Imperialism lives on in C. America
By Nazly Siregar
MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, USA (JP): If you think that imperialism is long gone, you don't understand the word itself. For a lot of people in many countries, every day seems to be another day of being enslaved, surviving and fighting for another plate of food.
The Free Trade Zones in which the sweatshops flourish in Central America and the Caribbean were promoted by the U.S. government and largely financed by U.S. taxpayers. The hundreds of thousands of young and mostly female factory workers in Central America who earn next to nothing and often live in squalor have been an absolute boon to American clothing companies.
Early this month, the National Labor Committee, a union- sponsored human rights group in New York, accused The Gap company of farming out its work to overseas companies that paid "starvation wages" and subjected its employees to demeaning working conditions. The charges were echoed in two widely reprinted New York Times opinion pieces.
The women who worked at a plant in El Salvador that made clothing for The Gap and other companies were paid a pathetic 56 U.S. cents an hour. If they wanted to use the bathroom, they had to go through the humiliation of asking a supervisor for a ticket. Anyone who stayed in the bathroom too long was punished by being made to sweep the grounds in the hot sun. Several were fired for their union activities, according to the National Labor Committee.
Guatemala can be reached from El Salvador in less than an hour by air. The same picture if not worse is found there. The maquila industry -- a key element of the Guatemalan government's plan for economic growth -- is increasingly being criticized for its often harsh labor conditions, low wages, anti-union stance and physical and sexual abuse of a predominantly female workforce.
Maquilas became a force here in the mid-1980s, when the government tied future growth to nontraditional exports -- the term given to goods specifically produced for foreign consumption -- and passed a series of laws exempting maquilas from paying most taxes. Another key to their growth is the availability of cheap labor. Today, there are 500 maquila factories, which generate US$330 million annually in exports to the United States and provide 70,000 jobs, according to the Nontraditional Products Exporters' Association.
The women who live in the maquila industry, which largely involves sewing pre-cut clothing for U.S businesses such as Phillips-Van Heusen, Sears, Levi's, Liz Claiborne and J.C. Penney, told of the backaches they get sitting on a backless wooden bench all day and the troubles they have breathing because of dust at the factory. A grueling production pace, the pounding noise of hundreds of machines, working in factories with high temperatures and poor ventilation and sharing five bathroom stalls with 500 other workers are parts of the daily lives of many such women. Many are single mothers working jobs that may pay as little as $2 a day.
Nevertheless, no stories are more tragic than child slavery. In this case, Latin Americans could find their counterparts easily in Asia. At the instigation of Senator Tom Harkin, America's Department of Labor investigated 19 countries where 46 million children work making goods for American firms. It found that in South Asia, where about half of all these children live, children were working 14-hours days in crowded factories and unsafe conditions.
Whenever it awards contracts to apparel makers in Guatemala, J.C Penney Co. is responsible for the use of underage workers. Bob Ortega reported in The Wall Street Journal that factories supplying American retailer J.C. Penney readily hired workers under the legal age of 14, paid less than the minimum wage of $2.80 a day and forced them to put in unpaid overtime for work days as long as 15 hours. In a country with a long history of child labor, violations of local labor law -- and therefore of retailers' codes -- appear to be rampant. The right to unionize is flagrantly trampled. And government labor officials estimate that half the 80,000 workers in the apparel industry are paid less than minimum wage.
The working conditions are poor, and the workers say they are beaten for working too slowly. To fill rush orders, they say, they must work as many as 90 hours a week -- or lose their jobs. And they say they are forced to pay for medical-insurance cards that they rarely receive and workers often aren't paid for overtime. Thus, for factory owners, a prime incentive to obey labor laws is avoiding retailer's wrath. But owners say that retailers pressure them relentlessly to pare costs to the bone so that obeying costly laws can cost them business.
Many apparel plant owners said that Penney did not really check on workers ages or factory conditions. They have never had any request from Penney about how they pay or treat workers, only about matters related to the quality of their products. Penney inspectors are "interested in a high quality garment, fast delivery and cheap sewing charges -- and that's all."
In June 1994, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, a body representing labor unions around the world, launched a campaign to abolish child labor. Last year International Confederation of Free Trade Unions failed to persuade the world trade body, GATT, to impose trade boycotts on countries that employed improper working conditions.
Last December Britain's Mail on Sunday ran a story revealing that 14 to 16 year-old girls in Bangladesh were working up to 16 hours a day making jeans for Levi Strauss. Unfortunately this tragedy is overshadowed by the more tragic reality. Caroline Lequesne of Oxfam, a British charity, has just returned from Bangladesh, where she visited factories to determine the impact of American retailer's human-rights policies. She reckons that between 1993 and 1994 around 30,000 of the 50,000 children working in textile firms in Bangladesh were thrown out of factories because suppliers feared losing their businesses if they kept the children on. But the majority of these children have, because of penury, been forced to turn to prostitution or other industries like welding, where conditions pose far greater risks to them.
