Soledad Arnedo is head of the La Negra del Norte cooperative textile workshop, which works together with other productive enterprises of the popular economy in the Argentine municipality of San Isidro, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, May 5 2023 (IPS)

Nearby is an agroecological garden and a plant nursery, further on there are pens for raising pigs and chickens, and close by, in an old one-story house with a tiled roof, twelve women sew pants and blouses. All of this is happening in a portion of a public park near Buenos Aires, where popular cooperatives are fighting the impact of Argentina’s long-drawn-out socioeconomic crisis.

“We sell our clothes at markets and offer them to merchants. Our big dream is to set up our own business to sell to the public, but it’s difficult, especially since we can’t get a loan,” Soledad Arnedo, a mother of three who works every day in the textile workshop, told IPS.

The garments made by the designers and seamstresses carry the brand “la Negra del Norte”, because the workshop is in the municipality of San Isidro, in the north of Greater Buenos Aires.“In Argentina in the last few years, having a job does not lift people out of poverty. This is true even for many who have formal sector jobs.” -- Nuria Susmel

In Greater Buenos Aires, home to 11 million people, the poverty rate is 45 percent, compared to a national average of 39.2 percent.

La Negra del Norte is just one of the several self-managed enterprises that have come to life on the five hectares that, within the Carlos Arenaza municipal park, are used by the Union of Popular Economy Workers (UTEP).

It is a union without bosses, which brings together people who are excluded from the labor market and who try to survive day-to-day with precarious, informal work due to the brutal inflation that hits the poor especially hard.

“These are ventures that are born out of sheer willpower and effort and the goal is to become part of a value chain, in which textile cooperatives are seen as an economic agent and their product is valued by the market,” Emmanuel Fronteras, who visits different workshops every day to provide support on behalf of the government’s National Institute of Associativism and Social Economy (INAES), told IPS.

Today there are 20,520 popular cooperatives registered with INAES. The agency promotes cooperatives in the midst of a delicate social situation, but in which, paradoxically, unemployment is at its lowest level in the last 30 years in this South American country of 46 million inhabitants: 6.3 percent, according to the latest official figure, from the last quarter of 2022.

Women work in a textile cooperative that operates in Navarro, a town of 20,000 people located about 125 kilometers southwest of Buenos Aires. Many of the workers supplement their income with a payment from the Argentine government aimed at bolstering productive enterprises in the popular economy. CREDIT: Evita Movement

The working poor

The plight facing millions of Argentines is not the lack of work, but that they don’t earn a living wage: the purchasing power of wages has been vastly undermined in recent years by runaway inflation, which this year accelerated to unimaginable levels.

In March, prices rose 7.7 percent and year-on-year inflation (between April 2022 and March 2023) climbed to 104.3 percent. Economists project that this year could end with an index of between 130 and 140 percent.

Although in some segments of the economy wage hikes partly or fully compensate for the high inflation, in most cases wage increases lag behind. And informal sector workers bear the brunt of the rise in prices.

“In Argentina in the last few years, having a job does not lift people out of poverty,” economist Nuria Susmel, an expert on labor issues at the Foundation for Latin American Economic Research (FIEL), told IPS.

“This is true even for many who have formal sector jobs,” she added.

On five hectares of a public park in the Argentine municipality of San Isidro, in Greater Buenos Aires, there is a production center with several cooperatives from the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy (UTEP), which defends the rights of people excluded from the formal labor market. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) estimates that the poverty line for a typical family (made up of two adults and two minors) was 191,000 pesos (834 dollars) a month in March.

However, the average monthly salary in Argentina is 86,000 pesos (386 dollars), including both formal and informal sector employment.

“The average salary has grown well below the inflation rate,” said Susmel. “Consequently, for companies labor costs have fallen. This real drop in wages is what helps keep the employment rate at low levels.”

“And it is also the reason why there are many homes where people have a job and they are still poor,” she said.

Social value of production

La Negra del Norte is one of 35 textile cooperatives that operate in the province of Buenos Aires, where a total of 160 women work.

They receive support not only from the government through INAES, but also from the Evita Movement, a left-wing social and political group named in honor of Eva Perón, the legendary Argentine popular leader who died in 1952, at the age of just 33.

