| Coalitions
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| 281. Multinational enterprises have a strong presence in the
export processing zones either because they have direct investment there, or
often because they subcontract local firms there. They therefore bear heavy
responsibility for the working conditions prevailing in the zones. According to
a report published at the end of 1995 by the British organisations Christian
Aid, Nike sports shoes that sell for approximately L 50 a pair in Great Britain
cost, in wages and other social charges, 46 pence in China, L 1.08 in the
Philippines and L 1.19 in Thailand. The President of Nike, Phil Knight, earned
US$ 929,113 in 1994. To earn the same amount, one of his Chinese employees
would have to work nine hours per day six days per week for fifteen
centuries.
| 281. Multinationals happen to have a stronger presence outside
EPZs worldwide. By attacking EPZs ICFTU is misdirecting its approach. The small
and medium sized corporations which find shelter in EPZs are just the ones that
can be driven completely out of business by the ICFTU attack on EPZs or by a
boycott. Good idea -- attack the weak!
We believe ICFTU needs a lot better education
as to what EPZs are, what makes them work as development tools, and why this
reckless and irresponsible attack by ICFTU against the workers in EPZs is
senseless.
If ICFTU has an argument with large
multinationals, talk to them; don't wildly attack EPZs without knowing about
them -- as ICFTU clearly does not.
See our frontispiece for information as to the
relationship between the president's income and that of the operator on the
line in China. We believe that a more interesting figure is that of Nike's
sales of 165 million pairs of shoes in 1996, the worker in China earned 125
times as much per pair as the President of Nike.
|
| 282. Some enterprises deny exploiting workers.
"Reebok" writes the weekly US News and World Report in 1995 "jumps from one
Asian location to another in the 0search for cheap labour. Its network of
factories in China and Indonesia produces nearly 60 percent of Reebok's world
output...Ten years ago, Reebok didn't produce a single pair of shoes in these
two countries. Almost all of its production was in South Korea and
Taiwan."
| 282. Did ICFTU or US News and World Report check on whether
the workers in South Korea and Taiwan who used to make Reebok shoes were
gainfully employed after Reebok left for China and Indonesia? We doubt it.
Based on current wage levels and unemployment
statistics, these workers in Korea and Taiwan are not only gainfully employed
but are getting higher pay and enjoying better working conditions than a decade
ago working for Reebok. It is called progress and development.
So by advocating the destruction of EPZs in
Taiwan and South Korea -- as well as those of China and Indonesia, ICFTU is
doing nobody a favor.
The "runaway plant" idea was used by unions
against Puerto Rico in the early 1950s. It is time ICFTU learned what is really
going on by rereading our 282 paragraphs.
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| 283. "Over the last few years" replies the
human rights director of Reebok International "we have set up extensive
programmes to monitor and audit working conditions and we carefully study our
partners and the working conditions they apply."
| 283. What EPZs are they in?
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| 284. Confronted with information on the activities of their
subcontractors, the companies, either through conviction or to save their
image, are forced to react. At the beginning of January 1996, the ICFTU
announced that after a long struggle by workers in the Mandarin Factory and a
trade union solidarity campaign in the United States, the big US clothing
company The Gap had agreed to demand that its suppliers respect a code of
conduct and labour laws in the free trade zones of El Salvador. The firm also
agreed to an independent surveillance system.
| 284. Please name the EPZ in which Mandarin is located in El
Salvador.
Even when the multinationals act, as they have
in most incidents presented by the ICFTU in this paper, the ICFTU has to make a
derogatory assumption about their motives.
|
| #285. Some enterprises even support the trade
unions' efforts. In the Philippines, for example, the Trade Union Congress "has
initiated dialogue with a group of progressive businessmen who have put a pilot
proposal to the governor aimed at ensuring the respect of human and trade union
rights in the Cavite zone". In Honduras the vice-president of the US clothing
company Liz Claiborne, accompanied by a representative of the ILGWU (the
International Ladies Garment Workers Union) threatened one of its
subcontractors, the Korean firm Galaxy, in 1994 that the company would withdraw
its contract if Galaxy continued to violate the law. With its back to the wall,
the Galaxy management promised to respect the Honduran labour code, set up a
creche, respect working hours, reinstate sacked workers and dismiss the
middle managers who had threatened and harassed the workers. In August 1995,
however, the firm went back on its promises.
| 285. What EPZ is Galaxy in? Did ILGWU talk to its manager, if any?
