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Opportunity, exploitation and resistance

Friday, September 7th, 2007

The Life of a Migrant Worker

By Cameron Walker

Who/What is a migrant worker?
The United Nations defines a migrant worker as a person who is to be engaged, is engaged or has been engaged in a remunerated activity in a State of which he or she is not a national’. In simple terms a migrant worker is someone who works in a country in which they’re not a citizen.

An International Labour Organisation (ILO) report stated that many migrant workers “are not looking simply for better work. Propelled by poverty and insecurity, they are looking for any work.” Some travel great distances to find opportunities to earn enough money to make them and their families better off. However, while some find opportunity in their host countries many others find that they’re treated terribly by their bosses, paid low wages, are victims of racism and harassment by the police and immigration authorities, and are treated as invisible by their host country’s people.

Latin American migrant workers tend to move to the US to find work, Africans journey to Europe. Workers from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand tend to leave for richer parts of Asia, such as Hong Kong and Japan, while from those from the nations of the Pacific, such as Tuvalu, Tonga and Samoa come to Aotearoa New Zealand or Australia.

Migrant workers have become extremely important to their home and host countries. According to the Financial Times migrant workers in the United States (US) last year sent home US$62.3 billion to their families in Latin America and the Caribbean, while in their host country, the US, they do unpopular jobs at a price few locals would work for. Worldwide, money sent home by migrant workers is worth about US$232 billion!

Tatik’s Story
I work as a domestic here in Hong Kong to support my family in Indonesia. I am the eighth of nine children and my family depends on me for food, clothing, education — everything. Many of the migrants who come here are from villages where they cannot find work. But even those who have finished university come here because there is no work. We cannot survive and improve our lives at home. That’s why we are here, we do not want to be here.
Some of us are treated well by our employers, many are not. The main problems are low pay and unfair dismissal. But there is physical abuse too. And the working hours can be very long. You go to bed at 1 or 2am and your employer expects you to be up at 6am.
Tatik, President of the Coalition of Migrant Workers in Hong Kong

Source New Internationalist, April 2006, NI388

Why do Migrant Workers leave their home countries to work?

Many Mexican migrant workers have made perilous illegal journeys through the desert — risking thirst, exposure to the elements and harassment and intimidation by border guards and vigilante groups, known as the Minutemen’, across the US border.

Economic conditions in Mexico have been particularly bad for the poor since the country entered into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with the US and Canada in 1994. The agreement forced Mexico to drop all its restrictions on food imports from the US, while in the US agribusiness corporations were (and still are!) highly subsidised by the government and able to dump their produce at a very cheap price in Mexico — so cheap that Mexican farmers could not compete. Many Mexican farmers were forced off their land so they flooded to the cities to find work. The oversupply of workers in the cities drove down wages to a level where many could not afford the basics. This in turn made it so many had to go across the border, either legally or illegally to find work.

Rather than addressing the economic conditions creating large numbers of illegal migrants, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has launched Operation Return to Sender’, a huge campaign to round up, detain and deport migrant workers from Latin America. Laura Carlsen, an analyst for the International Relations Center, writes that the US state treats migrants as if they’re human junk mail’.

Even in Aotearoa New Zealand migrant workers may not be fairly treated. The Press recently reported about the awful working conditions of Thai labourers employed on Marlborough’s vineyards.

A married Thai couple, Surachet Kannika and Orasa Khambut, both 25, paid $10,000 each to a Thai recruitment agency for an offer of work in New Zealand, flights and expenses. They borrowed the money — enough to buy a good house in Thailand — having been told they could earn $5000 a month between them in New Zealand. However, when they began pruning for Havenleigh a horticultural contracting company, in Seddon last year, they were taking home about $200 a week each, after tax and rent of $96 each was deducted. They were forced to work 60 to 70-hour, seven-day weeks and public holidays, without proper recompense, were bullied by supervisors, and ordered to work in other regions without negotiation. The Labour Department is currently investigating the complaint.

Source: The Press | Saturday, 2 June 2007.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers CIW is a community-based workers organisation. Members are largely Latino, Haitian, and Mayan Indian immigrants working in low-wage jobs throughout Florida. They fight for, among other things, fair wages, more respect, better and cheaper housing, stronger laws and the right to be part of a union. In 2005 in the US, fast food chain, Taco Bell was forced to increase the pay of migrant tomato pickers working for the restaurant’s suppliers, after a four year long boycott campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers. The campaign was supported by university and high school students all over the country who set up blockades of Taco Bells on their campuses. Taco Bell’s parent company, Yum Brands, has recently announced that this pay agreement will be extended to ALL its fast food chains!

