Are Sanders and Fair Trade a Threat to the Global Poor?

By David L. Wilson, MRzine
April 13, 2016

On April 24, 2013, some 1,134 people died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex outside Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh. The building housed factories where low-wage workers, largely women, stitched garments for the U.S. and European markets.

For several years before the disaster a number of U.S. opinion makers -- notably New York Times columnists Thomas Friedman and Nicholas Kristof -- had been arguing that assembly plants like those at Rana Plaza were crucial to the development of economies in the Global South and therefore a boon to the world's most impoverished. The media's efforts to promote sweatshops suddenly slowed down after the collapse in Bangladesh, but they seem to be reviving now, just as we approach the third anniversary of the disaster.

The occasion for the new pro-sweatshop campaign is Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' opposition to trade pacts like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).[...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2016/wilson130416.html

Statements From Haiti and Bangladesh for Left Forum 2014

[These two statements from front-line labor organizations were read at the June 1 "Global Minimum Wage" forum at this year's Left Forum conference in New York City.]

Statement From Batay Ouvriye ("Workers' Struggle"), Haiti

To the comrades in attendance at the Left Forum this year:

In the name of Batay Ouvriye in Haiti, we salute all the workers, laborers and militants who are taking part in the 2014 Left Forum in the US. Also, we salute this initiative, particularly because it seeks to address a fundamental question: Reform or Revolution.

In the context of the organizational construction necessary to free all workers and all humanity, we are conscious of the need for well-coordinated linkage and relationships between vanguard organizations and the working masses, and with the popular masses in general, particularly in dominated countries. For this linkage to be effective, it must also enable us at the same time to advance toward our final objective. To achieve this, we must seek at all times to build the necessary capacity to go beyond and build the capacity to transcend. And this ability must be rooted in the very nature of what we are building, in its DNA. It is this intrinsic capacity that can ensure the necessary permanent surpassing of our struggles and organizations.

This is the only way we can struggle against the revisionism that naturally develops in struggles within the realm of bourgeois democratic rights. It is the surest way to always emerge onto the advancement that is needed each time. This is a key point.

On our side, within the necessary objective of seeking to surpass and to enable the struggles of sweatshop workers in general to move beyond their initial limits (the struggle of workers all over the world against this spreading blood-sucking form of capitalism), we are working to see how a global minimum wage can be established. This could be regional at first, maybe, taking into account the many different regional “Free Trade” agreements, but always toward the objective of achieving a comprehensive international minimum wage. This way, the working class would be able to battle, with strength, with a unity it would be building within the struggle itself. The ability to do this would enable the working class to become more and more conscious of its strength and potential, to struggle for more and to naturally enable its struggles to seek new levels, surpassing their previous objectives, developing new relationships and surpassing itself. That would once again be the role of the conscious vanguard that would emerge from the working class itself, to not only take hold of this possibility but to enact it and bring it to life.

The working class is the only class capable of moving this construction beyond and through the constant surpassing of its limits, without halting.

On the flip side, it is in the US that the upheaval we are seeking can take a shape and reach a level so high that it would project at once the emancipation we are all struggling for.

These two parameters highlight the importance of this 2014 Left Forum.

In this context, we salute once again this initiative to reflect on this necessary linkage, while the representative of our political tendency is bringing to you our vision on this ensemble of issues.

Long live the struggle of the popular masses, with laborers as their pillar, under the leadership of the working class!

Stay strong in struggle, always seeking to move beyond, and we will prevail!

Batay Ouvriye, Haiti

The Wage Struggle of Garment Workers in Bangladesh

Statement from Faiezul Hakim,
President of the Bangladesh Trade Union Federation
May 30, 2014

In Bangladesh, the garment workers are now very much class conscious. Especially, this has increased after the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Savar, a suburb near the capital Dhaka last year, on 24th April 2013. In addition, the people of Bangladesh are also now concerned about garment workers’ conditions, like their wages, lifestyle, etc. The exception is the ruling class.

In 2013, the present Government declared wages for the garment workers through a Wage Commission. It was a farce. This commission declared the minimum basic wage for a garment worker to be 5,300 Bangladeshi Taka [BDT] (1 US dollar was equivalent to 80 BDT), where the basic wage is 3,200 BDT excluding house rent , medical allowance, transportation, education allowance, etc.