The Evita Movement formed a group of textile cooperatives which it supports in different ways, such as the reconditioning of machines and the training of seamstresses.

“The group was formed with the aim of uniting these workshops, which in many cases were small isolated enterprises, to try to formalize them and insert them into the productive and economic circuit,” said Emmanuel Fronteras, who is part of the Evita Movement, which has strong links to INAES.

“In addition to the economic value of the garments, we want the production process to have social value, which allows us to think not only about the profit of the owners but also about the improvement of the income of each cooperative and, consequently, the valorization of the work of the seamstresses,” he added in an interview with IPS.

The 12 women who work in the Argentine cooperative La Negra del Norte sell the clothes they make at markets and dream of being able to open their own store, but one of the obstacles they face is the impossibility of getting a loan. CREDIT: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The high level of informal employment in Argentina’s textile industry has been well-documented, and has been facilitated by a marked segmentation of production, since many brands outsource the manufacture of their clothing to small workshops.

Many of the workers in the cooperatives supplement their textile income with a stipend from the Potenciar Trabajo government social programme that pays half of the minimum monthly wage in exchange for their work.

“Economically we are in the same situation as the country itself. The instability is enormous,” said Celene Cárcamo, a designer who works in another cooperative, called Subleva Textil, which operates in a factory that makes crusts for the traditional Argentine “empanadas” or pasties in the municipality of San Martín, that was abandoned by its owners and reopened by its workers.

Other cooperatives operating in the pasty crust factory are involved in the areas of graphic design and food production, making it a small hub of the popular economy.

The six women working at Subleva Textil face obstacles every day. One of them is the constant rise in the prices of inputs, like most prices in the Argentine economy.

Subleva started operating shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, so it had to adapt to the complex new situation. “They say that crisis is opportunity, so we decided to make masks,” said Cárcamo, who stressed the difficulties of running a cooperative in these hard times in Argentina and acknowledged that “We need to catch a break.”

Fidel Daza and Susana Chiura (behind) in the 20 de Diciembre Cooperative in Buenos Aires, where the two Bolivian immigrants work after being freed from slave labour in garment industry sweatshops. The cooperative forms part of the Clean Clothes network fighting for decent working conditions, which already includes 20 brand names in Argentina. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Fabiana Frayssinet
BUENOS AIRES, Mar 10 2016 (IPS)

In Argentina, there are now 20 brand names that guarantee that their garments are produced by workers in decent working conditions, thanks to the Clean Clothes network, aimed at eradicating slave labour in the garment industry, which illegally employs some 30,000 people in sweatshops around the country.

The members of the 20 de Diciembre Cooperative stop for lunch, and leave work on time after a seven-hour workday, to go and pick up their children at school.

These rights are supposedly guaranteed by local laws. But they are not respected in around 3,000 sweatshops in Greater Buenos Aires, which account for 80 percent of the local garment industry’s output, according to statistics from the La Alameda Foundation, which was behind the creation of the cooperative.“We started to receive a lot of phone calls from people who were indignant about what had happened, and concerned because we denounced many brand names of clothing for using sweatshops, and people asked us: so what are we supposed to wear?” -- Tamara Rosenberg

“They only gave us one plate of food, which we had to share with our kids. And the food wasn’t good,” Susana Chiura, a member of the cooperative who came to Argentina from Bolivia seven years ago, told IPS.

Like many other South American immigrants in Argentina, many of whom are from Bolivia, Chiura was brought in by the owner of a textile workshop, who in this case was from Peru.

“He promised me a good job, and housing,” she said. “But when we got here we found it wasn’t true. They didn’t let us out; we could only go out on Saturday afternoon. Even if we just wanted to go to the supermarket, he would take us there and bring us back to the house.”

She shared a tiny room with poor ventilation with her oldest son. She earned five times less than the minimum wage required by law, working from 6:00 in the morning to midnight. And the cost of the trip from Bolivia, meals and lodging were docked from her pay.

Another Bolivian member of the cooperative, Fidel Daza, said: “I worked from 7:00 to 21:00, with just one half-hour break. There were entire families working even longer hours, because they needed the money to be able to eat.”

