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News :: Miscellaneous |
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The Sweatshop Connection: From Bangladesh to ISU |
Current rating: 0 |
by Nick Berveiler
Email: naberve (nospam) ilstu.edu (unverified!) |
24 Oct 2001
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Workers are paid 1 1/2 cents to make ISU Caps. |
Have you ever wondered what it is like to work in a sweatshop? Talking during working hours is strictly prohibited. Total repression of Freedom of Association. No day care center. No sick days. Cheated on overtime wages. The factory is overcrowded and hot and often hazardous. Trapped in misery.
The most visible form of sweatshop abuse available in Bloomington Normal can be seen in the Illinois State University hats made in Bangladesh. ISU Students Against Sweatshops was contacted by the National Labor Committee to purchase an ISU hat made by Headmaster labeled "Made in Bangladesh." When the NLC received the hat at their New York City office, they had confirmed that the hats were coming from a factory they had investigated, Lim's Bangladesh Ltd. in Chittagong, Bangladesh. The National Labor Committee is releasing several reports of factory conditions discovered through research in Bangladesh factories that produce apparel for universities across the country.
According to the National Labor Committee, workers at Lim's have never even heard of university codes of conduct, let alone seen them. The $18.99 retail price for the caps represents more than a 1,400% mark-up over their total landed U.S. Customs value of $1.23. Workers are paid just 1.5 cents for every university hat they sew.
This is the greatest exploitation the National Labor Committee has ever seen. No worker knew where or by whom their hats were purchased. They knew nothing of the US companies or the universities. They had no idea what the hats sold for. In the US, labor accounts for approximately 10% of the cost of the garment. In Bangladesh, the labor cost has now almost been completely wiped out - falling from 10% to less than 0.1% of the retail price.
What would happen if universities insisted on payment of a basic subsistence level wage? Would the sky fall in on corporate profits if they raised the wage for the Bangladeshi women from 18 cents to 34 cents as hour? Hardly.
If the women were paid 34 cents an hour, so they could climb out of misery and into poverty, the direct labor cost to sew a university cap would still be less than 3 cents per cap, and their wages would still amount to just a little over 0.1% of the cap's $18.99 retail price.
The working conditions of Bangladesh apparel-makers are miserable. Due to long hours, rapid pace and constant pressure, the workers report suffering from near constant headaches and vomiting. Almost no one lasts past the age of 30, when the factory replaces them with another crop of young girls.
Up to 30 hours of overtime is required a week, resulting in a standard 13-hour shift, from 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Seven-day, 91 hour workweeks are the norm with just every other Friday off.
A senior operator at Lim's, with more than five years experience as a sewer, earns 2,200 taka per month, or $38.33, which comes to 18 cents an hour. This is less than the legal minimum wage set for the Export Processing Zones, which is $45 per month, or 22 cents an hour. The average junior operator's wage is just 12 cents an hour. Helpers, typically young teenage women who supply the assembly lines with fabric, and then clean the finished garments by cutting off loose threads, are paid just 8 cents an hour. Workers at the Lim's factory report routinely being paid for only one half of the overtime hours they are actually forced to work.
While the workers sewing university caps go hungry, the company does quite well. On average, the Lim's factory cheated the workers of $8.03 a week in regular and overtime pay, a total of $7,227 a week for 900 workers, and $375,804 a year.
Reports of these factories are being released by the NLC as they begin a national tour with two women from Bangladesh who offer testimony of working conditions in Bangladesh. The NLC is also demanding enforcement of university codes of conduct in Bangladesh.
Illinois State University has students, faculty and local labor leaders who have supported the demand to help bring workers rights in Bangladesh and around the world: that their human and workers rights be respected; that they be paid at least a subsistence level wage; and that basic factory health and safety standards be implemented.
In 2000, US companies imported 924 million garments made in Bangladesh. Apparel imports from Bangladesh were up 25.7% from the year before, and 49% of Bangladesh's apparel exports are destined for the US market. This gives the American people a powerful voice to improve conditions in Bangladesh. We purchase the goods, and companies (and ISU) must listen.
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