The trade unions linked with left parties demanded 8000 BDT as a total monthly wage. This is also the demand of SKOP, a organization of workers and employees. In contrast, we Bangladesh Trade Union Federation raised the demand of 18,000 BDT (where the basic wage is 10,000 BDT).

We also raised the question: on what basis did you people fix the wages. According to our calculation, one adult person needs 3200 calories per day, and according to this we can find the monthly food expenditure for a 4-member of a family in Bangladesh (especially in Dhaka) to be now around 10,000 BDT. Now we want to add house rent, transportation, medical allowance, allowance for children’s education, etc. It will be then 18,000 BDT (though house rent in the city is different from the periphery).

We have a marked difference from others. These trade union leaders have agreed on our point, but they ask: how could the garment owners give this money to the workers as wages? It is their position, and the reflection of the garment owners’ position also.

It is notable that when we were part of the state of Pakistan, they paid 155 Rupees as a minimum wage after a workers upsurge in 1969. Today it is equivalent to 18,000 BDT. This is basically the minimum real wage, not a humanitarian wage.

Many garment factory owners have not yet executed the minimum wage for workers of 5,300 BDT declared by the government. And the government is not interested in supervising this. Those who executed it, introduced new tactics. Suppose, before the wage declaration, that there were 20 workers working in a line of a factory. Now there are 15 workers. It means they terminated 5 workers, and now 15 workers are doing job which was finished before by 20. It creates pressure on the workers. It is important to mention here that the anti-labor law helps the owners.

After the mass killing of garment workers in the year of 2013 in Bangladesh, in the Rana Plaza building collapse, the Government of Bangladesh formed an investigation committee. That committee investigated, but the people of Bangladesh have not heard about their findings. But people do know that the victim’ families have not received real compensation yet—not from the government, not from the owners, and not from the foreign buyers. In addition, the factory buildings for garment production are ill-designed and life threatening.

We, the Bangladesh Trade Union Federation, are trying to build our units in garments area. We are discussing among the workers about the government, the state, and the global imperialistic and capitalistic system. We are going with political questions, which are to prepare to capture state power by a working class movement—not by the present election system but by people's political insurrection. We are also raise workers’ demands: trade union rights, 8 hours working time, appointment letters, no compulsory overtime, 6-month maternity leave with wages, etc.

The wage struggle of garments workers is not a local phenomenon—it is global. So we think it is the time to establish workers’ unity all over the world, which will enhance the working class movement throughout the world. It is our duty to expose capitalism-imperialism in front of the working class and people.

By abolishing the capitalistic-imperialistic system through people's struggle, we will enter again into socialism, a humanitarian society which will save our planet.

NYC, June 1: “The Global Minimum Wage Struggle,” at Left Forum

The Global Minimum Wage Struggle

Global capital’s “race to the bottom” in imposing ever-lower—even sub-survival—wages is generating resistance around the world. With a focus on the garment industry in Bangladesh and Haiti, the speakers will discuss the importance of working class internationalism. This includes not only building solidarity, but also coordination of struggles.

Panel at Left Forum

Noon - 1:50 p.m.

Sunday, June 1

Room 1.109

• David L. Wilson, Weekly News Update on the Americas
• Kiki Makandal, Batay Ouvriye Solidarity Network, One Struggle NY
• Stephanie McMillan, political cartonist, Proletarian Alternative, One Struggle FL

Recommended reading:
Stephanie McMillan: “A Garment Worker in Bangladesh Speaks Out”
Kiki Makandal: “Ten Years of UN Military Occupation of Haiti: Background and Current Effects”

Jan Makandal: “Wage Struggles: Reformist or Revolutionary?”

David L. Wilson: “Thinking Big: The Global Minimum Wage”

Thinking Big: The Global Minimum Wage

If the apparel industry can globalize production, the producers need to be able to globalize the minimum wage.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout
April 24, 2014

After years of neglect, the minimum wage has suddenly become a major national issue. President Obama has proposed an increase in the federal minimum to $10.10 an hour, fast food workers are agitating for $15, and candidates who back a higher wage floor, including an avowed socialist in Seattle, are winning local elections. In February, the retailer Gap Inc. announced that it was implementing a nationwide minimum wage for 65,000 of its own 90,000 employees (although only $9 an hour).

The minimum wage is an important issue in other countries as well, although we rarely hear about these cases. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23273-thinking-big-the-global-minimum-wage

Taking On the Fashion Industry

by David L. Wilson, MRZine
April 19, 2014

Tansy E. Hoskins. Stitched Up: The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion. Pluto Press, 2014. 254 pages.

