[news] Wal-Mart, other big retailers driving down working conditions worldwide

[ron]

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From: shniad at sfu.ca

OneWorld US	 February 10, 2004

Wal-Mart, other big retailers driving down working conditions worldwide

Jim Lobe

Washington, D.C. --Wal-Mart and other major global retailers in the apparel
and food industries are driving down working conditions for millions of
mostly women workers worldwide, according to a new report by the
British-based international development agency, Oxfam.

Despite the retailers' claims that they demand that their contractors comply
with basic labor standards, their demands for ever-quicker and cheaper goods
are making compliance impossible in many cases, according to the report,
"Trading Away Our Rights."

"This is where globalization is failing in its potential to lift people out
of poverty and support development," said the director of Oxfam's "Make
Trade Fair" campaign. "There is a widening gap between the rhetoric of
global corporate social responsibility and the reality of the corporate
business model."

"Many corporations have codes of conduct to hold their suppliers accountable
for labor standards, but their own ruthless buying strategies often make it
impossible for these standards to be met," he added.

The new report, which is based on hundreds of interviews of workers, factor,
and farm owners, global brands, importers, exporters, and union and
government officials in 12 countries, comes amid growing efforts by
multinational corporations to reassure their consumers that workers who
produce their goods are able to earn a decent living.

But a spate of recent newspaper articles and studies have suggested that
these efforts may be undermined by growing competitive pressures created by
the demands of retailers and the ever-growing number of poor countries that
have heeded advice and pressure from international financial institutions
(IFIs) to open their economies to attract investment and jobs.

"Globalization has hugely strengthened the negotiating hand of retailers and
brand companies," according to the report. "New technologies, trade
liberalization, and capital mobility have dramatically opened up the number
of countries and producers from which they can source products, creating a
growing number of producers vying for a place in their supply chains."

Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer, has led the field in putting this
model into practice, the report said. It is currently buying products from
some 65,000 suppliers worldwide and selling to over 138 million consumers
each week through its 1,300 stores in 10 countries.

It has made China, where wages are far lower than anywhere else in Asia and
workers are denied the opportunity to form independent unions, the center of
production, a key point made in feature article that appeared in the
Washington Post Sunday.

"As capital scours the globe for cheaper and more malleable workers, and as
poor countries seek multinational companies to provide jobs, lift production
and open export markets," the Post said, "Wal-Mart and China have forged
themselves into the ultimate joint venture, their symbiosis influencing the
terms of labor and consumption the world over."

That marriage, however, according to the both the Post account and the Oxfam
report, has come largely at the expense of the worker on the factory line.
"Wal-Mart pressures the factory to cut its price, and the factory responds
with longer hours or lower pay," a Chinese labor official who declined to be
identified for fear of retaliation told the Post, "And the workers have no
options."

That was also the message of a report released Monday by the New York-based
National Labor Committee and China Labor Watch on a toy factory in Ping
Township in Guangdong province that produces goods for Wal-Mart. The two
groups reported that the mostly female labor force at the plant were paid
only about half the legal minimum wage and forced to work longer hours than
the legal maximum. It also reported that fire exits were normally locked.

Wal-Mart responded to the report by insisting that it conducted regular
inspections of all of its plants in China, but the groups said that plant
managers were always informed of the inspections in advance and coached the
workers on what to tell the inspectors.

The report was largely consistent with the findings of the Oxfam study that
put the main responsibility for the worsening situation on corporate buying
teams that pressure suppliers to deliver "just-in-time" orders at ever-lower
prices in hopes of squeezing maximum profit from goods once they are sold to
shoppers in mainly wealthy countries.

"Today's business ethos is 'make it quick, make it flexible, make it
cheap,'" said Blomer. "Anyone appalled by labor conditions in the world
today should be asking, 'so who turned up the heat?' The workers at the
bottom of the global supply chains are helping to fuel national export
growth and shareholders' returns, but their jobs are being made vere more
insecure, unhealthy and exhausting and their rights weakened."

To minimize resistance, contractors are employing workers who are less
likely to try to join trade unions in those countries where they exist. For
the most part, these include young women, often migrants or immigrants, who
are easily intimidated if they do not cooperate with management.

"Jobs in labor-intensive industries are celebrated as empowering women,"
according to Bloomer. "While we welcom the fact that millions of women are
getting a wage, the wage alone doesn't free them from poverty. Instead,
they're being burnt out by working harder, faster, over longer hours and
with few health, maternity or union rights. It's a poor strategy for
improving women's lives," he added, noting that the IFIs, such as the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) were complicit in the
worsening situation by encouraging governments to make their labor markets
ever more "flexible."

In Chile, for example, 75 percent of women in the agricultural sector are
hired on temporary contracts picking fruit and put in more than 60 hours a
week during the season, but one third still make below minimum wage.

Fewer than half the women in Bangladesh garment factories have a contract,
and the majority receive no maternity or health benefits. Some 80 percent
fear dismissal if they complain.

In China's Guangdong province, young women face 150 hours of overtime each
month in the garment factors, but only 40 percent have a written contract
and 90 percent have no access to social insurance.

Given these kinds of situations, governments must step in to guarantee
workers basic labor rights, including the right to join trade unions and
bargain collectively. At the same time, a greater effort must be made to
enforce labor laws, while consumers must insist that retailers do a far
better job of monitoring labor conditions to ensure that the employment they
are creating in poor countries is not exploitative, according to the report.



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