File spoon-archives/marxism-general.archive/marxism-general_1997/marxism-general.9712, message 169


Subject: M-G: Fw: international corpos. criticized by US Nat Labour Cttee
From: papadop-AT-peak.org
Date: 11 Dec 1997 23:17:00




Forwarded by Liam R.Flynn <liam-AT-stones.com>
mail stop:<trinity-AT-hot-shot.com>
---------------- Original message follows ----------------
 From: papadop-AT-peak.org
 To: Recipients of conference <iww-news-AT-igc.apc.org>
 Date: 11 Dec 1997 23:17:00
 Subject: international corpos. criticized by US Nat Labour Cttee
--

            U.S. Firms Cited for Violating Workers Rights Overseas
NEW YORK, Dec 2 (IPS) - Nine U.S. clothing companies, including such
giants as Nike and Disney, are guilty of allowing low wages and poor
working conditions in their foreign operations, says the U.S. labour
rights group, the National Labour Committee (NLC).  The Committee
accused Nike, Disney, Wal-Mart, Guess, K-Mart, J.C. Penney, Esprit, May
Co.  and Victoria's Secret of allowing subcontractors overseas to
violate the labour rights of local workers.

''This is not a call for a boycott or (an action) meant to hurt the
companies financially,'' said Charles Kernaghan, the Committee's
executive director. ''Nor is it an effort to take jobs out of the
developing world - but rather, (it is) to ensure that these are jobs
with justice that pay a living wage.''

An NLC study cited wages as low as 15 cents-an-hour for women workers
who make clothes for Wal-Mart, K-Mart and J.C. Penney subcontractors in
Nicaragua. The average wage the Committee found in the Nicaragua
sweatshops was only 1.84 dollars a day, in a country where milk for two
infants costs more than four dollars a week.

In Haiti, Disney stands accused of allowing subcontractors to pay an
average wage of only 57 cents an hour. This meant workers could not
even earn the 30  dollars a week that a diet of rice and beans is
estimated to cost for a small family. ''We hardly know what meat is
here,'' one worker told an NLC researcher. ''We try to buy milk, just
for the  baby, but not every day.''

Nike, Esprit and Disney were cited for operating  facilities in China
were workers allegedly are underpaid and  prevented from forming
unions. May Department Stores' overseas  manufacturing in Indonesia and
Victoria's Secret/Limited's  facilities in the Dominican Republic also
came under fire in the  survey.

Guess, a jeans company, was previously cited by the U.S. Labour
Department in 1992 for violating U.S. wage and working-hour laws, and
was forced to pay more than half a million dollars in back wages to
workers. Last summer, Labour Department inspectors in California found
evidence of garment construction  for Guess clothing at homes in Los
Angeles. Immigrant women  were illegally stitching clothes at their own
homes, and the  company again faces fines for non-payment of overtime
wages.

Many of the companies attacked in the survey have fended off
accusations from labour groups over the past few years by arguing that
they are bringing jobs to the developing world. A Disney spokesman, for
example, told IPS that the company was providing good jobs at adequate
wages in Haiti at a time when few outside firms were bringing
employment to that country.

''Nike has been a potent economic stimulus,'' Nike spokesman Vada
Manager argued last month.  ''It has had an impact on the lives of
workers ... We provide some 500,000 jobs around the world, and they are
good jobs with superior wages.''

Other companies responded to reports of labour violations  by moving
out of some countries noted for labour abuses entirely. When Wal-Mart's
line of 'Kathie Lee' clothing was found two years ago to have been sewn
in Honduras by mostly teen-aged girls working in locked quarters for
extremely long hours, Wal-Mart promptly  relocated much of its apparel
work to nearby Nicaragua, where wages also were low.

Ironically, the NLC's Kernaghan recently wrote Wal-Mart Chief Executive
Officer David Glass to ask the company to remain in Nicaragua after
reports that Wal-Mart was contemplating another move when the NLC
documented worker abuses there. According to the NLC, women seeking to
form unions in Nicaragua's free-trade zone have been fired, while other
workers have been subject to humiliating body searches and low wages.

Kernaghan argued that the current effort to list major U.S. violators
is intended to challenge them to ''do the right thing'' by enforcing
company codes of conduct and monitoring the conditions imposed by their
subcontractors.

''No-one in America wants to purchase a product made by a child or a
teenager forced to work long hours under harsh conditions, or by any
exploited worker stripped of his or her rights and paid starvation
wages,'' he said. ''As a society, as an economy, we can do better than
that.'' (END/IPS/fah/mk/97)

Origin: ROMAWAS/LABOUR/ ----

[c] 1997, InterPress Third World News Agency (IPS) All rights reserved

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** End of text from cdp:econ.saps **

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