> CIEL Voices & Visions 2005 - Editor's Introduction - Fiction - Non-Fiction - Poetry - Art & Photography
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Sweating Pennies On January 7th, 2004, over 800 Americans lost their jobs. All of them were previous employees of Levis’ last two U.S. Factories in downtown San Antonio. The day marked Levi's complete transition from the all American, made in the USA tradition they began over 150 before, to a company completely reliant on overseas labor. The day was also close to the two-year anniversary of the company becoming a Wal-Mart supplier. This example of the globalization of one of our most classic, ground roots company is one of many that have undergone in the past five years. Sam Walton, the founder and previous owner of the retail monstrosity, Wal-Mart, realized in the late 1980’s that he could buy most of his inventory from China for less than half price of buying it here. Since then, our economy has slipped from one of sturdy and reliable manufacturing, to a solely retail driven market. It doesn’t pay to have the “Made in the USA” label on products anymore, unless of course its from a US territory like Saipan, where workers have been documented to have worked for as little as $3.05 (Tracinski, 2003) an hour, far below any minimum wage regulation in the continental US. But even those wages are considered hefty for today’s garment retailers, who prefer having their factories in countries like Mexico, where the minimum wage is only 50 cents an hour. (Armbruster-Sandoval, 2005) Not only are these wages barely enough to live on, most overseas garment factories manage to go below the minimum, and issue their workers more than 80 hour work weeks. The conditions of these factories are often dismal, and the chance of any worker-formed union is close to nil. These factories are called sweatshops, and are the thumping pulse behind our ever-expanding retail industry. The three aspects of Sweatshop labor that makes it one of the hottest ethical issues today are, one; the unacceptable working conditions found in factories, two; the lack of rights Sweatshop workers receive, and three; the sad reality that sweatshops are here to stay. Eric Schlosser revealed to us in his shocking investigation of the fast food industry, Fast Food Nation, that workers in factory farms have seen runaway cows caught and mangled by conveyor belt gears. (Schlosser, 2002) Now imagine a place where the human beings can meet a similar fate. In one Indonesian Factory, a 22-year-old woman was scalped after getting her hair caught in an assembly line conveyor belt. (Ellis, 2001) In many Chinese toy factories, where most action figures and waterguns sold in the US originate, workers are rarely given proper gloves and other basic protection when handling hazardous or corrosive materials. In some of these factories the workers are denied even facemasks, leaving them open to a plethora of lung diseases that include bronchitis and chemical pneumonia. (Armbruster-Sandoval, 2005) Sweatshop workers are paid much too little to afford normal housing, so many factories provide their own dormitories. Neil Pryde, a company that makes and sells yacht sails and sporting equipment, has a plant in Shenzen, China. Workers are offered dorms for the equivalent of $20 a month. Each room houses 10 workers in five bunks. There are 18 rooms per floor leaving one bathroom for every 180 workers. This makes for long lines after work gets out, sometimes leading to fights. This is not surprising, as the workers are only allowed a maximum of two bathroom breaks during their eleven-hour shifts. (Kahn, 2003) Along with terrible working conditions, most sweatshops also deny their workers even the most basic human rights. In August 1995, federal police raided a barbed-wire enclosed apartment building in Monte, California. Inside, they found 72 Thai garment workers. Most of these people had been smuggled into the country with promises of freedom and a good job. Their purchasers however confined them to this apartment where they were forced to work 16-hour days, at 70 cents/hour. Some had been held there as long as 7 years. It was later found that the shop had produced clothes for well-known businesses like Target and Sears. (Armbruster-Sandoval, 2005) It’s estimated that 600 to 800,000 people were trafficked world wide in 2004, and that at least 20% of those were used for manufacturing work. (DesRochers, 2005) The fact that this could happen in the United States is a shocking prospect. This, however was an illegal operation kept secret from authorities. In China, police officials actively contribute to the dehumanization of sweatshop laborers. Liu Youlin is an ‘expert cutter’ at a factory run by Neil Pryde. Liu has been pushing for unionization of his factories work for more than three years with no luck. Despite an 11-hour workday seven days a week, Liu managed to educate himself about Marxism and Chinese labor history and law. One night he came across a then recent (2001) revision of the Chinese labor law, which stated that every foreign company had to have a branch in the national labor union. Neil Pryde did not have a union. After two long years of petitioning and campaigning for a union, factory management finally gave in and held an election. However, the ballets only included those who worked in management. Workers were not allowed to head the union. This infuriated Liu and the other workers, who when it came time for the election, cast only blank ballets making the election “stillborn.” The story ends with Neil Pryde, along with most other companies like it in China, remaining union less, even after Liu’s tireless efforts. The most frightening aspect of sweatshops is that they are here to