More Info

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers
The Rights of Migrant Workers UN Factsheet
Promotion and protection of the rights of migrant workers
New Internationalist issue 379 dedicated to migrant workers’ stories

Take Action

Become informed. (see the resources above)
Challenge racism and bigotry against migrants. If you hear someone going on about how poor immigrants cause New Zealand’s social problems or how migrant workers “are taking our jobs” challenge them.
Join or volunteer with a union. Solidarity Union is a small union that has been organising Auckland workers in non-unionised factories, including many migrant workers.
Celebrate International Migrants Day on December 18

A version of this article was originally published in JET magazine.

Tags: borders, migrant workers, poverty, trade, unions
Posted in Articles, Economics & Trade, Global Themes, Human Rights & Social Justice, Your Stories | No Comments »

What’s up with coke? Part one

Friday, February 16th, 2007

Union Busting in Colombia

By Elisabeth Perham

It’s a multinational juggernaut of a company turning over US$23 billion a year and one of the most recognisable brands in the world. Its corporate body speaks from Atlanta, Georgia, ensuring its consumers that the company adheres to the “highest ethical standards” and aims to be “an outstanding corporate citizen in every community we serve.” Why then have numerous colleges across the USA and around the world terminated their contracts with Coca Cola? Why was the 2005 annual Coca Cola stockholders meeting overtaken by activists demanding answers? What’s up with Coke?

Article Twenty-Four of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states in part that “Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.” Some recent actions (and inactions) of the Coca Cola company in Columbia suggest they don’t rate this human right very highly. Many employees of the Coca Cola bottling plants belong to a trade union called SINALTRAINAL (the Columbian food workers union). In the years between 1989 and 2002 eight Coca Cola workers with connections with the union have been killed, forty eight have been forced into hiding and a further sixty five have received death threats.

In 2001 a lawsuit was made in Miami against the Coca Cola company by the union. It was reported in this lawsuit that years of intimidation of the Coca Cola workers belonging to the union was stepped up in 1996, reaching its highest point on December 5 when a squad of paramilitaries turned up at the gates of a Coca Cola bottling plant in the small Columbian town of Carepa. The paramilitaries shot and killed the gatekeeper, a member of SINAlTRAINAL’s executive board. An hour later another union leader was kidnapped and the offices of the union were set alight. The next day the paramilitaries returned to the plant, demanding the employees sign a statement saying that they resigned from the union.

It was alleged by the union that both Coca Cola and the company which owned the bottling plant were collaborating with the paramilitaries and that in fact, the manager of the bottling plant had ordered that something be done to break up the union. Adding clout to this story were claims that the statements of resignation, which the workers were ordered to sign, bore the letterhead of the bottling plant. Coca Cola, unsurprisingly, vehemently denied the claims made by SINALTRAINAL in the lawsuit. However, the fact that they did not immediately condemn the actions of the paramilitaries did little to back up their cries of innocence. Any commentary from such a large and influential company could have halted any more killings and prevented any more terrorism of union workers. But no such commentary was forthcoming.

The en masse resignation of union members following the killing in December of 1996 worked entirely in the bottling plant’s favour. In the ten years to 2004, SINALTRAINAL’s Coca Cola membership dropped from 1400 members to 400 members. Those resigning were replaced quickly by workers who were able to be paid a third of the wage of their predecessors. No longer was the union present in the plant to speak for the rights of the workers

Union work in Columbia is not easy. Every year workers are killed in a bid to keep the employer supreme in the troubled country. This however is no excuse for Coca Cola. The company has money to burn and the sorts of savings made through such vulgar and inhumane means can never be worth the human cost. A company, which according to their corporate responsibility policy prides itself on human rights and ethical practises, should be the first to stand up in Columbia and fight for, not against, the worker’s unions.

What can you do?

Still wanting to enjoy the Coke side of life? If not there are several groups of protestors who have set up websites which you can check out:

And of course there is the option of making the decision not to drink Coca Cola on moral grounds. If everyone does it the company will have to sit up and listen, or face a fate even worse than that they have inflicted on their workers in Columbia and around the world.

Resources:

Look out for Part Two coming soon — Environmental Destruction in India

Tags: conflict, corporations, unions
Posted in Activism, Articles, Economics & Trade, Global Themes, Human Rights & Social Justice, Peace and Conflict, Take Action | No Comments »

Dressed to kill

Friday, October 6th, 2006

Hannah Newport

Excited doesn’t begin to describe how Jimmy’s feeling right now. He’s holding those pants like their God’s greatest gift, and he aint lettin’ go. “Thanks Mum!” he cries. “I mean, um, cheers… you can go now.”

Little Jimmy thinks that the snaz new pair of Dickies his adoring mother has just purchased is going to solve all his problems. He truly believes. Finally no more spit-ball sandwiches from those dastardly 6th formers. No more childish treatment from the aloof and awe-inspiring 7th formers and certainly no more sickening pity from the teachers. Who knows, the girl with the pretty pig tails from science class might even smile at him.

