shops10.6

New international anti-sweatshop coalition is a global response to a global problem

In August a potentially crippling wage strike in the textile and clothing sector by 33 000 members of the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union (SACTWU) in the Western Cape was averted at the eleventh hour when the employers agreed to SACTWU's demands when it tabled a "historic" 6.47 percent wage rise.

This brings successful end of five months of tough wage talks in an industry which has nationally seen more than 35 000 job losses over the last two years, with more than 175 permanent factory closures.

SACTWU’s problems are part of an international crisis in the textile industry. Unions and civil rights and religious groups from around the world have joined forces to battle sweatshops on two fronts—in the countries where the abused and exploited workers manufacture products and at the stores where most of these goods are sold and bought.

The group’s first, major campaign seeks to hold well-known retailers responsible for the conditions under which their merchandise is made.

"Despite years of public pressure against sweatshops, today’s global retailers are greedier than ever and more workers around the world are toiling in sweatshops to make their goods," said the campaign organiser, Bruce Raynor. "It’s time for retailers to stop hiding behind high-priced PR firms and industry-created cover-ups and finally sit down at the table with workers to develop concrete ways of ending the global sweatshop crisis."

The group plans to hold demonstrations, rallies and other public events at major retail outlets during the high-volume, back-to-school and holiday shopping seasons. The first three targets for the coalition are clothing retailers Banana Republic, Eddie Bauer and Ann Taylor.

"We’re shining a spotlight on corporate retailers and holding them responsible for the race to the bottom in wages and working conditions that plagues the clothing industry worldwide," said US trade union federation AFL-CIO President John Sweeney.

The coalition is focusing on retailers, Raynor said, because when a large retailer negotiates a price for goods manufactured overseas, it is in effect setting the working conditions. When the retailers pay such low prices for its overseas-made goods, it knows "the only way to make that shirt is to use, or slave labour, or pay below the minimum wage. They are dictating working conditions," he said.

Along with Raynor, Sweeney and representatives from unions and civil rights and faith groups in Canada, Mexico, Thailand, Nicaragua, Hong Kong, Guatemala, Honduras and Dominican Republic announced the new anti-sweatshop effort on 8 Aug. in New York City, leading 500 supporters in a march down Broadway to outlets for the three retailers.

According to figures from UNITE, the three retailers earn healthy profits, yet still purchase some goods made in sweatshops. For example, Ann Taylor—with annual sales of $1.2 billion and profits of $52.4 million—has sold apparel made in China by workers forced to labour 96 hours a week for 14 cents an hour. Banana Republic, part of the Gap Inc. chain, with annual sales of $13.7 billion and profits of $877.5 million, markets clothing made in Cambodian sweatshops where workers earn 21 cents an hour.

But recent polls of consumers show that not only are they seriously concerned about sweatshops, but most are willing to pay a little more for.

Raynor said the retailer-specific campaign during high-sales periods would help consumers learn about the sweatshop conditions under which the goods are made while pressuring retailers to address those conditions.

"We want consumers to reward good behaviour and to punish retailers who pay prices so low that their factories are forced to abuse workers…. We’re going to demand that retailers pay workers a living wage, respect their freedom to join a union and ensure decent and safe working conditions," he said.

The fight against racism goes on

By Simon Boshielo, COSATU International Secretary

The World Conference on Racism, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances (WCAR) in Durban has come and passed. From 28 August to 7 September South Africa hosted the world community of nations in the NGO and inter-governmental forums of the United Nations.

The event helped to raise consciousness and educate people in South Africa and all over the world on the issues of racism and other forms of intolerance. But the struggle for equality amongst our people goes on.

The NGO forum, with thousands of delegates from across the globe, was a good opportunity to discuss our shared values and draw up a comprehensive programme of action to eliminate xenophobia and racism amongst our peoples.

Ahead of this conference, it was clear that that it was polarised between the North and the South. For the countries of the South, racial discrimination has always been linked to social and economic exclusion. COSATU expressed this view, saying that racism is a manifestation of class antagonism in our societies. Those discriminated against are the poor and the working class, while the rich and the ruling class are united in a coalition to keep their class intact by disuniting the working people.