“Now I have more time to play with my kids. Before, they’d be sleeping when I left in the morning and they’d already be asleep when I got home,” he told IPS.

According to La Alameda, workers like Chiura or Daza are the last link in a chain that starts out with large, medium and small clothing companies which, due to omission, complicity or ignorance, use sweatshops to manufacture the garments they sell.

Verónica Virasoro, the owner of Vero Vira, a women’s clothing store, said “I wanted to see the workshop, but I was told they probably wouldn’t let me in. That smelled fishy to me: when there’s a locked door, something is being hidden behind it.”

Her firm is one of the cooperative’s clients and forms part of the Clean Clothes network, which also groups garment factories and consumers.

She said many designers turn to sweatshops to cut costs or because they don’t really understand what’s going on.

“Besides, they are not all clandestine sweatshops that use slave labour,” she said. “There are also family workshops that have a dynamic of charging less, but to do that they work extremely long hours, and sleep in the factory. And they’re not aware that accidents can be caused by bad installations.”

This Buenos Aires sweatshop was destroyed in April 2015 by a fire that claimed the lives of two Bolivian boys who were living there. The Clean Clothes network emerged in response to the indignation caused by the tragedy in this country, where 30,000 people work in sweatshops. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

The Ropa Limpia or Clean Clothes network emerged in 2015, with a successful fashion show held to demonstrate that it is possible to produce clothing without slave and child labour.

On Apr. 27, 2015, two Bolivian children died in a sweatshop fire.

“We started to receive a lot of phone calls from people who were indignant about what had happened, and concerned because we denounced many brand names of clothing for using sweatshops, and people asked us: so what are we supposed to wear?” said Tamara Rosenberg, the head of the cooperative.

“That’s when the idea came up to suggest to our customers that it is possible to produce in decent working conditions…it’s not the same thing to show that there’s a cooperative as to show that there are a number of designers who respect people’s rights, and charge appropriate prices.”

The very same clothing produced in sweatshops, which is sold at low prices in the city’s street markets, is sometimes sold by famous brand names at a higher mark-up.

The Argentine network was inspired by the global Clean Clothes Campaign, whose aim is to improve working conditions in the global garment and sportswear industries.

“The idea is to approach the sweatshops to raise awareness about the risks of not having their installations in proper working order, or of having children in the workshop, because the dust in the air hurts their respiratory system,” said Virasoro.

The members of the network also give advice to designers “who want to do things in a responsible manner,” she said.

“It’s not easy because they’re scared they’ll be reported,” she added. “The problem is that even though it’s not a clandestine workshop or a sweatshop using slave labour, they might not pay all their taxes, or their installations might not all be in order.”

Daza said: “You know you’re being mistreated, but the owner of the workshop tells you, ‘look, if you go, we have 10 others who want to work’. Since it’s hard to find a job, you bow your head and keep working.”

Others are worried about reporting the situation because the police themselves often “tell the owner, who fires (the whistle-blower),” he said.

Laura Méndez, who owns the Clara A brand name, decided to produce her accessories in the cooperative, after seeing “how they all worked crowded into a place with no exit” in a footwear factory, as well as other irregularities.

“The most important thing for me is to show clients that clothing can be produced in an ethical manner,” she told IPS. “I want the products to have a social impact.”

The 20 de Diciembre Cooperative employs 12 workers.

“In a sweatshop, people work 16 hours and earn 5,000 or 6,000 pesos (312 to 375 dollars) a month,” said Rosenberg. Here, most of the members of the cooperative work seven hours, earning 7,000 to 8,000 pesos a month (437 to 500 dollars), which is even higher than the wage agreed on with the industry.”

María Reina’s story is dramatic, like those of many of her fellow workers. Six years ago, when she was travelling from Bolivia to Argentina, where she had been hired to work in a garment workshop, the bus rolled and in the accident her boyfriend and brother-in-law were killed, and she lost a leg.

“When I got out of the hospital they took me to the workshop,” she told IPS. “I was in a wheelchair and they told me I had to work. I said I couldn’t, that I had to heal, that I was ordered to rest. They didn’t understand, and finally they threw me out on the street.”