Jimmy may be deluding himself just a little, but how many of us do the same thing? How many of us feel our adolescent problems solved by the power of a logo or a look’? A bit of retail therapy will calm our self-conscious nerves! We’ll happily pay the price for a branded t-shirt if it’s going to help us fit in with the crowd. We’re hooked on sweet, sticky conformism, and boy does it taste good.

But while expensive items tailor our “personal look” (to be like with everyone else’s), and boost young Jimmy’s cred, what do they really mean? Even those of us less creatively dressed are judged on our appearance. So what are your clothes saying about you? And what’s the true story behind the labels we love?

More often than one would like to believe, the clothes we buy in NZ were made in a factory where the conditions are hard and workers are not allowed to bargain collectively in unions. And many of the workers are teenagers. There’s a vague awareness of this among teenagers, but it’s just not a priority when it has no noticeably direct impact on our own lives.

So, things look rather unenthusiastic for the ethics of tomorrow. Or do they? Hidden among the wonderful sea of apathetic youth are the odd students who break the stereotype; they’re actually thinking about life, the universe, and clothes. They’re few and far between, but so are red M & M’s.

“I’ve never wanted Chuck Tailors,” says one such rule-breaking individual. Susie Harcourt, a Wellington 7th former tells sweatshops where to go, on a regular basis. She’s been working as a volunteer at Trade Aid for more than a year now, and yes, she knows a thing or two about this and that.

“I’d say teens are more materialistic than ever,” she says. “And also there’s more material to be materialistic about. People do have money, children do have money, and the advertising is more than ever before.”

“We see groups of 8 girls who have little variations, but mainly looked just the same. And with girls it’s more obvious, but then you look at boys as well; you think about it, and you look at it properly, and it’s like- you all look exactly the same!” Aha, so it’s about being part of the crowd. We are all in danger of letting the right label or “look” take over our own sense of identity or, even more frighteningly, our sense of morals.

Decades ago now, many NZ stores, including Glassons and Hallensteins, stopped printing “Made In New Zealand” on their labels as they began to manufacture overseas instead. It doesn’t take a genius to work out this was cost motivated. Profit won out over supporting local products (and therefore employment) and ignored the environmental damage caused by international transportation.

Enter individual number two. When it comes to matters of an un-conformist nature, Stephanie Cairns (best known as the keyboardist from rock quest band “Cybersex on Mars”). has got an opinion all right.

“People are just lazy,” she says. “They’re easily brainwashed and they’re easily persuaded. When you see a cheap shirt that you like, you want to buy it, because it’s cheap.”

Most people avoid thinking about the conditions the clothes they buy were made in. “A lot of people are aware of it, but they sort of feel that it’s not their position to do anything about it.”

And often, it’s not even as clear cut as knowing about it or not. There’s this whole other grey area, where un-conformist and “cool” overlap. “Fashion isn’t just about clothes, it’s often about ideas. The fashion when I started a high school was to buy organic food, buy fair trade shoes, things like that. But then when it went out, suddenly a lot of people who cared about that stuff suddenly stopped caring about it because it went out of fashion.”

“It’s sort of like when those wristbands that came out that said, “Make Poverty History” on them and they were made by sweatshop labour,” remembers Stephanie. “People do have this thing on the surface, where they want to be seen as having a social conscience, want to be seen as standing up for things. They want to be seen to be “good people”, basically. But that doesn’t extend into the way they live their lives.”

It could be a little daunting, for a first-time freethinker: How do I show that I care, without showing that I want to show I care? Bit of a paradox. Perhaps the key is just playing a common-sense game of “match the pair”, between the issues that you care about, and the manner in which you support them. Is buying a candy cane from New World really going to help dentistry in the Middle East?

The ultimate hypocrisy, both young women agree, is the use of Guevara’s image in popular culture. “Have you seen my t-shirt that says, “Che Guevara is not a fashion accessory?” asks Stephanie.

“People think they’re being so revolutionary by wearing this image on this t-shirt, but they don’t even know what it means,” agrees Stephanie. These clothes or items that are sold to us, in countries like NZ, have been made in sweatshops.

“Che Guevara was working for a world where people weren’t oppressed like that, and didn’t have to work for someone else’s profit. It’s sort of like this phoney radicalism. Just the fact that they’re wearing it on a t-shirt; it’s the most hypocritical thing, and nobody realises.”

We’ve hit the nail on the head. Sure, it is ironic that in our efforts to “fit in” we’ve ended up looking like clone teens. But the ultimate irony can be found in the manufactured ideas, which we buy into with each purchase, then sell on again when the fad ends.