To say that Tansy E. Hoskins' Stitched Up deconstructs the garment industry would be a misrepresentation. What the British activist and journalist does is more like a controlled demolition, using facts and footnotes to strip away the apparel trade's decorative exterior and then to dynamite the foundations.

Hoskins' polemic begins with the title. In British usage "to stitch up" is "to swindle, to overcharge exorbitantly," according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and Hoskins' goal is to show the many ways that fashion swindles us all. Through its own media outlets and its billions of dollars in advertising, the industry creates a glittery illusion of beauty and sophistication. The reality is a $1.5 trillion industry as grimy and profit-driven as any, and the glossy pages of Vogue conceal a record of human and environmental damage we might expect from coal mining or oil drilling. [...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2014/wilson190414.html

U.S. Retailers Decline to Aid Factory Victims in Bangladesh

By Steven Greenhouse, New York Times
November 22, 2013

One year after the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh, many retailers that sold garments produced there or inside the Rana Plaza building that collapsed last spring are refusing to join an effort to compensate the families of the more than 1,200 workers who died in those disasters.

The International Labor Organization is working with Bangladeshi officials, labor groups and several retailers to create ambitious compensation funds to assist not just the families of the dead, but also more than 1,800 workers who were injured, some of them still hospitalized. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/business/international/us-retailers-decline-to-aid-factory-victims-in-bangladesh.html

The challenges of reforestation

By Ayiti Kale Je/Haiti Grassroots Watch
November 19, 2013

Doucet (Petit-Goâve), HAITI, 19 November 2013 – Reforestation and soil conservation programs costing many hundreds of thousands of dollars in the Petit-Goâve region have resulted in hundreds of small ledges built of straw or sacks of earth. Eight to ten months later, in certain areas the earthworks seem to be lasting. But in many others, these little “shelves” have disintegrated.

The construction and destruction of the anti-erosion ledges – all made with development assistance and humanitarian donations – offer an example of how at least some of Haiti’s reforestations projects turn out. In some cases, at least, they could be considered vicious circles. [...]

Read the full article:
http://www.ayitikaleje.org/haiti-grassroots-watch-engli/2013/11/19/the-challenges-of-reforestation.html

Did War Talk Drown Out Anti-Sweatshop Activism at NY Fashion Week?

by David L. Wilson, Grassroots Solidarity
September 16, 2013

Fashion models and a Bangladeshi labor organizer joined some two dozen local activists outside a New York Fashion Week show on Sept. 6 for a press conference highlighting the use of sweatshop labor by Nautica and the VF Corporation, which owns Nautica and 29 other garment companies.

Photo: Josh Koenig

Standing on the sidewalk in front of Lincoln Center's main plaza, Kalpona Akter, the executive director of the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), described her conversations with a woman who lost a limb last April in the collapse of Rana Plaza, a commercial building in the Dhaka area where more than 5,000 garment workers were employed in several different factories. According to Bangladesh's government, 1,132 workers are known dead, with many still missing; some 2,000 of the survivors were injured.

“Who is responsible for this?” Akter asked the protesters. “Definitely the retailers like VF,” she said, answering herself.

Corporate responsibility was the focus of the press conference, which included Sara Ziff, a model and activist who modeled in a Nautica advertising campaign ten years ago. The organizers—the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) and United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS)—are pushing U.S. apparel manufacturers and retailers to sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety, an agreement that would commit the companies to improving conditions in the Bangladeshi factories where many of their products are assembled.

So far 86 companies, largely European, have signed on, but major U.S. retailers like VF and Walmart have refused, insisting that their own monitoring system will be adequate.

From Dhaka to Greenwich Village

U.S. anti-sweatshop activists are hoping that the Rana Plaza disaster will arouse the public here to demand safety conditions for overseas garment workers in the same way that the 146 deaths in the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York built up the public pressure that resulted in a number of U.S. workplace safety laws. USAS’s Caitlin MacLaren noted the parallel at the press conference; the Greenwich Village building where the fire broke out is still standing today and is part of the campus at New York University, MacLaren’s school.

“This year,” she warned the retailers, “students across the country will be saying: ‘You are going to sign the accord.’”

