sweatshops, analysis of impact globally

[Jon Ford]

Since Bob feels everything is hunky dory with the US and its foreign 
outsourcing policies, I thought I'd send the following for his elucidation 
and for those of others who might doubt that this stuff happens in countries 
around the world. A section from the "Sweatshopwatch" newsletter 
follows.It's a few years, old, but I doubt if much has changed. Earlier I 
said many people get pennies an hour--well, there have been raises-- in 
Costa Rica, you might even get $2.50!

Jon

<http://www.sweatshopwatch.org/swatch/newsletters/2_1.html>

U.S. transnationals own none of the overseas
manufacturing facilities and have no long term commitment
to any country or supplier. The relationship is
order-by-order. Not tied down by capital investments and
with no responsibility to the workers, U.S. firms can ship
their production from one country to another without
much disruption of their global operations.

The disruption and devastation on the local economies and
communities, including the United States, though, are
immense. In the United States, over 400,000 jobs have been lost
since 1973. The loss of U.S. jobs is not due to foreign
competition. Rather, U.S. apparel manufacturers compete
with each other, and sometimes with themselves -- producing
the same products both domestically for local markets and
abroad for import into the U.S. market.

The impact of this transnational movement of capital is even
more pronounced in the less developed countries where U.S.
companies relocate. Child labor, geographic dislocation,
and sexual abuse are all aspects of the social upheaval
connected with the arrival of U.S. transnationals. For
example, in Bangladesh, 7% to 10%, or 100,000 garment
workers are children between the ages of 10 and 14 who
assemble clothing for U.S. consumers. When the workers
reach the age of 25, they are laid off. In China's Special
Economic Zones (SEZ), created for the production of goods
for exports, 80% of the SEZ workers are women; most are
between the ages of 16 and 25. After age 25, the women must
return to their province of origin. While in the SEZ,
workers live in crowded dormitories provided by employers
and, in some cases, are not allowed out of the dormitories
except to work. In Sri Lanka, most of the 15,000 women
employed in the garment industry are between the ages of 19
and 25. Typically from far off villages, they live in
boarding houses near the factory, sharing one room with 10
to 12 others. Many of these boarding houses lack
ventilation, electricity, running water, and adequate
toilet facilities. In El Salvador and Guatemala, young
women suffer sexual harassment as well as forced
consumption of contraceptive pills. In all these countries,
the girls and women work six or seven day weeks, ten to
fifteen hours a day at wages so low many are malnourished.

The human suffering continues when U.S. companies shift
work from one country to the next. Left behind are
unemployed women workers, most of whom have no skills or
training in other field. In the 1970's, for instance, garment
jobs were abundant in Hong Kong. When wages began rising,
U.S. manufacturers moved from Hong Kong to the developing
countries of Southeast Asia. A Hong Kong garment worker
who worked ten years in garment factories, can not find
skilled or unskilled work because she, like numerous other
women, is considered too old at thirty to be employable.
When minimum wages in Thailand began to rise higher than
those of Vietnam and China, production was moved to the
lower wage countries. For twenty years, Thai women had
labored in garment factories. When the industry moved,
most were over forty and faced layoffs with no skills to
obtain new jobs.

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