People's Democracy

Sweatshops: The Underbelly of Global Capitalism

Archana Prasad

THE death of at least 1,127 garment factory workers as a result of the collapse of the eight-storey Rana building in Savar, Bangladesh, has once again highlighted the underbelly of global capital. The building housed sweatshops for retail giants of readymade garments and employed at least 3,000 workers who were forced to put in hard labour in abysmal conditions. In Bangladesh alone there are about 3.5 million workers in 4,825 garment factories, of which 85 per cent are women and children. They form the lower end of the value chain of famous garment retail giants like Walmart, Pikmark, Mango and other European and American brand names.

SWEATSHOP LABOUR AND

EXPANSION OF CAPITALISM

But Bangladesh is not the only country with such sweatshops. Almost all developing countries provide cheap labour and production infrastructure for retail giants in electronics, readymade garments, etc, which contribute to the growth of the global fashion and garment retail industry and whose output constitutes a large part of their exports --- for example, about 80 per cent of all export trade in the case of Bangladesh. Here, women and children constitute 85 per cent of the labour force and get paid less than a minimum subsistence wages. However, this phenomenon is not limited to Bangladesh, but is also prevalent in other developing countries like India where multinational companies are outsourcing their production operations in order to tap cheap labour. Hence the re-emergence of sweatshop labour across the globe after the early 1990s, which is crucial for the reproduction of the current form of corporate capitalism.

The term ‘sweatshop’ refers to the workshops and factory sites that do not adhere to the internationally and nationally set-out labour standards. They are places where workers do overtime labour at low wages and in inhuman working conditions. This means that workers are forced to extend their working day in order to generate surplus which are appropriated by and get concentrated in the hands a few monopolies.

Such a tendency was also noted by Karl Marx in Volume One of Capital (1867) where he described the extension of the working day (that is, the time within which capital consumes labour power) as a basic form of exploitation to extract surplus labour. The earliest sweatshops were started in Britain --- in cotton factories, potteries and lace works --- in the 19th century. Marx himself recorded the conditions of lace workers and pottery works where children of seven to ten years of age were woken up at 4 or 5 a m and made to work till 9 or 10 p m the next day, with barely half an hour for dinner. Such exploitation was not fettered by any legal regulations and provided the conditions for an increase in the extraction of surplus labour and expansion of the influence of capital. The health and nutritional impacts of such labour were recorded by Marx in the case of England whose industrial capital grew on the foundation of this very kind of inhuman conditions.

This was also true of the rapid industrialisation and growth of capitalism in the US of America where the term ‘sweatshop’ came into popular usage. The US law designated the ‘sweatshop’ to be a factory which violated at least two labour laws. Thereafter the concept of a sweatshop was identified with hard labour, lack of workers’ unionising rights, and very low living wages. Though American capital was subsidised by sweatshops since the early 20th century, the period of the 1980s was one when New York city housed garment sweatshops with Chinese labourers. But the search for still higher profits shifted the focus of these companies and they began to shift from their domestic production units to decentralised production units in other countries that have large surplus and cheap labour force.

SWEATSHOP CULTURE &

NEW FORMS OF SLAVERY

It was thus that from the 1990s onwards we see a proliferation of sweatshops producing goods for transnational brands across the world. The Nike and Reebok used sweatshop products from South East Asia, especially South Korea. A US congressional committee on the working conditions of sweetshop workers found that even five years old children worked for 75 hours a week in the South East Asian sweatshops. At the same time, sweatshops in Mexico, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua produced cheap garments and electronic goods for several retail chains, of which Walmart has been the most prominent.

The expansion of sweatshop production in South Asia since the 1990s needs to be seen in this context. In India, Tamilnadu has emerged as the global hub for outsourcing of the production of cotton yarn and of the readymade garments. Contracting companies and designers like Ralph Lauren, Gap, Discount Stores and others set the terms of trade for the contractors. Their profits are largely dependent on two factors: 1) the designs that they produce and 2) the costs of production which they pass on to the manufacturing units in the developing countries. Hence the retail brands concentrate on selling products and establishing their brand names. It is therefore not surprising that the suppliers and the contractors do prefer to maximise their own profits by violating labour laws and attracting cheap labour.

Sweatshop owners have been known to target unmarried girls and juvenile children for their work. New schemes are made to attract young girls and force them into virtual bonded labour. For instance, the Sumungali scheme was started by the mill owners in Tamilnadu and it promised young unmarried women a lump sum amount of money for their dowry if they signed a work contract for three years. A survey by the Fair Labour Organisation in May 2012 showed that more than 60 per cent of the women employed under the scheme were less than 16 years of age and about 84 per cent of the workers were less than 18 years old. They collected Rs 20,000 to 25,000 at the end of their three year term. They were paid subsistence wages of about Rs 400 per month. Of the respondents, however, only one fifth completed their three year term and one third of the women left work before completing their three year term, thus not receiving any money at all.

Very plainly speaking, the reasons for these girls thus leaving their work lie in the oppressive rules of the contracts. Women are not allowed to move about freely; they have to live in hostels which have no proper facilities including toilets and food. They are forced to do overtime work without payment and this had severe consequences for their health.

CONTINUING RELEVANCE

OF MARX’S CALL

The conditions of work in the sweatshop of Tamilnadu are not unique. Women working in the factories of the destroyed Rana Building Complex of Bangladesh have similar stories to tell. Arifa started working in the garment factories when she was ten years old and worked in the sector for 20 years. She started with a monthly wage of 100 taka and now earns 2200 taka, a little above the minimum wage, but not a living wage. However, it took her two decades and 13-14 hours of work per day. Her monthly expenses are 5000 taka a month.

Another aspect impacting the life of the workers is the utter disregard for occupational safety in most of these worksites. In this connection it is important to note that the Rana building had itself been gutted earlier in 2005 --- eight years before the collapse of April 2013.

In the mills at Tirupur (Tamilnadu) too, accidents are common without adequate medical help and safety measures. Other labour laws are also violated as all overtime work is forced and unpaid. In many cases, women are subjected to corporal punishment and sexual harassment. Minimum wages are not paid, and children are employed from the tender ages of five to seven years onwards. Thus, the ILO has noted in its statistics of 2012 that there are about 21.6 million people who are working as forced labour. Of these, more than two thirds are working as bonded labourers in private manufacturing units.

This story seems to be repeated in almost all sweatshops all over the world and have prompted many trade unions and women’s organisations to initiate campaigns for the basic rights and a decent life for a sweatshop worker. Thus the garment workers of Bangladesh have been demanding the right to unionise and have forced their government to take notice of their conditions in the wake of the Savar tragedy. In India too, the democratic trade unions are now reaching these workers and struggling for their rights. Such struggles show that Karl Marx’s call for a struggle for a decent normal working day is more relevant now than ever before, as it can strike at the heart of contemporary corporate capitalism.