She is now undergoing rehabilitation. And she has learned that South American immigrants like her have labour rights, and have the right to an identity card and to free healthcare and education.

“La Alameda has long been denouncing these practices by the sweatshops, which are also linked to other criminal activity,” said Rosenberg.

“We’re even talking about organised crime because many of the brand names that outsource work to sweatshops have ties to other crimes like money laundering, drug trafficking, car smuggling, or ‘narco-brothels’,” she said.

The challenge is to pass laws that guarantee inspections of the garment industry and the legal registration of private workshops.

“One of our working groups is focused on finding workshops that, while they might not have the best conditions for production, they at least offer good conditions or are interested in improving them,” she said. “We don’t want them to close down; what we want is to offer them options, such as joining together, in an adequate space.”

One alternative is the Polo Textil Barracas, which employs former sweatshop workers and uses machinery that in many cases had been confiscated.

But they dream about going further. For example, creating a label that identifies the origin of the clothing, and a slave labour-free system of sales – to guarantee, in Rosenberg’s words, that the clothes we use “aren’t stained with blood.”

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Samson Sesete weaves a small bag at his loom in Salem’s, a small-scale Ethiopian manufacturer of scarves and bags. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
ADDIS ABABA, Mar 26 2014 (IPS)

The sign for Salem’s directs you off a busy road in Addis Ababa, down a side street to a compound where multiple pairs of feet move up and down working treadles, and wooden shuttles flit back and forth, as Ethiopian sheumanoch — weavers — ply their trade.

Seated at their looms, most appear to be making scarfs, the majority of which are sold on site in a colourful shop. But a small number of scarfs are destined for shores and stores far away from Ethiopia. Ethiopia currently has 60 garment factories and 15 textile mills in operation, as the country tries to position itself as the next source country for the world’s clothing industry.

Currently, increased international interest in Ethiopia’s centuries-old textile industry is seeing some of the world’s biggest companies investing in it.

At the same time this interest is affording small-scale business like Salem’s, which employs 14 weavers, a chance to grow.

“It is a time of change, absolutely,” Salem Kassahun, the owner, tells IPS. “Now we make what our grandmothers wore but also what our daughters will wear and what the wider world wants.”

Last week she exported 700 scarfs to London-based Rose & Rose, which sells designer scarves and accessories. It was only the second shipment, but she hopes it will become a regular order.

Five years ago, there was little interest in Ethiopia’s textiles, Salem says, but during the last three years queries from overseas have increased steadily.

Larger domestic manufacturers appear to share her optimism.

More buyers are being attracted as a result of increased international attention, Fassil Tadese, chief executive of MAA Garment and Textiles Factory, tells IPS.

The MAA Garment and Textiles Factory, which is based outside Mekele, a city in northern Ethiopia, employs 1,500 workers, of which nearly 90 percent are women, and exports knitted garments to Europe and U.S.

Also, Fassil points out, manufacturers of auxiliary accessories and dyestuffs are coming, which is helping improve the local supply chain and access to materials.

Trends and events on the global stage have impacted where large international textile manufacturers set up shop. 

The collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh last April, which killed more than 1,100 people, drew worldwide attention to the poor conditions of many Asian factories.

At the same time, production costs in Asia are increasing, with salary increases easily outstripping inflation.

And election-related violence in recent months has disrupted Bangladesh’s clothing industry, the second-biggest after China. In addition, strikes by garment workers in Cambodia, another major supplier, have increased pressure on global firms.

Tesco, the world’s third-largest retailer, recently announced it expects to source more clothes from Ethiopia.

Hennes & Mauritz, popularly known as H&M, the world’s second-biggest fashion retailer, also said it sees good opportunities for producing clothing in Ethiopia and across sub-Saharan Africa.

Ethiopia currently has 60 garment factories and 15 textile mills in operation, as the country tries to position itself as the next source country for the world’s clothing industry, according to Tadesse Haile, state minister for Industry.

Ethiopia’s new role as an awakening textile giant is helped by an abundance of cotton — millions of hectares suitable for growing cotton remain untapped — and labour, thanks to a population of about 90 million, with a large proportion under the age of 30.