For a few though, it’s frustration at this hypocrisy that sparks alternative antics. Nothing drastic, just little variations to keep the sanity. For Susie, it’s her volunteer shift at Trade Aid. Steph, on the other hand, vents her individuality on a sewing machine. “There’s lots of reason for making your own clothes. Number one is that it’s just cheaper. Basically, I’m a poor student, so it’s the best thing. And another reason is basically you’re not taking part in the whole capitalist machine. If you’re doing your own thing and making your own clothes then you’re not taking part in the cycle of exploitation.”

Whether it’s taking to fabric with a pair of scissors, or carving your own style through donating time to a cause, it’s about expressing yourself; stepping away from the clothes that “everyone” wears and from what they represent.

And while the masses are dressed to kill, these individuals among us question. What they’re finding out is not altogether comforting; a profiteer you’ve never met has made some very personal decisions for you; decisions about the shoes on your feet and the way of the world. But after all, hasn’t it always just taken a few individuals to lead the way to change?

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead

LEARN MORE

Trade Aid
No Sweat Apparel American company No Sweat says it “defines the market for goods that support independent trade unions - the only historically proven solution to sweatshops”.
The Fair Trade Foundation (UK)
The Good Shopping Guide (UK)
www.ethicalconsumer.org
Make Poverty History in NZ

Global Issues magazine 15 (July 2005) “Trade: A Fair Journey?”

An interesting article on the web about things being made in China called “A Life Without China” . It’s about New Zealand-based reporter Mandy Herrick who renounces Chinese-made goods for a month to reveal the depths of our growing dependence on the mega-factory of the world.

TAKE ACTION!

Make your own clothes
Volunteer your time, eg at Trade Aid
Find out more about your own jeans brand, or Google where your t-shirt was made
Write to your favourite shop and tell them you love their stuff but want it to be fairly traded
Go op-shopping / buy second-hand stuff

Photos of Susie and Stpehanie by Hannah Newport.

Tags: consumerism, corporations, Environment, fair trade, identity, Media, sweat shops, unions, volunteer, youth activism
Posted in Articles, Economics & Trade, Human Rights & Social Justice, Take Action, Your Stories | No Comments »

Taking back their rights

Wednesday, February 15th, 2006

Omar Hamed

“SHE
Works her hands
On the factory floor.
Sweat pours down her body.
Airtight suffocation.
Clock in clock out.
Spasmodic moments
of freedom.
Wage packet goal of survival.”

Rapped the middle aged Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua to an audience of about six hundred, mostly young people, at the Auckland Town Hall. The occasion was a public rally against youth rates and low wages, and in support of the Unite! Unions workers mostly young and mostly Polynesian who will be taking strike action in the coming months to end youth rates and gain a $12 minimum wage and secure hours in their contracts.

The concert was part of the supersizemypay.com campaign, which aims to bring together a broad coalition of social justice groups and the labour movement to put public and political pressure on the government and employers to live up to three demands-a $12 minimum wage, an end to youth rates and secure hours.

It must have been one of the most diverse line-ups ever to grace the town halls stage in a long time. Speakers like the Green Party’s Sue Bradford and the Maori Party’s Pita Sharples alternated with musical acts like Olmecha Supreme, NZ Idol Rosita Vai and Auckland Ska Band Geneva.

The concert proved that the campaign for workers rights in the fast food industry had come along way from International Workers Day, when Radical Youth stormed Starbucks and then occupied McDonalds, shutting down Queen Street and resulting in twenty arrests, including of Tearaway Journalist Cameron Walker, for taking photos of police making brutal arrests. The occupation and subsequent arrests proved the inspiration for a public rally against youth rates in the weeks before the election, which brought together the Green Party, Unite! Union and Child Poverty Action Group, three of the main participants in the supersizemypay.com campaign against youth rates. The supersizemypay.com campaign has gone from strength to strength, with many strikes, pickets and a media conference raising the issue in the national arena.

It was inspiring to see so many young people involved in taking back their rights at work. Firstly, there were the Unite! members, like Nick, the worlds first Starbucks worker to go on strike, who were taking back their rights to a living wage and freedom from age discrimination in youth rates. Secondly, there were the McDonalds workers like Mele and Meleane Manumoa who were taking back their rights to fight for a fair wage even after they were threatened with legal action from one of the world’s biggest corporations.

The public rally showed that youth do have rights and if they join together and fight for them they can win. One Starbucks worker told the crowd that they were fighting a culture of apathy, but said she believed that together we could overcome that apathy. And she’s right, because if we want to make poverty history we first need to do it in our own backyard. Possibly the most pressing reminder from the concert was Sharples reminding the crowd of Nelson Mandela’s words, “Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

Check out Unite and their campaign website for Supersizemypay.com

Tags: corporations, Media, music, Politics, poverty, unions, youth activism
Posted in Activism, Articles, Human Rights & Social Justice | No Comments »

Two faced land of the free

Thursday, January 12th, 2006

Cameron Walker

Members of the Bush Administration regularly claim that the aim of American foreign policy is to spread ideals of democracy, freedom and liberty around the world. However, the actions of the US Government in its dealings with other nations regularly seem to contradict this.