In South Africa, racism and xenophobia affect mostly black people in general and the African majority in particular. This is because black people have been under the yoke of colonial and apartheid oppression, which was established to ensure that the minority maximised its accumulation of wealth at the expense of the majority.

This included making sure that black people were kept out of the mainstream economy while the white minority had access to jobs, education, health services and all aspects of social life in South Africa. Class formation and the consolidation of classes in South Africa has taken a racial dimension. Social divisions were formed against a background of institutionalised racism.

For many in the third world, including COSATU, there was consensus that the effects of the slavery, colonialism and exploitation that took place previously had to be at the core of conference.

The issue of slavery is still relevant, as many African and other third-world communities were balkanised by slavery and colonialism and the effects of that are still felt today. In many Northern Countries too the descendents of African and Asian slaves continue to suffer exclusion and discrimination.

In the South and Africa in particular, our countries were conquered in the era of colonial expansion and their economies plundered so that they failed to develop socio-economically. This was especially true of those countries whose material wealth was in the form of minerals and food. These were exploited for the benefit of the Northern world and indeed was the basis for the wealth of these prosperous countries in Europe, America and some parts of East Asia.

As a result, many of the progressive movements that are looking forward to a world that is free of class exploitation, xenophobia and racism agreed that countries that benefited from slavery and colonialism need to pay compensation or reparation.

Compensation is meant to ensure that the rich and developed world transform the world trade regime and its instruments - the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank and the IMF - to serve the poor and developing countries. The rich countries should be committed to debt relief, development of the poor countries and investment in infrastructure, education and job creation.

One of the dividing issues was the US government’s threat to boycott the WCAR it was to discuss the conflict in the Middle East and the call of both the US and the European states called for the removal of the item on slavery and raparations.

Had the US conference agreed to drop these issues, the US goverment could abscond from their responsibility for racism, in the form of Zionism, in Palastine territories and the maiming of women and children by the Israeli authototies. The US has been feulling the loss of life in the middle East by funding and providing arms to the Isaeli government.

Israel is not a US state yet the US has increasingly become its spokesperson. Consequently, when the US realised that the conference would not accept the dictatorship of one country, its delegation, and those from Israel, walked out.

Subsequently, all the European Union (EU) delegates threatened the conference with another walk out. As a result governments wasted time trying to negotiate with the EU rather than doing the real business of conference.

The EU did not like these issues being discussed by the conference because European countries have been the main perpetrators of colonialism and racism. Most of the EU countries have never come to the rescue to the poor and the vulnerable in the Middle East, or in Rwanda and Burundi where thousands of innocent lives were lost as a result of colonial balkanisation and divide-and-rule policies of imperialist powers.

The NGO forum that took place from 28 August - 1 September was unanimous on all issues that cause racism and social exclusion. The US NGOs were not antagonistic to the development agenda but rallied alongside other NGOs and trade unions to get these issues to constitute the UN government conference.

To the South Africans and the working class in the South, many lessons can be learnt. We have learnt that the UN and other world bodies are a terrain of class struggle, in the sense that the powerful seek to use these forums to subjugate the poor and the weak.

The rich and the bourgeoisie stand side by side as a united front against the poor who are divided along racial, religious, regional and ethnic grounds.

These divisions are also a product of a conscious policy of the colonial powers. They used the tool of dividing communities around language and religion, just as apartheid South Africa did. Indeed the British rulers laid the foundations of apartheid.

This divide-and-rule tactic was used to ensure that the poor and the working class never realised that they share a common legacy of poverty, social exclusion and disease.

It is therefore critical that our people, especially in the developing countries, realise that we need the highest level of maximum unity, if we are to realise the objective of a free world in which all people are treated equally. Unless this maximum unity is fortified, the rich and the developed world will continue to triumph at the expense of all of us.

The decisions of the UN conference are difficult to enforce, given the power in the world of the Group of 8 countries who do not favour the eradication of racism. There is no shortcut to these problems and no one country can survive in the pool of these filthy-rich vultures.