That this influx of foreign companies might squeeze out local manufacturers is not a concern, Fassil says. The massive textile market means there is plenty of room.

Also, he says, competition spurs efficiency and technological upgrades: “Hence we welcome investments from all over the world.”

So as international companies try diversifying from relying on Asian sourcing — H&M is one of the biggest buyers of garments from Bangladesh — Ethiopia increasingly appears to be a beneficiary.

Tesco predicts that by 2014 and 2015 it will export about 1.5 to two million dollars of products from Ethiopia, increasing to about 11 million dollars by 2016 and 2017.

At the same time, foreign companies are particularly sensitive about the need for regulated growth and ethically sound practices, so that mistakes made elsewhere in the world are not repeated.

“It really matters to us that clothes are produced in good conditions and everyone involved is treated decently,” Giles Bolton, the ethical trading director at Tesco, tells IPS.

Hence the company is engaging closely with the Ethiopian government and local business to ensure the long-term development of a well-regulated, ethical clothing industry, he adds.

An advantage in Ethiopia is many suppliers have worker unions which ensure effective dialogue between workers and employers, Anna Eriksson, a spokesperson for H&M, tells IPS.

At Salem’s the weavers appear content working away in the smart and breezy compound. But like most employees, they have concerns.

Weaving is a difficult and physically demanding job, Samson Sesete, who has been a weaver for seven years, tells IPS.

And they are paid per item, which means incomes vary, 21-year-old Teshome Onke, who began weaving at 14 in southern Ethiopia, tells IPS.

Fast weavers can earn about 2,000 birr (110 dollars) per month, he says, though their slower companions average closer to 1,500 birr (81 dollars).

And being paid for an item that is then sold for at least twice the cost appears a source of frustration.

Salem says she discusses wages with the weavers, acknowledging how they always want to be paid more.

“But then I wouldn’t be able to sell anything,” she points out.

A 25 percent mark up in price covers overheads, Salem says. A further 65 percent is the maximum profit margin that could be added, and 30 percent of this goes to the government in taxes.

Another challenge for a small business like hers is access to capital. Banks want to see collateral — colourful designs and ideas are not sufficient — and currently she doesn’t have enough.

Across the road Salem has a second compound where she wants to employ dozens more weavers to grow the business.

But currently it’s still too early to commit to expansion.

“Although we are getting plenty of interest, I’m waiting to see whether questions turn into orders,” Salem says.

And even if those orders come, she acknowledges that it will be hard work within the highly-competitive international market where order quotas must be delivered on time, every time.

“You have to strive for perfection,” Salem says. “All of us need to adapt our mindsets for the international market.”

Workers stitch Hanes tee-shirts at a factory in the CODEVI free trade zone in Ouanaminthe, Haiti. Credit: Jude Stanley Roy/IPS

By Jane Regan
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Dec 3 2013 (IPS)

Haiti’s minimum wage will nudge up 12 percent on Jan. 1, from 4.65 to 5.23 dollars (or 200 to 225 gourdes) per day. Calculated hourly, it will go from 58 to 65 cents, before taxes.

But the raise will not affect Haiti’s 30,000 assembly factory workers, who are supposed to already be receiving about seven dollars for an eight-hour day – about 87 cents per hour. Recent studies have found rampant wage theft at almost two dozen of the factories that stitch clothing for companies like Gap and Walmart.“If I hear there is going to be a demonstration, I’ll be there. I cannot make it with this pocket change. The bosses know that." -- Haitian garment worker

The wage hike comes almost five years after the Haitian parliament asked for a 200-gourde minimum wage, then worth 4.96 dollars a day, but failed to overcome Washington-backed industry opposition [see sidebar].

Agreed to on Nov. 29 by a government-convened Council on Salaries (CSS) – made up of labour, business and government representatives – the raise falls far short of the minimum wage of 11.63 dollars (500 gourdes) that factory worker unions and others were demanding.

Last month, in the capital and in Haiti’s north, the Collective of Textile Factory Unions federation (KOSIT), which represents workers in three industrial parks, mobilised for the 500-gourde wage.