According to Franklin Research & Development, a Boston-based ethical investment firm, fewer than 5 percent of America's retailers and branded-goods companies are now tackling human- rights issues and for seven years, U.S. labor groups have pressured the U.S. trade representative's office to withdraw tax breaks under the Generalized System of Preferences, which either exempts maquilas from paying U.S. import duties or reduces the tariffs. Although the requests have never been successful, officials are hopeful about two petitions filed this year by the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations and a diverse group of 10 labor, human rights and religious groups.
Human rights seem to be trivial here. United States, as a leading nation of human rights and children protection, has to make war against the profitability of the business world. And if money is involved, once again law and amendment are only written papers. Today's business is so cruel that humans are also subjected as advertising targets like machines, cars or tools. The only difference is that the human price is a lot cheaper than the rest.
In August 1990, the ludicrously named Salvadoran Foundation for Social and Economic Development, a group almost entirely financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development, placed an advertisement in Bobbin, a major trade magazine for the apparel industry.
The glossy full color advertisement showed a young woman seated at a sewing machine in a shirt factory. The text spoke directly to executives in the United States. It said: "Rosa Martinez produces apparel for U.S. markets on her sewing machine in El Salvador. You can hire her for 57 cents an hour." The ad assured the executives who would be shelling out the two quarters and seven pennies an hour that "she and her co-workers are known for their industriousness, reliability and quick learning."
In March 1991, the same ad ran in the same magazine, except for one minor change. "You can hire her for 57 cents an hour" was changed to "You can hire her for 33 cents an hour." At some point between August and March it was decided that at 57 cents an hour the industrious, reliable and quick-learning Rosa Martinez was overpaid!
Another similar seductive offer came from James R. Stevens, International Editor of Appliance Manufacturer magazine in its February 1995 edition: "Colombia, population of 33 million, has an excessive labor supply. An unskilled laborer is paid on the basis of minimum daily wage in 1994 with benefits and bonuses up to $0.77, based on a 48-hour week. The labor cost in Colombia is a bargain -- a potential opportunity for many North American companies. A young, trained, non-unionized work force coupled with business-friendly regulations, low labor costs and declining inflation, makes Colombia an attractive place for business. Only 8 percent of the private-sector workforce is unionized." Not even a major league deceptive insurance company could bean the "sweat" and "irony" in both printings!
Many human rights activists ask for the responsibility of the owners. Are they conscious about what is really going on? Have they ever been at the plant, talked to the workers and seen the workplace?
If you ask executives such as Donald G. Fisher, the chief executive of The Gap and Banana Republic empire, who paid himself more than $2 million last year, you might be disappointed because he had no time. It takes a great deal of time to oversee an empire balanced on the backs of youngsters. After all, The Gap had sales of $3.6 billion last year. Forbes magazine reported that Fisher is worth $1.5 billion.
Warren Hashagen, a senior vice president at The Gap Inc., responded chillingly to the accusations. In the New York Times he said that he did not believe the maquiladora system was "inherently" exploitative. "We believe that it is important to pay at a minimum the legal minimum wage, or the prevailing wage for the industry, whichever is higher," he said. Whether that is a sufficient income for the wage earners, he said, is not his call. He continued, "I am not an economist, and I am not an expert on Central America to know whether it is an appropriate wage for the cost of living there and for whatever is provided by the factory otherwise."
American company executives should learn from their colleagues in Europe, because in Europe there is some good refreshing news. Shoppers here are now forcing retailers to be kinder to mankind as well as to animals and the environment. A monthly poll of British consumers by the National Provident Institution, which runs a portfolio of ethical stocks, found that concerns about slavery abuse of workers rights now ranks above those about greenery and animals -- partly thanks to the killing in April of a 12 year-old Pakistani boy who was a symbol for children's rights. Meanwhile IKEA, a Swedish furniture store, recently decided not to sell carpets unless they could be certified as made without child labor. C&A, a Dutch store chain, has agreed to establish a code of conduct to help abolish child labor.
The ethics of the world market are very clear, retailers and manufacturers will move wherever it's cheapest or most convenient to their interests. And as usual, unions are often seen as a threat to profits. In fact, while companies like The Gap, J.C. Penney, Levi Strauss, and many others reap the benefits, workers will suffer. While Peter Haas of Levi Strauss enjoys being a 1.3 billion dollar man, his workers earn less than the amount needed to meet the minimum cost of living requirement. In the suites of the big apparel companies, the attitude is: that's their problem.
Nazly Siregar, assistant associate editor to Grand Times magazine, accepts correspondence related to human rights through nazly72gar@aol.com electronic mail.
Window A: Today's business is so cruel that humans are also subjected as advertising targets like machines, cars or tools.
Window B: The ethics of the world market are very clear, retailers and manufacturers will move wherever it's cheapest or most convenient to their interests.