We were all told the war on Iraq was to bring democracy to a nation suffering under Saddam Hussein. In the first year of the American occupation of Iraq, the nation came under the authority of the Coalition Provisional Authority and its American head Paul Bremer. During this time Bremer decreed 100 orders or changes Iraq had to make to its’ economy.

Instead of helping Iraqi people rebuild from decades of war these changes all strengthen American corporations at the expense of ordinary Iraqis. For example, Order 39 allows for 100% foreign ownership of Iraqi banks, mines and factories and also decrees that corporations may take 100% of their profit out of Iraq, instead of investing it in the local economy, which is in dire need of development. (Palast Greg Adventure Capitalism’)

Order 81 prohibits Iraqi farmers from saving seed from year to year. Instead they must fork out large amounts of money to buy new seed from American agribusiness corporations, such as Cargill. According to the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) in 2002 97% of Iraqi wheat farmers saved their seeds. This process helped avert famine during the harsh sanctions on Iraq in the 1990’s. As the British magazine the Ecologist points out:

“The US, however, has decided that, despite 10,000 years practice, Iraqis don’t know which wheat works best in their own conditions, and would be better off with some new, imported American varieties. Under the guise, therefore, of helping get Iraq back on its feet, the US is setting out to totally reengineer the country’s traditional farming systems into a US-style corporate agribusiness.” (Smith Jeremy Order 81’)

No Iraqis were involved in making these decisions. They were forced on the war-wrecked nation in such an un-democratic way it would have made Saddam Hussein proud. An insider implementing the US government’s economic policies in Iraq told the American journalist Greg Palast: “They have [Deputy Defence Secretary Paul] Wolfowitz coming out saying it’s going to be a democratic country … but we’re going to do something that 99 percent of the people of Iraq wouldn’t vote for.”

The one of the few Saddam era laws retained by the American occupation forces in Iraq is the law that restricts union organising in public sector industries. Since 2003 Iraqi unionists have been busy actively opposing American moves to sell Iraqi industries to American corporations. As Hassan Juma’a Awad, a leading member of Iraq’s General Union of Oil Workers says:
“It was our duty as Iraqi workers to protect the oil installations since they are the property of the Iraqi people and we are sure that the US and the international companies have come here to put their hands on the country’s oil reserves”.

Iraqi unionists have had some big victories but also have had to suffer great costs. A general strike broke out in Basra when the British tried to install a notorious mayor who was a member of Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party. Oil workers forced US Vice President Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton to employ Iraqis to complete reconstruction work in one city where unemployment was as high as 70%, instead of importing Kuwaiti oil workers. (Bacon David Interview with Hassan Juma’a Awad’)

Unions suffered persecution under Saddam. Today they face repression by both the American occupying forces and the remnants of Saddam’s regime that make up part of the murderous insurgency’. Some unionists have been kidnapped and murdered.

While the US is bringing democracy’ and free market capitalism to Iraq at gunpoint, it is also using huge amounts of effort to undermine the democratically elected government of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

Chavez, described by US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice as “a negative force in the region [South America]”, won a landslide election victory in 1998 and was again popularly re-elected in 2000. In 2004 he won a recall referendum on his rule with 58% of the vote, which was declared free and fair by foreign observers including former US President Jimmy Carter.

In 2002 opponents of Hugo Chavez launched a coup in which the president was briefly overthrown and held under house arrest. The head of the Venezuelan Federation of Business, Pedro Carmona Estranga, appointed himself President.

Most nations around the world condemned the coup as anti-democratic and called for Chavez to be released and returned to office. The USA failed to condemn the coup and became one of the few nations in the whole world to recognise the coup government of Carmona. After a huge public outcry on the streets of Venezuela Chavez was returned to power.

In 2005 the pro-Bush US evangelist minister Pat Robertson said on his TV program, The 700 Club’ that the US should assassinate Chavez.

Why do the US government and its allies hate Chavez so much when he is a seemingly popular democratic leader? Well he has raised taxes on US oil companies and increased the price of oil exports to pay for large social programmes for the poor in urban slums, known as barrios. He vocally criticises US “free trade agreements” in Latin America as new world imperialism and also criticised the war on Iraq.

Despite its rhetoric the US government is quite happy to put corporate profit ahead of democracy.