On Nov. 7, to chants of “500 gourdes! 500 gourdes!,” over 5,000 workers and supporters marched outside the gates of a free trade zone on the border of the Dominican Republic in Ouanaminthe. Hundreds of others marched on Nov. 26 in the capital.

The factory owners countered late last week with an open letter which pled to “keep Haiti competitive” with what they identified as their “big rivals” – Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam, countries all known for harsh conditions and abuse.

Union members, other workers and their supporters demonstrate to demand a 500-gourde minimum wage in Port-au-Prince on Nov. 26, 2013. Credit: Batay Ouvriye

“We recognise that the clothing and assembly sectors are not ends in and of themselves, but they can be a very important stimulus and can serve as a motor to help Haiti open up and present itself as a country that is changing and modernising,” said the 23 Haitian, Dominican and South Korean factory owners and industrialists from the Association of Haitian Industries (ADIH).

Two days later, on Nov. 29, eight of the nine members of the CSS, including all three union representatives, approved the 225-gourde wage. (None of the union representatives were from KOSIT.)

Yannick Etienne of Batay Ouvriye (Workers Struggle), a labour group which supports KOSIT and other textile unions, said her organisation and the unions disagree with the 225-gourde salary.

“We think it is a shame that the CSS union representatives agreed to the miserable wage of 225 gourdes. At a meeting the night before, we requested that they refuse to sign any agreement that was less than 300 gourdes,” Etienne told IPS.

Rampant wage theft

The country’s 30,000 workers – almost two-thirds of them women – in Haiti’s free trade zone assembly factories stitch together clothing for Gap, Gildan Activewear, Hanes, Kohl’s, Levi’s, Russell, Target, VF, and Walmart. Haitian law stipulates that “the price paid per production unit… must be set in a way that permits a worker to earn at least 300 gourdes for an eight-hour day.”

But recent studies by three different international groups, including the U.N.’s International Labour Organisation (ILO), have documented that the vast majority of workers receive the legal minimum only rarely: about 25 percent of the time, according to the ILO.

A 29-year-old mother who works at the Multiwear factory, which makes tee-shirts for Hanes, is one of those being gypped. (Like all workers interviewed for this story, she agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity.)

“I support my four-year-old, and two sisters, and one brother,” she told IPS. “Sometimes I make the quota and get 300 gourdes, but just once in a while.”

In its October 2013 report, the ILO’s Better Work textile factory monitoring programme found all 23 factories surveyed, including Multiwear, to be “non-compliant” with the law. To be “compliant,” Better Work said that “at least 90 percent of experienced workers” should be able to make 300 gourdes in an eight-hour day.

The mother is her family’s sole support.

“I am the oldest,” she continued. “Right now, my husband is not working. We live in one room.”

She wants the minimum wage to be raised, but said “many people won’t even show up to a sit-in, because if the bosses think you support a wage hike, you’ll immediately be fired.”

Workers, KOSIT leaders, several reports and many economists agree that 225 gourdes, and even 300 gourdes, are not living wages.

A 2011 study by the U.S.-based AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Centre held that a factory worker living in the capital and supporting two children would need to earn about 29 dollars per day (1,152 gourdes), six days a week, to support his or her family.

A 54-year-old worker from One World Apparel, owned by former presidential candidate Charles Henri Baker, also rarely earns 300 gourdes, she told IPS.

“When the boss started to hear talk about the minimum wage going up, he clamped down on us,” said the mother of three, who said she has worked at One World for eight years.

“You have to do 75 dozen pieces, but not every job is the same. Sometimes you can make the quota, but sometimes you can’t. No matter what the job is, the number is the same. Once in a while, if I work really hard, I can at least make 225 gourdes,” she added.

Both Gildan and Fruit of the Loom recently released statements promising to ensure their subcontractors respected the 300-gourde minimum.

“It is our view that the clear intent of Haiti’s minimum wage law is for production rates to be set in such a manner as to allow workers to earn at least 300 gourdes for eight hours of work in a day,” Fruit of the Loom said in a statement. “Based on our independent investigation, we concur with the WRC that the garment industry in Haiti generally falls short of that standard.”

In addition to denying most workers the 300-gourde minimum, bosses were regularly cheating labourers out of overtime and making them work essentially for free, according to a report from the Washington-based Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), issued Oct. 15, 2013.

