RIGHTS-LABOUR: Clothing Industry’s Failures Under Attack Again

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Niccolo Sarno

BRUSSELS, May 8 1998 (IPS) - Widespread violations of the rights of workers in the garment and sportswear industry have been condemned here by the self-styled ‘Permanent People’s Tribunal’, a panel of experts in the field of international law.

Meeting here this week to review the activities of seven multi- national clothing and sportswear companies, the unofficial tribunal concluded that the firms’ activities had violated several labour laws and basic human rights.

“We have seen through the seven companies, what are the general practices of this industry,” said Francois Houtart, president of the tribunal session and director of the Tricontinental Centre in Belgium.

12 witnesses from ten developing countries testified on actual working conditions in the industry, singling out seven leading transnationals: sportswear manufacturers Nike and Adidas, clothing traders H&M, Levi Strauss, C&A and Walt Disney, and the world ‘s biggest mail order company, Otto-Verstand.

After hearing from witnesses from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, the tribunal accused the seven of allowing violations of laws covering extended working hours, insufficient remuneration and working conditions, and a general non-respect o f human dignity.

“They affect in particular women, adding to existing gender discrimination a factor of exploitation,” said the ruling. Women constitute some 80 percent of the apparel industry workforce.

“Globalisation has brought with it a globalisation of poverty, and a feminisation of poverty,” warned the tribunal, which says its aims to promote universal and effective respect of fundamental rights.

“I will inform the Haitian government about the verdict,” said Yannick Etienne, a Haitian trade unionist and tribunal witness. “The government must know that (factory) owners’ impunity has to come to an end.”

Disney and its contractor, HH Cutler, eventually left Haiti after allegedly rejecting the pleas of workers making six cents for every garment they made — average retail cost 19.99 dollars — to be paid 58 cents an hour instead.

The request to dedicate a People’s Tribunal session to ‘workers and consumers rights in garment industry’ was first presented by the Clean Clothes Campaign, a broad European coalition of trade unions and non-governmental organisations.

The Campaign ran a five day ‘Clean Clothes Forum’ here which ended Tuesday with the tribunal verdict. It says the retailers are responsible and should be made to account for the conditions under which their orders are produced.

“They check quality, colour and delivery speed. They can check on wage and working conditions and pay extra for them, if necessary,” says a Campaign document.

In its verdict, the Tribunal acknowledged the consumers’ right to information on the working conditions under which the clothes they buy are produced, and commended efforts to implement codes of conduct in the apparel industry with fair standards and ind ependent monitoring.

The ‘Clean Clothes Forum’ was supposed to formally begin a dialogue with large garment industry companies, both those that have already taken some steps to develop policies concerning working conditions and those that have not yet done so.

But only one company, the Swedish retailer H&M, sent a representative to the Forum and Tribunal to defend its operations. Nike sent a written response, and the remaining five manufacturers refused to attend or answer, generally because they considered th at the tribunal was not a fair forum.

H&M and Nike argued that they could not be responsible for the improper practices of their sub-contracting firms, that operations were adapted to local social and wage conditions and the effect of competition on the situation. They also said they has ado pted voluntary codes of conduct.

Voluntary codes of conduct are a form of self regulation. As such, they are not generally enforceable in courts of law. An independent report commissioned by Nike in Vietnam found these codes were being routinely ignored by subcontractors.

Workers had been forced to run laps as punishment or kneel in front of their supervisors, and forced to work up to 14 hours per day with two to four days off a month — a violation of both Nike policy and local laws.

Nevertheless, these codes of conduct play a key role in pressurising companies through public opinion to improve the treatment of workers producing the goods they market. A recent EU study found that 74 percent of people would buy fair trade products if they were available.

Last month activists in San Francisco sued Nike for allegedly misrepresenting its products to U.S. customers concerned about ‘sweatshop’ conditions in Asian factories where its shoes are put together.

Other options are being taken up. Otto-Verstand has already signed up to a new global standard, Social Accounting 8000, developed by the New York-based Council on Economic Priorities in conjunction with representatives from multinationals, international consultancies and NGOs.

SA8000 is based on the conventions of the International Labour Organisation, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The quizzed companies are major earners. “There is no doubt that (the level of profits) is in great part the result of the tremendous exploitation of the working class, and in particular of women, of the South and of the Eastern Europe,” said the Tribu nal.

The U.S. National Labor Committee has said the 50 cents an hour paid Mexican workers making Guess? jeans, for example, paled against real cost of living levels. A week’s worth of basic food for a small family costs about 30 dollars.

The trend in the garment sector is to see production shifted to the developing countries where labour costs are lower.

The Tribunal verdict reflects close continuity with judgements of previous sessions of the Tribunal, which documented the “repressive dominance” on the international scene by the laws of an economy governed mainly by market and financial criteria.

“This economy has little or no respect for the social conditions and clauses, and has its greatest impact on the weakest components of society, namely women and children,” declared the Tribunal during its 1995 session on the violation of the rights of childhood and minors.