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| 286. "Ethical" investment funds, which direct their
investments towards "socially responsible" enterprises, and consumers
organisations can be valuable allies in the fight against the exploitation of
workers in the EPZs, for example by helping enforce the boycott of products
manufactured in conditions of exploitation and violence.
| 286. Do such "Ethical Investment Funds" go into the street and
participate in violently boycotting companies and products that didn't come
from EPZs? ICFTU has not at all proven its main argument for
killing EPZs in "Behind the Wire". Investors have to be careless with money to
invest in such a fund if they do. Because they will go out of business.
Of course, that is not the role of "ethical"
investment funds nor one they could do very well. These funds invest in firms,
or don't invest in firms, based on some form of supposedly "ethical" issue.
Enforcing or not enforcing a boycott of products would not be an effective
action for such funds. Perhaps they would not buy stock in firms on a union
blacklist, but that is not in any way enforcing a product boycott. Are they
expected to tell their investors that if they buy such and such a product they
will have to sell their investment? This paragraph shows the author's lack of
understanding of product boycotts and investment funds.
|
| 287. The British organisation Tradecraft, whose
purpose is to promote greater equity in trading relations between the
industrialised and developing countries, has adopted a "buying policy"
stipulating that "products should not exploit those that make them nor
jeopardize their health".
| 287. It is an old British-created privilege to boycott. We
suspect if they truly follow this policy it means they buy only from the
developed world, but more likely they have no idea where the steel for their
staples come from nor the labor conditions in the mines and forests that
produce the graphite and wood for their pencils nor the accident rates at their
electricity provider. It is in fact a quite meaningless statement.
|
| 288. "Campaigns and demands for a code of conduct" write
Deborah Lenvenson-Estrada and Henry Frundt, in Report on the Americas
(March-April 1995), "when linked to strong local organisation, can be a
significant antidote to the unbridled expansion of enterprises encouraged by
GATT and NAFTA. The advantage of a code of conduct is that it offers American
consumers the possibility of exerting pressure in the form of overseas trade
union solidarity."
| 288. "If there is any expansion I hate, it is unbridled expansion."
This might also be said as, "Try to create
confusion for the consumer, and perhaps blackmail retailers, so that consumers
will pay more for products produced in the developed world, preserve union
membership, and deny to the developing countries a chance to advance and to the
consumers the benefits of trade."
|
| 289. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty
International or Human Rights Watch are also involved in the struggle for the
respect of workers' rights (see text by Pierre Sane, General Secretary of AI).
Already very active in the fight against child labour, Human Rights Watch takes
a close interest in the conditions imposed on workers in third world factories,
particularly in China's special economic zones.
| 289. As explained earlier, most of China's SEZs are not EPZs.
Laudable as the objectives of Amnesty International may be, they must be in a
position to join ICFTU in condemning all EPZs everywhere and eliminating the 15
million worker's jobs dependent on EPZs if what ICFTU is implying is true.
Somehow, we don't believe this is Amnesty International's position.
It is worth noting that according to National
Geographic, the conditions in SEZs are so superior to elsewhere in China that
authorities have to restrict access to these zones to avoid a flood of labor.
Their wages are ample so that many are willing to send half of their earnings
home to support a family elsewhere.
|
| 290. "The market is not an automatic guarantee
of human rights," says the organisation's world report for 1996. In fact, in
China, some violations of human rights such as the repression of trade union
activists and the exploitation of migrant workers seem to have increased with
development.
| 290. That's an easy one -- they were never able to migrate
under Mao Zedong. What union activists?
|
| 291. "Human Rights Watch believes that "all enterprises have a
duty to avoid direct complicity in the violation of human rights and
internationally recognised labour conventions, such as discrimination, forced
labour and restrictions on the freedom of expression and of association,
including the right to organise and to bargain collectively. This duty implies,
as a minimum, the adoption of specific standards by country to avoid such
complicity, and the implementation of a programme to apply these standards by
means of credible inspections of factories and suppliers. If these standards
are not respected, measures should be taken immediately in order to rectify the
situation or, failing that, trading relations should be suspended."
| 291. Put another way Human Rights Watch believes that the
Western democracies should impose their standards on the rest of the world, and
if they are found wanting should raise prohibitive barriers to trade. This
would condemn the less developed countries to continued political oppression
and poverty since economic growth is the surest solution to poverty and
oppression. The reader should now be fully aware that the intent of the ICFTU
modest proposal is protectionist and is exactly what the developing countries
fear.