SOURCES

Bacon David (September 2005) Interview with Hassan Juma’a Awad’ The New Internationalist, p33, issue 382

Hari Johann (August 26, 2005) Awaiting the hit’ in oil rich rogue state’, The New Zealand Herald, pB4

Palast Greg (October 26, 2004) Adventure Capitalism’

Smith Jeremy (February 2005), Order 81’, The Ecologist

MORE ARTICLES ON CHAVEZ

The Rise of America’s New Enemy by John Pilger

White House and Media Escalate War of Words Against Hugo Chavez by Scott Harris

Tags: agriculture, capitalism, corporations, democracy, economy, free trade, Iraq, sovereignty, unions, United States of America, Venezuela, war
Posted in Articles, Economics & Trade, Human Rights & Social Justice, Peace and Conflict, Politics | No Comments »

My school the corporation

Thursday, December 15th, 2005

Omar Hamed

As I walked up the tree lined driveway to school one morning I was confronted by an interesting juxtaposition. A large Document Destruction Service truck pulled up next to the schools offices. What was the DDS doing outside Senior Management’s offices? Were they getting rid of unfavourable Education Review Office reports or the expenses lists for the Principals recent excursion to Wellington? The answer will doubtless remain a mystery thanks to a tax-payer funded document destruction. The truck drove away and suddenly the ironic site of the DDS outside an education institution was gone.

I suppose my judgement is unfair. As one Senior Manager of my school casually remarked to me the other day, “the school is basically a company”. Companies must protect their financial secrets at all costs and my school, which is “basically a company” seemed to be no exception. Companies are also designed to make money, lots of money. My school again seems to be no exception. The school in order to increase its revenue has even let some large multi-national American corporations use it wall space for advertising.

The school owned tuckshop proudly displays an advertisement for Coca-Cola opposite where hungry and thirsty students queue for overpriced junk food. A student can not help but notice this advert. The school is openly endorsing the products of Coca-Cola, actively encouraging students to buy from a corporation guilty of, “Complicity in the murder and torture of workers in Colombia” and “Depriving communities of water, poisoning land and water and selling poisoned drinks in India”. (Killercoke.org)

In response to Coca-Cola’s labour violations and the presence of pesticides in their products six Universities in the United States have dropped contracts with Coke. In Auckland, New Zealand, my high school, oblivious to the concerns of independent human rights organisations continues to sell the products of a corporation which sponsored the murder of eight union leaders.

The school which is you remember “basically a company” has to make money somehow and these days student donations just wont make ends meet. You just cant afford the swanky “achievers breakfasts” and a glossy prospectus that students need these days without selling at least some of your walls as billboard space for fast-food giant McDonalds. As the schools conservation committee meets to discuss environmental issues the logo of a corporation that uses over a million tonnes of unnecessary plastic waste each year shines over the school. McDonalds, a company with a track record of working to undermine unions and one which has sued (unsuccessfully) people in England who distributed information about the health, environmental and social effects of McDonalds is given advertising space by my school.

Another example of a company advertised at my school is Compaq, a multinational computer producer whose large red billboard is attached to the wall in the library. Compaq uses American prison labour to make computers. “For private business prison labor is like a pot of gold. No strikes. No union organizing. No health benefits, unemployment insurance, or workers’ compensation to pay. “ says Linda Evans, a prisoner in California.

Compaq uses what has been described as “the next best thing to slavery” to produce computers. It does not have to worry about maintaining decent standards for health or safety and the workforce can be beaten when they refuse to work, Lee Swepston, Senior Adviser for Human Rights to a United Nations organisation commented that these prison factories fall outside international law and are therefore open to exploitation of inmates. (Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex by Angela Y. Davis)

So the three corporations that endorse themselves through my school are in fact corporations with histories of murder, bullying and questionable ethics. These companies are designed to make money and inevitably put profits above human lives and dignity. My school as a public institution can refuse the in school advertisements of those who use forced labour or aggressive advertising practices. That’s the difference between corporations and public institutions, one is accountable to its members the other is not. Then again why would the school refuse money because if it is “basically a company’ it should basically not care?

We however should.

For more information about corporate crimes check out Corpwatch.

Tags: capitalism, corporations, human rights, international law, prision, schools, sweat shops, unions
Posted in Articles, Economics & Trade, Human Rights & Social Justice, Media | No Comments »

Trade Unions

Monday, November 14th, 2005

Omar Hamed

When I raised the issue of my sister joining a Trade Union her first question was, “What is in it for me?”, followed by, “How much does it cost?” She works part-time at a telemarketing company, interviewing people over the phone for $10.50 an hour, 14 hours a week. She enjoys her job, and knows while she is still at school, moving from low paid job to low paid job is better than fixing problems at your original workplace.

Trade Unions are organisations that protect worker’s rights and campaign on behalf of workers on issues that affect them. They also represent individual or groups of employees in disputes with employers. Despite this, most high school students with part time jobs are not in unions.

David Young, formerly of the National Business Review, in his recent Listener article, was “perfectly happy” with the fact that young people are “the first unionless generation”. He sees the Employment Relations Act, passed by the Labour government in 2000, as offering all the benefits of a Union without the need to join one. Yet Young’s subtitle, “For a new generation, organised labour is history”, is misleading. Union membership has been growing since 2000 and continues to grow strongly. (Unions and Union Membership in New Zealand: Annual Review for 2004, Blackwood, Feinberg-Daniel and Lafferty.)

