http://www.oneworld.net/link/gotolink/addhit/51528 Yahoo! News Tue, Feb
10, 2004
World - OneWorld.net
Wal-Mart, Other Big Retailers Driving Down Working Conditions Worldwide
OneWorld.net
Jim Lobe, OneWorld US
WASHINGTON, D.C., Feb 10 (OneWorld) --Wal-Mart and other major global
retailers in the apparel and food industries are driving down working
conditions for millions of mostly women workers worldwide, according to a
new report by the British-based international development agency, Oxfam.
Despite the retailers' claims that they demand that their contractors
comply with basic labor standards, their demands for ever-quicker and
cheaper goods are making compliance impossible in many cases, according to
the report, "Trading Away Our Rights."
"This is where globalization is failing in its potential to lift people
out of poverty and support development," said the director of Oxfam's
"Make Trade Fair" campaign. "There is a widening gap between the rhetoric
of global corporate social responsibility and the reality of the corporate
business model."
"Many corporations have codes of conduct to hold their suppliers
accountable for labor standards, but their own ruthless buying strategies
often make it impossible for these standards to be met," he added.
The new report, which is based on hundreds of interviews of workers,
factor, and farm owners, global brands, importers, exporters, and union
and government officials in 12 countries, comes amid growing efforts by
multinational corporations to reassure their consumers that workers who
produce their goods are able to earn a decent living.
But a spate of recent newspaper articles and studies have suggested that
these efforts may be undermined by growing competitive pressures created
by the demands of retailers and the ever-growing number of poor countries
that have heeded advice and pressure from international financial
institutions (IFIs) to open their economies to attract investment and
jobs.
"Globalization has hugely strengthened the negotiating hand of retailers
and brand companies," according to the report. "New technologies, trade
liberalization, and capital mobility have dramatically opened up the
number of countries and producers from which they can source products,
creating a growing number of producers vying for a place in their supply
chains."
Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, has led the field in putting this
model into practice, the report said. It is currently buying products from
some 65,000 suppliers worldwide and selling to over 138 million consumers
each week through its 1,300 stores in 10 countries.
It has made China, where wages are far lower than anywhere else in Asia
and workers are denied the opportunity to form independent unions, the
center of production, a key point made in feature article that appeared in
the Washington Post Sunday.
"As capital scours the globe for cheaper and more malleable workers, and
as poor countries seek multinational companies to provide jobs, lift
production and open export markets," the Post said, "Wal-Mart and China
have forged themselves into the ultimate joint venture, their symbiosis
influencing the terms of labor and consumption the world over."
That marriage, however, according to the both the Post account and the
Oxfam report, has come largely at the expense of the worker on the factory
line. "Wal-Mart pressures the factory to cut its price, and the factory
responds with longer hours or lower pay," a Chinese labor official who
declined to be identified for fear of retaliation told the Post, "And the
workers have no options."
That was also the message of a report released Monday by the New
York-based National Labor Committee and China Labor Watch on a toy factory
in Ping Township in Guangdong province that produces goods for Wal-Mart.
The two groups reported that the mostly female labor force at the plant
were paid only about half the legal minimum wage and forced to work longer
hours than the legal maximum. It also reported that fire exits were
normally locked.
Wal-Mart responded to the report by insisting that it conducted regular
inspections of all of its plants in China, but the groups said that plant
managers were always informed of the inspections in advance and coached
the workers on what to tell the inspectors.
The report was largely consistent with the findings of the Oxfam study
that put the main responsibility for the worsening situation on corporate
buying teams that pressure suppliers to deliver "just-in-time" orders at
ever-lower prices in hopes of squeezing maximum profit from goods once
they are sold to shoppers in mainly wealthy countries.
"Today's business ethos is 'make it quick, make it flexible, make it
cheap,'" said Blomer. "Anyone appalled by labor conditions in the world
today should be asking, 'so who turned up the heat?' The workers at the
bottom of the global supply chains are helping to fuel national export
growth and shareholders' returns, but their jobs are being made vere more
insecure, unhealthy and exhausting and their rights weakened."
To minimize resistance, contractors are employing workers who are less
likely to try to join trade unions in those countries where they exist.
For the most part, these include young women, often migrants or
immigrants, who are easily intimidated if they do not cooperate with
management.
"Jobs in labor-intensive industries are celebrated as empowering women,"
according to Bloomer. "While we welcom the fact that millions of women are
getting a wage, the wage alone doesn't free them from poverty. Instead,
they're being burnt out by working harder, faster, over longer hours and
with few health, maternity or union rights. It's a poor strategy for
improving women's lives," he added, noting that the IFIs, such as the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were complicit in the
worsening situation by encouraging governments to make their labor markets
ever more "flexible."
In Chile, for example, 75 percent of women in the agricultural sector are
hired on temporary contracts picking fruit and put in more than 60 hours a
week during the season, but one third still make below minimum wage.
Fewer than half the women in Bangladesh garment factories have a contract,
and the majority receive no maternity or health benefits. Some 80 percent
fear dismissal if they complain.
In China's Guangdong province, young women face 150 hours of overtime each
month in the garment factors, but only 40 percent have a written contract
and 90 percent have no access to social insurance.
Given these kinds of situations, governments must step in to guarantee
workers basic labor rights, including the right to join trade unions and
bargain collectively. At the same time, a greater effort must be made to
enforce labor laws, while consumers must insist that retailers do a far
better job of monitoring labor conditions to ensure that the employment
they are creating in poor countries is not exploitative, according to the
report.