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TAKE
IT PERSONALLY:
By Anita Roddick
The
Sweatshop Chapter
Anita:
The terrible truth is that if nobody is watching and there are no
enforceable international regulations about how we should do business
– then even the cleanest and squeakiest corporations can transform
themselves, almost unnoticed, into a force for evil. And if you peer
into the sweatshops around the world, as I have – some of them
well-lit, modern, and apparently civilized factories – you can see
the by-products of an inhuman system. Charlie Kernaghan has seen more
than most people. That’s why he’s one of the most potent voices
against exploitation in the world…
How
is it that so many giant companies, household names like Nike and
Wal-Mart, have prospered so dramatically over the past decade whilst
sweatshop workers from China to Nicaragua continue to be exploited?
Take,
for example, the Indonesian workers who have been making Nikes for the
past ten years. In 1991, they were paid US $0.45 per day, not enough
to meet basic physical needs. Today, their inflation-adjusted wages
are little better and mean that their living standards often remain as
wretched as they were a decade ago. Nike, on the other hand, has
tripled its annual revenues over the past ten years from $3 billion in
1991 to $9 billion last year. CEO Phil Knight got paid $3.2 million in
cash last year, bringing his net worth to well over $5 billion and
making him one of the richest men in the world. Despite the fact that
Nike, giving in to pressure from human rights groups, issued a
statement in 1998 promising to improve conditions for the 500,000
employees of their contractors, many claim that the situation has not
significantly improved and the reality is but a shadowy reflection of
that promise. Sweatshop workers are still being exploited and
companies like Nike need to do far more to improve the situation.
Or
take the Chinese workers who make Kathie Lee Gifford handbags sold by
Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer. A leading human rights
watchdog discovered a factory in Zhongshan City in 2000 where workers
for Wal-Mart’s contractor are forced to put in
14-hour
shifts, seven days a week, 30 days a month. They are effectively held
as indentured servants in overcrowded dormitories. At the end of
the month nearly half of them owe the
company money – to cover two dismal meals a day and pay
deductions for talking to co-workers while sewing.
Over
half of Wal-Mart’s imports come from its contractors in China.
Wal-Mart, like Nike, have argued that they do not permit their goods
to be produced under sweatshop conditions and point to their
requirement that suppliers sign a code of basic labor standards. They
claim that when this has not been adhered to
they have withdrawn production from that
supplier. However, in February 2001 they were struck
off the KLD Domini 400 “socially responsible” register, on the
grounds that they had failed to ensure that their suppliers operate
factories that meet adequate human rights and labor standards.
Sweatshops
By Charles Kernaghan
Why does this
happen? Why does it continue? The answers: the culture of “profits
before people” and in some cases government collusion. Many companies
scour the globe to find the cheapest labor possible. They play countries
off against each other in a bidding war for production contracts. In
what has been dubbed “a race to the bottom,” the winning contractors
and governments are the ones willing to reduce their workforces to
levels of pay and working conditions that strain human endurance to the
limit. Some governments turn a blind eye to labor law violations, and
the international human rights treaties they have ratified, and instead
leave workers with little choice but to fall in line.
Take
Indonesia, where human rights observers have noted the presence of army
units inside some of the factories where Nike’s shoes are made. Or
Nicaragua, where workers were indicted by their government on charges
that carry sentences of up to ten years in jail. Their crime: asking for
an $0.08 increase per pair of blue jeans they assemble for retailers
including Wal-Mart – jeans that sell in the US for $30 per pair.
Meanwhile,
the accounting firms that companies (including Nike and Wal-Mart) use to
monitor their factories – supposedly to ensure observance of
international standards and corporate codes of conduct – often
miss violations because their monitoring efforts are significantly
flawed. Dr O’Rouke of MIT claims that auditing giant PriceWaterhouse
Coopers, in its audit reports, failed to recognize workers’ rights
and, in some cases, overlooked serious violations of health and safety
standards. Although PWC officials argue that their monitoring uncovered
violations of minimum wage, overtime and safety laws, their shortcomings
clearly indicate inadequate procedures.
When business
journalists caught Wal-Mart lying in its denial of any connection to one
particularly dreadful factory, the company’s vice-president explained
that it was because they were “defensive” about the sweatshop issue.
Sweatshops are, indeed, indefensible. They insure that the great wealth
created by the global expansion of trade and investment – touted by
pundits the world over as the cure for poverty – remains with top
corporate executives and shareholders while millions of workers barely
survive.
Charles
Kernaghan is the executive director of the National Labor Committee, an
independent, non-profit organization focussed on the protection of
worker rights.