Young people especially have benefited from the creation of a new union called Unite. Unite is open to everyone and sets it’s fees at one per cent of member’s incomes. For my sister this would cost $1.47. In return, Unite visits workplaces and signs up members, who list what they would like to see come out of a collective agreement such as more pay or more holidays. Unite then negotiates the contract with employers and if the employees are satisfied it is implemented. Unite then sees to it that employers fulfil the terms of the contract.

“They [Unions] have failed to evolve to overcome our apathy”, maintains David Young in his Listener article. Yet for the kids working at Starbucks, KFC and many points in between “the times they are a changing”.

In Australia workers at KFC are paid a starting rate of NZ$14 with allowances for clothing, shoes and travel, while back here, friends of mine get a measly $7.60 per hour. David Young is wrong. The young people of New Zealand are not too lazy or apathetic to do something about their exploitation. Young people will evolve to overcome being ripped off.

As Bob Dylan put it “Your son’s and your daughters are beyond your command, your old road is rapidly ageing. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand, for the times they are a-changin“.

TAKE ACTION!

Young Workers Unite- Rally Against Youth Rates.

12.30pm, November 30th 2005
Corner of Manners and Cuba Street’s,
Wellington.

This image was originally used in Global Focus a collaborative project of Tearaway Magazine and the Global Education Centre. It was first published in Tearaway magazine and is reprinted here with their permission. Illustrator: Gavin Mouldey

Tags: corporations, unions, youth activism
Posted in Articles, Human Rights & Social Justice | No Comments »

NZ Sweatshops Inc.

Tuesday, June 14th, 2005

Cameron Walker

So your brand new, highly expensive, major brand jacket actually cost less than two bucks to make in a Thai sweatshop. How cool is that?! Not very. Leading sportswear companies continue to make huge profits from unethical sweatshop labour.

Earlier this year Sripai Nonsee, a trade unionist and former sweatshop worker from Thailand, visited New Zealand to speak about the terrible conditions facing clothing workers in Thailand. At the age of 17 Sripai left her rural home to find work in the Thai capital, Bangkok. She got a job at a firm called Par Garment, producing clothing for big brand sportswear companies, such as Nike, Adidas, GAP, Old Navy and Fila. These clothing brands are very expensive in shops in more developed countries such as New Zealand, but the workers who produce them are treated very badly. The sportswear companies use sweatshop labour because it brings down the amount of money they have to spend on production, which means they make more profit.

Vulnerable to abuse
Conditions in the factory where Sripai worked were very poor. The workers, mainly teenage girls and young women, were forced to work three hours unpaid overtime. During this time they were locked in the factory and not allowed out. The factory was hot and dusty and had no first aid room. Sexual abuse was frequent and any worker who refused to submit to the sexual demands of the personnel officer would be threatened with the loss of their job. Many of those employed in sweatshops are vulnerable to abuse because they are young, desperate for work and from rural parts of Thailand, away from their families.

Working to improve conditions
The workers became sick of their treatment so they set up a trade union. At the age of 20 Sripai became the head of the union at her factory. Six years later she was fired when she tried to help workers set up a union at another Par Garment factory. In New Zealand forming a union is considered a basic right for workers. Thailand has not approved the International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions on the rights of workers to organize unions. This makes it easier for factory owners to get away with poor work conditions. Today Sripai works with organizations which aim to improve conditions for Thai clothing workers.

78 cents!
During her time in New Zealand, Sripai visited a sports store in Christchurch. She found a selection of jackets that she used to make in Thailand. Each of the jackets took less than two hours to make, for which the worker was paid 78 cents an hour. But in New Zealand they were being sold for $159.99 each. Sripai calculated it would take 205 hours, or eight and a half days and nights, for workers in her factory to earn enough money to buy just ONE of the jackets.

Ripped off
Last year the company which owns that particular store made a profit of $23.6 million. Some sportswear companies, such as Nike, make profits in the billions. These companies are growing very rich off the sweat of workers, like Sripai, in Thailand. Is it really worth spending huge amounts of money on clothing which is made by virtual slaves? We’re getting ripped off and so are Thai workers!

GLOSSARY

Sweatshop: A factory where workers are forced to work long hours, for low pay and with poor conditions. The factory Sripai worked in was a sweatshop.
Trade Union: An organized association of workers which aims to protect and improve pay and workplace conditions. Sripai is a clothing workers trade unionist.
International Labour Organisation (ILO): An agency of the United Nations which aims to promote fair conditions in the workplace and the abolition of forced labour. The ILO researches and creates rules for governments to put in place to ensure workplaces always have fair pay and conditions.