But even with Sara Ziff and four other models, the press conference faced a lot of competition on the sidewalk outside Fashion Week. Vendors were hawking a “fashion model diet,” young women in bright red were rollerskating to promote some other product, and several nearly naked activists painted with green scales were promoting a campaign by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to protect endangered reptiles. Media coverage of the anti-sweatshop event was mostly limited to a dispatch by Agence France Presse and an entry in the Fashionista blog.

But the main problem wasn’t the other actions at Fashion Week: it was simply the fact that the news cycle had moved on. On the day of the press conference the headlines were dominated by the threat of a U.S. air strike on Syria, where the White House said 1,429 civilians were killed on Aug. 21 in a gas attack by government forces. For most people in the United States, the deaths in Syria had displaced any memory of the comparable number of deaths in the Bangladeshi factories that produce the clothes sold here.

Circumventing the News Cycle

Not everyone has forgotten Rana Plaza, of course. Akter and ILRF and USAS activists held two brief protests after the press conference, one outside Lincoln Center--closely watched by the New York police--and another at a Children’s Place outlet some 15 blocks up Broadway; the corporation had some of its clothes made at a Rana Plaza factory, but so far it hasn’t paid any compensation for the victims. “I’m going to put this on my Facebook page,” a well-dressed older woman said as she stopped to photograph the Children’s Place protest. ILRF director of organizing Liana Foxvog started to explain the labor situation in Bangladesh, but the woman cut her off. “I know,” she said. “It’s disgusting.”

Other passersby would pause to look at the protest. Most seemed to have forgotten about the April disaster—one of the worst industrial accidents in history—or maybe had never heard of it, although they were sympathetic when they learned the protest’s purpose.

“I didn't think about the garment workers who made the clothes I was wearing,” Ziff had remarked at the press conference when talking about her time modeling for Nautica. A visit to Bangladesh in the summer of 2012 was “eye-opening,” she said, and led her to work in the anti-sweatshop campaign.

Activists are now confronting the problem of how to open more eyes, and how to mobilize public support without having to rely on the media. Akter, for example, was stopping in New York on her way to the AFL-CIO’s Sept. 8-11 convention in Los Angeles. She expected to work with union leaders on strategies for the campaign to get U.S. companies to sign the fire and building safety accord.

At the press conference youth organizer Rishi Singh pointed out the importance of building direct links between low-wage workers here and in the Global South. Singh, who works with the Queens-based South Asian organization DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving), described the situation of South Asian immigrant workers in New York. “These are the conditions we face here,” he said, “but we just need to look around” to see how much worse it is in places like Bangladesh. There’s a real potential for direct worker solidarity there, Singh indicated, adding: “The struggle of one is the struggle of all.”

David L. Wilson is co-author, with Jane Guskin, of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers, Monthly Review Press, July 2007. He also co-edits Weekly News Update on the Americas, a summary of news from Latin America and the Caribbean.

Who Really Benefits From Sweatshops?

"[L]abor costs typically constitute 1-3 percent for a garment produced in the developing world." -- Zahid Hussain

By David L. Wilson, MRZine
Sept. 12, 2013

Consumers are ultimately the ones responsible for dangerous conditions in garment assembly plants in the Global South, Hong Kong-based business executive Bruce Rockowitz told the New York Times recently. The problem is that improved safety would raise the price of clothing, according to Rockowitz, who heads Li & Fung Limited, a sourcing company that hooks up retailers like Macy's and Kohl's with suppliers in low-wage countries like Bangladesh. "So far," he said, "consumers have just not been willing to accept higher costs."

Rockowitz isn't alone in blaming consumers in Europe and the United States for sweatshop conditions in the apparel industry. The idea pervades popular culture.[...]

Read the full article:
http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2013/wilson120913.html

Sweatshops Don't Just Happen - They're a Policy

We see the result of these policies in the more than two million Mexicans who now work in maquiladoras assembling goods for the US market, the more than three million Bangladeshis who sew apparel for European and US retailers, and the millions more across the globe who either work in sweatshops or cross borders "illegally" to find jobs in the richer nations.

By David L. Wilson, Truthout
June 25, 2013

On May 5, The New York Times dedicated its "Sunday Dialogue" feature to letters about the factory collapse in Bangladesh that had killed more than 1,100 garment workers a week and a half earlier. The "dialogue" started with a letter from University of Michigan business school professor Jerry Davis, who apportioned blame for the disaster to "the owners of the building and the factories it contained, to the government of Bangladesh, to the retailers who sold the clothing," and to us. Through "[o]ur willingness to buy garments sewn under dangerous conditions," he wrote, we "create the demand that underwrites these tragedies."