I
work sixteen
hours a day for a top shoe
manufacturer I get paid $50,000 per week
I
work sixteen hours a
day for a top shoe manufacturer I
get paid $15.00 per week
Anita:
What’s a days work worth? Ask yourself that while you compare a
corporate CEO’s compensation with the daily wage of third world
workers.
The
Race to the Bottom
By Charles
Kernaghan
CEO vs
Workers Compensation:
A sample of starvation wage around the world
Hourly take
home pay:
Guatemala
37¢
El Salvador 60¢
Nicaragua 23¢
Honduras 43¢
Haiti 30¢
Mexico 50¢
China 28¢
Indonesia 20¢
Burma 4¢
Bangladesh 13–20¢
Romania 17–37¢
Russia 11–56¢
US sweatshop $3–$4
US territory of Saipan $3
CEO 1998
Compensation
(includes salaries, stock options, bonuses)
Millard
Drexler, GAP $660 million
Phil Knight, Nike $3 million
David Glass, Wal-Mart $40
million
Wal-Mart’s Walton family is now worth $67.5 billion
Nike’s Phil Knight is worth $5.8
million
Can anyone
live on these starvation wages?
The companies
say, yes, for example, 60¢ an hour is a living wage in El Salvador,
sufficient to raise a family. After all, El Salvador is not New York
City.
We asked
women workers who sew Nike garments in El Salvador if this was true.
Could they survive on 60¢ an hour?
“No, it’s
impossible,” they told us. “It’s a lie when the companies say
that.”
Then they
talked us through their daily expenses:
•
For an 8-hour day they earn $4.79
•
It costs them 68¢ a day for a round trip bus fare
•
A small breakfast – rice, beans, tortilla, and coffee is 80¢
•
A modest lunch – rice, beans, and tortillas again, a scrap of
chicken and lemonade, since they can’t afford soda, comes to $1.49.
So, just
getting back and forth to work and surviving costs them $2.97, leaving
just $1.82 out of their daily pay of $4.79. The workers live in one-room
hovels, 10 by 12 feet, sharing an outhouse and common sink with several
other families. For this they pay $31.40 per month, $1.03 a day. That
now leaves them with just 79¢ at the end of the day.
What do they
do now? The cheapest supper for a family of three costs at least $1.14
– for rice, beans, tortillas, and coffee, and maybe the family splits
a plantain. But they do not even have enough money for this. What about
daycare, which costs $1.13 per day, or a child’s new shoes which cost
$8.00?
Women sewing
expensive $75 Nike shirts are forced to raise their children on coffee
and lemonade, since they cannot afford milk. No one can live on 60¢ an
hour in El Salvador. It is a starvation wage. To climb out of misery and
into poverty, the workers would need to earn at least $1.18 an hour.
What would happen if Nike paid its workers $1.18 an hour rather that the
current 60¢ wage? Would the sky fall in on
corporate profits?
Hardly. At
the 60¢-an-hour wage, the women are paid 20¢ to sew each $75 Nike
shirt. At $1.18 an hour, the workers would be earning 391/2 cents for
every $75 Nike shirt they sewed. This
means their wages would still come to less than half of one percent of
the retail price. Nike could surely afford that.
But is does
not have to be that way
•
We can fight back
•
We can remake our economy with a human face
•
We can hold the corporations accountable to respect human and worker rights and to pay a living wage.
This is not a
boycott
It is the
opposite. This is a struggle to keep jobs in the developing world, but
jobs with dignity, justice, and fair wages.
We are
winning!
Last year the
companies said they would never agree to public disclosure, but that is
exactly what university students have won on over a dozen campuses
across the US including University of Michigan, Duke, and Georgetown. If
a company wants to manufacture goods for these universities, it must now
publicly disclose the names and addresses of its factories.
Today there
is an active social movement of labor, religious, student, solidarity,
and community organizations across the US, working together to end child
labor and sweatshop abuses. Just five years ago, this movement did not
exist. We have all come a long way.
Charles
Kernaghan
JC Penny,
Victoria’s Secret, IBM, Toys R Us, and TWA
are among the US corporations that have profited by
employing prisoners. Put together long mandatory sentences for minor
drug offences, a strong racial bias, prisons run by corporations for
profit, the sale of convict labor to corporations, and a charge for
prison room and board and you have a modern system of bonded labor – a
social condition otherwise known
as slavery.
The
National Labor Committee
The Worker Rights Consortium
Sweatshop Watch
Clean Clothes Campaign
Free The Children
Alliance For Childhood
Anti-Slavery International
Human Rights Watch
International Labour Organization
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to Lü - Posted with Permission
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