Export zones havens of exploitation for workers

Export zones havens of exploitation for workers

Rebecca Frasquet, Agence France-Presse, Miyazaki, Japan

Embraced by governments hungry for the cash of multinational firms, the world's growing number of special export zones are havens of exploitation for millions of workers, union leaders say.

Some 3,000 export zones have been set up since the 1970s, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO). Two- thirds of the zones are in China, which aggressively woos foreign manufacturers through tax incentives.

But the handsome profits are coming on the back of some 42 million people around the globe who work in such zones, many of them women, toiling long hours and enduring harassment for substandard wages, organized labor says.

The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which is holding its 18th World Congress in Miyazaki, Japan with 150 countries taking part, has challenged the wisdom of economic zones, generally used for assembly of material imported from elsewhere.

The ICFTU said one problem was that companies in the zones were able to pack up as quickly as they arrived if another country offered a better deal.

"Investment comes and goes, usually leaving little behind once it has gone," said Zwelinzima Vavi, general secretary of the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

But most important, in the ICFTU's view, is the human toll.

Norosoa Ravalanirina is a 32-year-old in Madagascar who earns less than 30 dollars a month making sweaters for a Belgian company, which could not be identified for legal reasons.

"I can normally make five jumpers, but when my boss tells me to make nine, I can't do it and I sometimes have to work until 10:00 pm," she said in testimony in an ICFTU report presented to the conference.

"I can no longer afford rice or meat, and I have to walk to the factory because I can't afford the bus ticket," she said.

The ICFTU said workers put up with such misery in part because the economic zones tried to demoralize them into submission.

In Mexico, Monica, 26, said that when she was recruited in 1999 to assemble Hewlett-Packard printers, two "nurses" forced her to strip naked on the pretense of verifying she had no tattoos.

"My word was not good enough. I had to take off all my clothes, including my underwear. They even touched me while I was naked, checking my breasts. I don't know what they were really looking for," said Monica, who no longer works at the factory.

The ICFTU report quoted Hewlett-Packard as saying it had not heard of Monica's alleged mistreatment by the subcontractor in the economic zone and that it would have taken action if it had.

In China, where only government-run unions are permitted, at least one factory making CDs and DVDs deducts 10 percent of wages and returns it after a year at the job to ensure workers stay put at peak production times, the report said.

But ironically, one glimmer of hope may come in the shape of an event dreaded by the labor movement: the end of developed nations' textile import quotas from next month.

Much of the Miyazaki meet has been devoted to discussing fears that cheap, abundant Chinese labor will take over in the free market and lead factories elsewhere to shut or slash wages.

But the ICFTU said that in Bangladesh and the Philippines, the looming overhaul of the textile trade has led "a handful" of employers to reach out to labor to ensure a better working environment so factories can survive.

Unions have yet to make a dent at Luzon, near Manila, where three economic zones sometimes pay less than the minimum wage of 250 pesos (US$4.50) a day, said Democrito Tolo Mendoza of the million-member Trade Union Congress of the Philippines.

"It's a serious problem. We're managing to organize these workers, but it's very slow," he told AFP.

Begum Amena Mahmuda, a delegate in Miyazaki from the Bangladesh Jatiyabadi Sramil Dal, a union of two million members, said only a few firms in her country's economic zones allowed labor activism.

"Many women are inclined to form unions. But most foreign companies don't permit it," she said.