In Stealing from the Poor, based on worker interviews and pay stubs from five factories (four in the capital and SAE-A at the Caracol Industrial Park), the WRC found repeated cases of employers paying workers the incorrect amount for overtime hours. (The ILO reported only nine percent of factories cheating workers out of overtime.)

In the capital, WRC maintains that at the four factories surveyed – One World, Genesis, Premium and GMC – workers were “being cheated of an average of seven weeks’ pay per year.” Workers sometimes willingly work “off the clock” in order to make the quotas necessary to be paid 300 gourdes, the group reported.

Economist Camille Chalmers, director of the Haitian Platform Advocating an Alternative Development (PAPDA), is highly critical of the Haitian government for, among other things, not enforcing the 300-gourde minimum. He has called for a 560-gourde minimum wage.

“The government does not play the role of arbiter, as it should,” said the university professor while speaking at a Nov. 18 meeting on the wage issue. “Government authorities instead tend to listen to the embassies, to ADIH… Our government is really tied to the upper class, the oligarchy.”

The current government – whose slogan is “Haiti is Open for Business!” – has pushed Haiti’s low wages at numerous national and international conferences.

The mother of three agrees that the minimum wage needs to go up to at least 500 gourdes.

“If I hear there is going to be a demonstration, I’ll be there,” she told IPS. “I cannot make it with this pocket change. The bosses know that. They are just cruel.”

The recent ILO/Better Work report is the seventh Better Work report to document shortfalls and violations.

Additional reporting by Patrick St. Pré.

A worker at a factory in Lahore surrounded by piles of sportswear: the garments are in high demand in Europe, where they are sold for exorbitant prices. Credit: Irfan Ahmed/IPS

By Irfan Ahmed
LAHORE, Feb 26 2013 (IPS)

Twenty-seven-year-old Muhammad Arif works at a steel re-rolling mill in Lahore, capital of Pakistan’s northeastern Punjab province, producing steel ingots from scrap.

He holds no letter of appointment, does not know the name of his employer, receives his weekly wages in cash from a contractor and toils daily before a furnace burning at 800-1,000 degrees Celsius without any safety equipment.

Heat and steam from the furnace often cause him severe burns, but there is no first-aid kit to be found anywhere in this factory, which employs roughly 200 workers.

Medical leave is a luxury he will likely never experience, and if he stays away from work – for whatever reason – he risks pay cuts, or even dismissal.

Arif is totally oblivious to his rights as a worker – in fact, he has no concept of labour laws at all, let alone that he is protected under them, even though Pakistan boasts over 70 pieces of legislation specifically relating to workers’ safety.

The sole breadwinner of a family of five, Arif assures IPS, “I am content. It’s better than being jobless – a state I have experienced for years.”

Widespread exploitation

Arif’s plight is quite common in this South Asian country of 150 million people: experts tell IPS that trade union activity is discouraged at all levels and across industries, leading to a widespread denial of workers’ rights.

The problem is particularly severe in the industrial sector, which produces textiles and garments, leather goods, sports equipment and sportswear, surgical instruments and cutlery for export.

To meet a growing foreign demand, cities like Lahore, Karachi, Faisalabad and Sialkot have been transformed into industrial hubs, sprouting factories that have drawn a workforce that typically earns between four and six dollars a day.

But even while export earnings increase, the country’s administrative machinery has been apathetic about working conditions in these factories, says Khalid Mahmood, director of the Labour Education Foundation (LEF) of Pakistan. He says this lack of concern over workers’ safety has dire, sometimes fatal, consequences.

Having visited Ali Enterprises – the apparel factory in Pakistan’s capital, Karachi, that went up in flames last September, killing 300 workers – he says he cannot fathom how the plant was awarded the prestigious SA8000 certification by Social Accountability International, a New York-based monitoring body tasked with assessing safety standards, just weeks before one of the worst recorded industrial disasters.

Reportedly caused by short-circuiting, the fire tore quickly through the factory, trapping workers behind locked doors.

