number of the lawsuits have been successful, with around ¥240,000 (roughly 50,000 USD) awarded in compensation and out-of-court settlements in 2009. However only a handful of the 250 affected workers have been compensated.

No Choice But to Fight cover image

The struggle has now gone on for more than six years. Globalisation Monitor has published the workers’ story in a 196-page book, No Choice But to Fight. You can order a printed paperback copy on their website or you can view the complete 189-page PDF by clicking the cover image at right.

Success story: Gap in Bangladesh

Posted: January 24, 2011 in Consumer campaigns, Rights around the world
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A story of successful action by a ‘coalition of concern’ of consumer groups and labour groups.

The tale begins in tragedy: last month 28 Bangladeshi workers lost their lives in a fire in their workplace. Building exits had been locked by their managers, which is not uncommon in countries with poor labour standards.

Burned out factory floor

The burned-out factory floor (Image:AP)

The factory supplied fabric used by Abercrombie & Fitch, Target, JC Penney, Osh Kosh B’Gosh, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and GAP.

When news got out, the International Labor Rights Forum, an NGO, started a petition on social change website change.org calling on the clothing companies to take some responsibility by paying compensation and conducting safety audits of similar factories. 25,000 signatures were gathered.

Other groups, such as United Students Against Sweatshops, joined in.

The campaign yielded a result this week when GAP agreed to both the demands of the petition. Well done, GAP executives!

However so far none of the other companies have committed to any action so the petition is still running. You can add your voice here.

Update, Feb 9: After pressure, the other brands who source from this factory have also agreed to pay compensation (read more). Well done, readers who added your voice to this campaign.

- – -

In an ironic twist, on the same day as the factory fire, authorities arrested Moshrefa Mishu, the leader of Bangladesh’s textile workers union. She has been agitating for implementation of the nation’s increased minimum wage. She’s still in jail now. You can petition for her release, too!

Update, May 1: She has since been released – thank you readers who added their names to the petition for her release.

Where’d that shrimp come from?

Posted: January 13, 2011 in Natural Resources, Rights around the world
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In Sydney, where I live, the disparity of price between local and imported seafood is dramatic.

I grew up in a little seaside town south of the city where the fish and chips shop sits right next to the fisherman’s boats.

I’ve been mystified how it can be cheaper to catch a fish in South-East Asia and fly it here, frozen, than to just catch it in the ocean nearby and pass it to the fish markets.

Well it turns out that the Australian fishing industry has high safety standards; people working on the boats are supplied with personal protective equipment. They are also paid much, much higher wages than workers in Bangladesh and Thailand and whilst labour costs are only a small part of production costs, the difference is more than enough to pay for the fishes’ airfares.

So far there is nothing controversial about this. However America’s Solidarity Center has singled out the shrimp (aka prawn!) industry as being particularly harsh to workers. They have seen none of the advances that have been won in apparel and footwear in the past decade and a half.

80% of the shrimp eaten in the USA is imported and nearly all of it is harvested through aquaculture rather than being caught in the wild. Over 40% of Thailand’s shrimp is processed in the port of Mahachai.

Photo: Reuters

Working conditions in Mahachai range from poor to appalling. In a (rare) police raid in 2006, it was discovered that one factory, Ranya Paew, was literally imprisoning its mostly Burmese workers in squalid conditions. Workers who angered the employer were ‘put to shame’ in front of the employer by having their hair cut off. Women and girls were stripped naked and publicly beaten as a form of discipline.

The extremely high density of these farms can indirectly affect the nearby community too. High density biomass of shrimp leads to high density waste which leads to disease outbreaks and parasite infestations. An outbreak of cholera in Ecuador that killed 10,000 people was traced to a virus strain which developed as a result of the heavy use of antibiotics in the local shrimp farming industry.

The only good news so far is that America’s Aquaculture Certification Council has developed a Best Aquaculture Practices (BAP) guideline which gives a consistent standard for big retailers to adopt. This is helpful to them, too, as it establishes a level playing field at the point of sale. Worker protections are included in the BAP, although these do fall short of the internationally adopted ILO standards.

The Solidarity Center also used public data to compile a list of U.S. importers who imported shrimp from factories that employed child labour. They were:

  • Aqua Beauty/Charoen Pokphand Foods
  • Eastern Fish Company
  • Fishery Products Interational
  • Great American Seafood Imports
  • H&N Foods/Expack Seafoods
  • Mazzetta Company
  • Ocean Fresh Trading
  • Ocean to Ocean/Icelandic USA
  • Quirch Foods
  • Pacific American Fish
  • Pacific Seafood Group
  • Sterling Seafood
  • Southern Foods USA
  • Tai Foong International

So next time you’re in the frozen section… you might want to read the label.

Source: The True Cost of Shrimp, Solidarity Center report, 2008

25/2: I’ve added a post related to this: Book Review: The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work