LEARN MORE

Sweatshops:

sweatshopwatch.org
Corpwatch.org
Aworldconnected.org
Feminist.org

Fair trade in New Zealand and Australia:

Trade Aid
Fair Trade Association
Scoop Article

This article was originally written for the Global Focus project (link to explanation?), a collaborative effort between Tearaway Magazine and the Global Education Centre. It has been reproduced here with the permission of the good folk at Tearaway. This article appeared in the December 2004 issue of Tearaway.

Tags: Activism, consumerism, corporations, poverty, sexual abuse, sweat shops, Thailand, trade, unions
Posted in Activism, Aid & Development, Articles, Economics & Trade, Human Rights & Social Justice, Your Stories | No Comments »

Don’t Sweat It

Wednesday, February 9th, 2005

Cameron Walker

So it turns out the new hoodie that was going to make you feel good and like you fit in (finally) for just the small price of $149.95 was actually made by an under-paid, over-worked young woman in Asia. Yeah. Still feeling good?

In the 1980’s and 1990’s U.S. and European clothing corporations closed down factories at home so they could focus on building their brand names. Companies like Dickies, Adidas, Gap, Nike and Converse (now owned by Nike) searched the world for the cheapest contractors to produce their gear.

Unfortunately for the workers, the cheapest contractors were often so well-priced because their workers were paid terrible wages and had to put up with appalling working conditions.
Meanwhile, the governments of some developing nations, such as Mexico, Indonesia, El Salvador, the Philippines, Thailand and China, set up large factory areas — as big as whole suburbs — known as Export Processing Zones (EPZs) to attract investment from corporations like Nike and Dickies.

EPZs are dedicated to making goods for the Western market. The corporations who use EPZs are not required to pay tax, so public services normally funded by taxes are often unavailable. So no public transport or street lights, for example.

NO smiling
Unions — the organisations which make sure workers are getting what they’re entitled to — have fewer rights and almost no bargaining power, shifts are long and wages are usually not enough to buy basic necessities.

Workers at a factory in the Philippines, which made GAP, Old Navy and Guess gear, told journalist Naomi Klein that sometimes they had to resort to urinating in plastic bags under their desks because they were not given toilet breaks.

In one Filipino factory there is a rule against smiling. In a certain factory in an Indonesian EPZ, which produces GAP and Nike clothing, workers have to do long shifts — 36 hours without going home!

In the Maquiladoras of El Salvador workers are paid $151 US a month, but the price of basic food (rice, beans, corn) for two to three people costs $250 a month. If you add the price of power bills, water and education for the workers’ children it costs at least $550 a month to live. It’s not hard to see that some are going without. Meanwhile, at a local shop I found Dickies Double Knee Workpants, made in Maquiladoras, for $115.

Go on, be ethical
No Sweat Apparel and other fair trade producers are getting more popular as people become aware of the exploitation used to make some of their favourite clothes.

Fair Trade and No Sweat
Under fair trade, workers are paid a decent wage, the environment is not exploitative and conditions are checked by the International Fair Trade Association (IFAT).
No Sweat Apparel, the ones who have just released those awesome new shoes (pictured), use an Indonesian factory where workers are unionised, paid 25 percent more than the regional minimum wage, and receive a rice allowance and health insurance that covers them and their family members.

You can get No Sweat sneakers from Trade Aid stores around New Zealand, and you can hunt around on the net for other fair trade producers.

nosweatapparel
ethicalconsumer

Buy NZ Made
Because New Zealand’s got pretty tough worker safety and rights laws, you’re almost guaranteed New Zealand-made clothing is made ethically.
Be careful though, because more and more NZ-owned companies are outsourcing their work to Asia and the Pacific. So even if they’re a New Zealand label, they might still be using the same sweatshop labour as everyone else.

Do your own research
We’d like to give you a list of your favourite labels and rate them according to how ethically or unethically their stuff’s made. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Big labels are usually part of a greater clothing and apparel group named something completely unrelated. They contract out their work to people in far-flung nations who then contract equally anonymous sweatshops. They don’t want to make it easy for you to find out. The best you can do is research. There are reports scattered around the net on particular clothing labels, so have a hunt around.

Tell the companies
Let the labels know there is a demand out there for ethically made clothing — write a letter or email to the company asking about their practices, or ask a shop assistant if it’s made ethically. This kind of pressure can do more than you think. Nike, for instance, as a direct result of public pressure to clean up their practices in Vietnam, made an effort to improve conditions in their Vietnam factories.

This article was written as part of the Global Focus a collaborative project of Tearaway Magazine and the Global Education Centre. It was first published in Tearaway magazine and is reprinted here with their permission

Illustrator: Rebecca Ter Borg

Tags: corporations, fair trade, globalisation, labour legislation, poverty, sweat shops, Trade Aid, unions
Posted in Activism, Articles, Economics & Trade, Human Rights & Social Justice, Take Action | No Comments »