stay. There has been some progress; in the early 90s, a global awareness of sweatshops began. Information about the terrible lives lead by millions of people worldwide began headlining major newspapers, and from 1990 to 1996, the number of US newspaper articles regarding sweatshops tripled. Most of the existing anti-sweatshop grassroot organizations were started during this time as well. The government applied political pressure to number of countries to bring minimum wage up. The most successful attempt to raise minimum wage was an effort in Indonesia in 1992. Along with multiple American protests, the US government threatened to withdraw tariff privileges on exported goods from the country. The effort paid off, and a doubling of minimum wage caused an immediate 50 percent increase in real wages and a 100 percent increase in nominal wages for unskilled workers. ( Harrison, 2004) Not all campaigns were this successful. Other target countries during that like Cambodia showed a 25 percent increase in real wages at first after doubling the minimum wage, but then eventually returned to its original level. Cambodian factories responded to the wage increase by simply laying off workers and increasing the daily hours for their remaining employees. In this scenario, the over quality of life is dropped significantly; the layoffs were jobless, with no income for food or clean water, and those staying behind had to work much longer hours to keep their jobs. ( Harrison, 2004) Anti-sweatshop protests and campaigns can cause even greater damage to the lives of sweatshop workers. (Balko, 2003) In 2000, BBC exposed a number of Cambodian sweatshop factories used by Nike, documenting the horrible working conditions and the fact that children as young as 15 were working 12-hour shifts. Nike immediately pulled out of the factories, and a resulting $10 million in contracts were lost, as well as hundreds of jobs. (Balko, 2003) In the early 90s, congress was considering a “Child Labor Deterrence Act” that would take action against companies using child labor. A German garment manufacturer that would have been hit hard by the bill, laid off more than 50,000 children from their assembly lines. The charitable organization Oxfam found two years later that thousands of these children had turned to begging and prostitution, and many had starved to death. (Balko 2003) The list goes on; an international boycott of a Nepalese carpet factory in the mid 90s forced thousands of girls into prostitution. When soccer ball plants in Pakistan were shut down after a large scale protests, the mean income of the country fell by 20 percent. Sometimes the real problem is not as much with the sweatshops but the poverty of the nation. Sweatshops are often the best opportunity for many living in impoverished countries. A group called Students Against Sweatshops campaigned against a factory in the Dominican Republic making baseball caps for their school, because the workers were earning 69 cent an hour. (Trasinski, 2003) However, the per capita GDP of the DR is only $1,770, which roughly matches a 69 cents hourly wage for daily 8-10 hour shifts. Usually, the alternative to working in Factories in Indonesia is to work on as a farm hand, who make less then 10 cents an hour. A steady job in a factory, even if its conditions and hours are horrendous, is going to generate more income and prostituting or begging which are common alternatives. Large retail companies like Wal-Mart do not help the situation either. Wal-Mart and its competitors use a process called ‘growing down’ which pits countries against countries for the cheapest labor. If there is any increase in the price of goods from a supplier in Haiti for example, which has an average income of 30 cents an hour, due to unionizing or other ways of increasing wages, the company can simply move the factory to China, who’s minimum wage is only 15 cents an hour. This forces contractors to discourage unions and keep wages constant to avoid getting their factory shutting down. As long as poverty persists in the third world, sweatshops will continue to be a problem. Unlike protests against unfair labor in the US, protesting sweatshop labor is often more harmful than beneficial. The only option we have is to make global change in the conditions of the factories with rigorous inspections. We can also pressure companies like Wal-Mart into not ‘growing down’ and to support unionization. Although sweatshops seem like good targets to protest against, they are merely products of free trade, and for the most part, cannot be abolished. The most direct way we can help is by contributing to international charities. The war on poverty is just beginning, and we definitely have our work cut out for us. Armbruster-Sandoval, Ralph. Globalization and Cross-Border Labor Solidarity in the Americas. Routledge, New York. 2005. Harrison, Ann and Scorse, Jason. Moving Up or Moving Out? Anti-Sweatshop Activists and Labor Market Outcomes. Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkley CA. May, 2004. Kahn, Joseph. The World’s Sweatshop Captive Unions: When Chinese Workers Unite, the Bosses Often Run the Union. The New York Times, December 29, 2003. Schmitt, Eric and Brinkley, Joe. House Passes Bill to Toughen Laws on Forced Labor. New York Times, Section A, Page 1, Coolum 2, October 7, 2000. Tracinski, Robert W. The ‘Sweatshop’ Scam: So-Called ‘Sweatshops’ Are Economic Opportunities for the Third World Poor. Capitalism Magazine, September 6, 2003. http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3003 Ben Sargent is from Norwich, Vermont, and is a rising sophomore at Pitzer College leaning towards a major in Theatre. He will work tables at a family restaurant in Vermont this summer. |
