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.
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