Though the factory owners blamed the heavy death toll on the chaos that followed the blaze, experts say a lack of basic safety standards – like an absence of exit passages or adequate in-house emergency firefighting capabilities – was the primary factor behind the tragedy.

A good five months down the road, families of several victims are waiting to gain custody of their deceased loved ones: burnt beyond recognition, the bodies have not yet been identified, despite repeated DNA tests.

Accidents waiting to happen

The incident garnered considerable media attention but, as Khalid tells IPS, thousands of factories operating all over the country in similarly hazardous conditions represent equally devastating accidents waiting to happen.

He says officials of provincial labour departments, district governments and even international monitors hand out safety bills without conducting proper inspections.

Increasing production costs push factory owners to compromise on workers’ health and safety in order to remain competitive.

“Local and imported raw material such as iron and steel scrap, synthetic fibre, silk yarn, chemicals and petroleum products are becoming expensive. The Pakistan rupee is (falling) against the dollar, loan markups are burdensome, energy costs are increasing and technological upgrades are too demanding,” Khalid says. “Labour rights are compromised to offset all these burgeoning costs.”

Over the last few months, local and international entities have called on the government to implement better, more effective laws to safeguard labour rights but Dr. Sultan Pasha, acting director at the Lahore-based Centre for Improvement of Working Conditions and Environment (CIWCE) does not believe that a lack of legislation is the problem.

He tells IPS that Pakistan has no less than 70 different laws regulating standards on cleanliness, disposal of wastes and effluents, ventilation and temperature, dust and fumes, artificial humidification, overcrowding, precautions in case of fires, work on or near machinery in motion and employment of young persons to work dangerous machines.

But the laws are splintered and divided into specific areas, from the Dock Labourers Act to the Factories Act, making their implementation and enforcement a challenge, especially for bodies like CIWCE, part of the labour and human resources department of Punjab’s provincial government.

According to Pasha, factory inspections were discontinued in 2003 on the pretext of protecting the industry from “harassment” by government officials. This left regulatory obligations in the hands of the factory owners themselves, most of whom will sacrifice rights and safe working conditions for profits.

Ghulam Fatima, secretary general of the Bonded Labour Liberation Front (BLLF) of Pakistan, tells IPS workers are seldom registered with the social security department, are underage and lack any access to first-aid, while working unusually long hours on outdated and dangerous machinery.

She claims “factory owners bribe labour department officers and do not bother to ensure safety standards”.

According to Pasha, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) recently began consultations with the government of the Sindh province to devise a comprehensive strategy for the future.

“Though there is lot more to be done, we are content that a draft law on workers’ health and safety is ready. We hope it will shortly be taken up by the parliament and passed through the required legislative process,” he adds.

International cooperation

Though many are skeptical about the possibility of change, others believe the answer lies in holding consumers of products manufactured here accountable.

Currently, the European Union (EU) is Pakistan’s largest trading partner: trade between the two countries topped eight million euros in 2011, with Pakistan enjoying a billion-euro surplus.

Trade concessions announced in the aftermath of the floods that ravaged Pakistan in 2010 and 2011 offer even more opportunities for favourable trade relations and pass some of the burden for ensuring labour standards onto European consumers.

The work of the German Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) in the aftermath of the Karachi fire is an example of successful consumer lobbying.

When news emerged that jeans carrying the label of the German company KIK had been found in the smouldering remnants of the Ali Enterprises factory, CCC exerted enourmous pressure on the corporation, eventually forcing it to cough up compensation worth a million dollars to families of the victims in Pakistan.

“It was the company’s fault not to ensure that the workers of the factory from which it imports (garments) work in safe and hygienic environments,” said Symantha Maher, head of the CCC delegation that visited Pakistan last month.

She charged that the Italian company that carried out an audit of KIK seemed “more interested” in collecting inspection fees than ensuring workers’ safety.

Maher also revealed that the CCC plans to coordinate regularly with trade unions in Pakistan and exert pressure on the Pakistani government by educating prospective importers on the working conditions in Pakistani factories.

“If the government wants to avail (itself) of preferential trade concessions and even retain its export markets, it will have to (comply) with international (and) national labour laws,” she says.

Pakistan has so far ratified 36 ILO conventions but implementation remains weak.

(END)