Protesting against sweatshops

Protest can help!

Judith Yanira Viera stands outside a 'Gap' clothes store in Toronto, Canada. She holds up a Gap T-shirt.

"In Canada, you pay $34 for this shirt.

"In El Salvador, we were paid 27 cents to make it."

Why are workers paid so little?

Companies like the Gap don't own the factories where their clothes are made, and they don't need to have contact with the people who make them. They contract out the work to companies in poor countries in the South, like the one Viera works for in El Salvador. And they also give work to small contractors and "homeworkers" in the North.

Because retailers like these are so big and powerful, they can tell the contractors exactly how fast and how cheaply they want their clothes to be made. The contractors, in their turn, pay the lowest possible wages and force their workers to work long hours and to complete large amounts of clothing in order to keep their jobs. If the workers try to take action for better pay and working conditions, the retailers say they will give their contracts to other companies, or move to other countries.

CONTRACT OUT: (v) to arrange for another company to do a job

RETAILER: (n) someone who sells to the public (usually in shops)

CONTRACTOR: (n) a company that has an agreement to make something for another company

Protest in the North

Many retailers may not care about the people who make their clothes, but they certainly care about the people who buy their clothes. The retailers need to look good to the public. When companies like the Gap sell their clothes, they are also selling an image: the idea is that when people buy a pair of jeans, they see themselves as 'buying' a piece of the trendy, fashionable lifestyle that the jeans represent.

Retailers want people to focus on this fantasy when they go shopping, they don't want people to know how their clothes are really made. That's why campaigns that tell people the truth about the garment industry can be effective; people see the ugly reality instead of the fantasy. They would feel bad if they bought the clothes, instead of feeling good.

NORTH AND SOUTH: North refers to richer nations and South to poorer nations

TRENDY: following the latest fashion

One example: the Gap

The factory in El Salvador where Viera made clothes for the Gap is owned by a Taiwanese company called Mandarin International. The working conditions were terrible:

the factories were extremely hot and there was little fresh air, so that workers sometimes fainted;
young women, many under 16 years old, often had to work for 18 hours a day;
workers who didn't finish enough clothes were yelled at and hit;
women were forced to take contraceptives, or sometimes given contraceptives without knowing it, because the company did not want to pay maternity benefits.

In fact, the Gap has a code of conduct for all the places where their clothes are made. These working conditions (listed above) break many of the guidelines in the Gap's code of conduct. However, the workers at Mandarin International didn't know anything about the Gap's code of conduct: it had not even been translated into Spanish.

CONTRACEPTIVE: (n) a method used to allow people to have sex without getting pregnant

CODE OF CONDUCT: (n) rules about what you should and should not do

The Gap Campaign

The workers at Mandarin International tried to organise a union. Mandarin International responded by firing 300 of its 800 workers. When workers demonstrated against the firings outside the factory, they were attacked by company guards. The organisers of the union, and their families, received regular death threats. But, in spite of the danger, the workers and human rights supporters in El Salvador did not give up. They testified to the labour violations that were taking place in the factory, and made the information public.

In North America, organisations like the National Labor Committee started a campaign to support the Mandarin International workers in El Salvador and to work with them. The aim was to inform the public about conditions in the Mandarin International factory, so that the Gap would have to improve them.

Viera toured the USA and Canada, giving sweatshop fashion shows and telling people about the conditions of the workers who made their clothes. People began to write letters and telephone the Gap's head office to complain.

UNION: (n) an organisation of workers, to help them protect their rights

TESTIFY: (v) to make a formal statement

SWEATSHOP: (n) a place where people work very hard for very low pay

Success

The campaign really got going in the Fall. By December the Gap were very worried about losing sales for Christmas. They signed an agreement that allowed independent monitors to visit the factories that make their clothes in Central America. Now, a human rights group, called the Independent Monitoring Group, has been formed to inspect the Mandarin factory. It reports that the worst abuses have stopped and that conditions for the workers at the factory have improved.

In El Salvador, the Minister of Labour signed a proclamation on working conditions in factories like Mandarin. It was also signed by all the factories in the Mercedes Free Trade Zone, where the Mandarin factory is located.

The Gap campaign was a victory. But it was also just a small step in the campaign to bring justice and fair working conditions to the millions of people who work in the garment industry around the world. Unfortunately, it is not only the Gap, or Woolworth that exploit the people who make their clothes; this is a common practice in the garment industry.

INDEPENDENT MONITORs: (n) people who are not connected to the company; they check to see what is happening.

ABUSE (n) bad treatment of someone

PROCLAMATION:(n) an official statement

EXPLOIT: (v) to treat people in an unfair way to get more money

There is still a long way to go...

For example:

The Gap does NOT allow independent monitoring in any of the other 500 factories where its clothes are made;
In 1997, Carmelita Alonzo died of overwork in the Phillipines - she had been working 14 hours a day in a factory making clothes for the Gap and other companies;
The Gap is being sued for labour violations in Saipan, along with 16 other companies.

VIOLATIONS: (n) actions that break rules or laws

Links & contacts

North America: the Maquila Solidarity Network / Labour Behind the Label
http://www.web.net/~msn
email: perg@web.net
fax: +1-416-532-7688

Europe: Labour Behind the Label
tel/fax: +44-160-361-0993

Australia: FairWear Australia
email: fairwear@vic.uca.org.au
fax: +61-3-9650-4490

New Zealand: National Distribution Union
fax: +64-9-355-1850

This information is taken from the article "Code breaking" by Bob Jeffcott & Lynda Yantz of the Maquila Solidarity Network, with some additional information provided by them and their website. The original article appeared in the June 1998 issue of the New Internationalist.

Last Modified: 20 Sept 1999

Sweatshop fashion shows