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| 292. The power of the multinationals can also be restricted by
limiting their lobbying capacity and therefore reducing the capacity for
financing political parties.
| 292. Such as by the AFL-CIO spending $35 million of union
worker's dues illegally misdirected for political activism to run a TV hate
campaign in 1996. Like most of the last few paragraphs this proposal has
nothing to do with EPZs. What purpose would ICFTU have to restrict them?
Remember how helpful they were in the Dominican Republic and Honduras in
stopping bad local management.
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| Amnesty International
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| 293. "The article by Peter Benenson, published in The Observer
on 28 May 1968, that gave birth to Amnesty International, mentioned six cases
of persecution around the world. One of the cases was that of a trade union
leader. Toni Ambatielos of the Greek trade union movement was incarcerated by
the then Greek regime. He was one of the very first prisoners of conscience
adopted by AI. Since then we have had cause to intervene in thousands of cases
of trade unionists, from the tin miners of Bolivia to the railway workers of
India, or those who tried to form independent unions in the former Soviet
Union. Many of Amnesty's current cases are actually those of trade unionists
victimised because of their fight for the rights of fellow workers. Trade
unionists are often the only force standing between ordinary workers and
rapacious employers, backed by the power of the state.
| 293. WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH EXPORT PROCESSING ZONES?
It predates most of them, and Greece doesn't have an EPZ! Miners in Bolivia,
railworkers in India, or unions in the former Soviet Union also were not
engaged in any way with EPZs. These random, out of place, comments are a waste
of time and space.
|
| 294. "Look for instance at the case, among too many, of
Deborah Guzman, a trade unionist at the Lunafil S.A. Factory, a textile company
in Guatemala. She has been singled out for a sustained campaign of harassment
and intimidation. She has been attacked by armed and masked men and abducted.
Both she and her husband, trade union leader Felix Gonzalez, have received
numerous death threats. In October 1995, they received another threat demanding
that they leave the country in 72 hours. Neither she nor her husband has
resigned from the Lunafil trade union and they are both continuing their
struggle.
| 294. DITTO
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| 295. "There are many areas in which I think it may be possible
to work out common or interlocking approaches. Situations where both the ICFTU
and AI have concerns are likely to involve serious violations of human rights,
not only in respect of ILO Conventions, but also other international standards
such as those set out in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human
Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which
includes the specific rights that Amnesty International seeks to protect.
Although we welcome the attention given by the ILO to situations of serious
human rights violations, it is not possible for them to take into account
material produced by NGOs such as AI. We would welcome access by NGOs to the
ILO complaint procedures in the Committee on the Application of Standards.
This is a matter on which the reflections and view of the ICFTU would be very
welcome.
| 295. DITTO
|
| 296. "Our two organisations are now operating in a world
context in which the prevailing economic and political dynamic has had terrible
consequences for workers' rights. But the undeniable fact remains that the
trade union movement in many countries is still the custodian of values of
freedom. We acknowledge that the labour movement was instrumental in ushering
in the very concept of human rights. Now, as it did then, preserving and
enhancing trade union rights depends on trade unions engaging themselves
forcefully in the defence of the human rights of all." ----- Pierre Sane,
General Secretary of Amnesty International, Free Labour World, January,
1996.
| 296. DITTO
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| Levi Strauss Code of Conduct
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| 297. Levi Strauss and Co. Extracts from the "Business Partner
Terms of Engagement" written in collaboration with the ACTWU. The company
withdrew from Burma and China in 1992.
| 297. So the demon multinational is, in fact, an ally. It is
interesting that ICFTU ends this article with the code of conduct of a major
multinational, after spending most of the last 296 paragraphs condemning their
profit-only attitude. It seems to us that this recognizes that the basis for the
entire article did not exist. It is even more compelling that Burma
(Myanmar) does not have any EPZs.
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| 298. Our concerns extend to the practices of our individual
partners as well as the political and social problems in the countries of our
potential suppliers.
| 298.
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| 299. Environmental requirements
We will only deal with partners who share our
commitment to the environment.
| 299.
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| 300. Health and Safety
We only employ partners who guarantee their
workers a safe and healthy working environment. The partners who provide
housing for their staff must guarantee that it is safe and healthy.
| 300.
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