There's a striking omission in Prof. Davis' list - the people whose policies make the sweatshop economy possible.[...]

Read the full article:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/17183-sweatshops-dont-just-happen-theyre-a-policy

Wealth and Deprivation: Ready-made Garments Industry in Bangladesh

By Anu Muhammad, One Struggle
May 1, 2013

Anu Muhammad is with the Department of Economics, Jahangirnagar University, Dhaka, Bangladesh. This is a brief excerpt of his article, reprinted with permission. For the full text please see meghbarta.info

Bangladesh’s ready-made garments industry has taken the low road to competitive advantage. Local capitalists, the big retailers and western governments are reaping the benefits of the super-exploitation and repression of the (mostly women) workers. Inevitably, the resistance of the victims is taking shape. The annual turnover of the readymade garments (RMG) industry in Bangladesh is now almost $9 billion; it employs around 3.5 million workers, more than 80% of them women. RMG account for nearly 80% of the country’s export earnings and are the second largest source of the nation’s foreign currency after remittances.

According to official estimates, nearly 4,500 garment factories are now in operation in the country, some of these factories work as subcontractors of the bigger ones. Over 70% of these factories are located in and around Dhaka, the capital city. The rapid expansion of this export-oriented industry has given the industrial sector a new landscape. The RMG industry has also created a huge labour force, mostly women, with lower wages and severe regimentation. Many workers were tortured and killed for their attempts to organise struggles for rights and decent levels of living. [...]

Read the full article:
http://onestruggle.net/2013/05/01/wealth-deprivation-ready-made-garments-bangladesh/

"Occupy the Port" Protests Walmart's Sweatshops in Bangladesh

"Block the Boat"  Photo: Marty Goodman/Socialist Action

By Marty Goodman, Socialist Action
December 18, 2012

Related story: Longshoremen shut down S.C. shipping terminal in protest over deadly fire at Bangladesh Walmart supplier

These are some photos of the protest Dec. 18 against Walmart at the Port of Newark, New Jersey. A ship transporting Walmart T-shirts from Bangladesh was to dock there that day. Some 60 protesters gathered at about 8 AM at the Port to draw attention to Walmart’s procurement of T-shirts from sweatshops that violate basic safety codes in Bangladesh and elsewhere.




Remembering the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire
Photo: Marty Goodman/Socialist Action



The horrific fire at the Tazreen apparel factory in Bangladesh, which killed 112 workers in November, was making clothes for Walmart leaked documents prove, despite denials (NY Times, Greenhouse, Dec. 5, 2012). A Walmart director of ‘ethical sourcing’ said in minutes leaked to The Times that correcting glaring fire and electrical safety issues at 4500 factories was not “financially feasible for the brands to make such investments.”

Spelling it out: Walmart kills
Photo: Marty Goodman/Socialist Action

The ship destined for the Port of Newark Tuesday carried clothes from a sweatshop not far from the deadly fire in Bangladesh. There were hopes that workers would not unload the ship. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. There are no details.

Truckers honked in support when they saw the signs
Photo: Marty Goodman/Socialist Action

Thisanjali Gangoda read a solidarity message from Bangladeshi workers in NYC Photo: Marty Goodman/Socialist Action

Sweatshops in Haiti also make clothes for Walmart. The wage is now about $4.80 A DAY, less than the new mandated minimum wage of about $7.00. Haiti is under a US/UN occupation, increased in 2010 by the Obama administration in the immediate aftermath of the January 12th earthquake. There will be a forum on Haiti in NYC on Saturday, January 12:

HAITI Reconstruction 3 Years after the 2010 Earthquake

Saturday, January 12 - 6 PM

CWA Local 1180

6 Harrison Street (basement), Manhattan

(Bet. Hudson St and Greenwich St)

#1 to Franklin St or A,C, E, 2 or 3 to Chambers St



A Report-Back from a Labor Solidarity Delegation
• What happened to $Billions in aid?
• Why build only sweatshops?
• Why is Haiti still under US/UN Occupation?
• Why is the minimum wage so low in Haiti?
• How is the labor movement fighting back?
• How do those struggles relate to workers struggles here and around the world?

Speakers / Photo projection:
Marty Goodman former TWU Local 100 executive board member
David Wilson Weekly News Update on the Americas
Tony Savino Photojournalist

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