> magazine
| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | [an error occurred while processing this directive] |
||
|
|
|||
|
> magazine |
|||
| [an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive] | |
DECEMBER 22, 2000 VOL. 26 NO. 50 | SEARCH ASIAWEEK
Deth Chrib worked her way out of a brothel. Now a global campaign against exploitation of third-world workers could force her back By GINA CHON Phnom Penh Deth Chrib sits in front of a sewing machine 16 hours a day, seven days a week, in a Phnom Penh garment factory. It is the best job she has ever had. "It's pretty easy, compared to working on a farm," Deth says. "The only problem is that sometimes I think too much about my children and I can't focus on sewing." Now Deth is in danger of losing her job because her employer, June Textiles, a garment factory owned by a Singapore-based corporation, has been accused by Western media of using child labor. U.S. casual and sportswear giants Gap and Nike are threatening to cut off their contracts. Deth, 30, has little knowledge of the issues and forces that will determine her fate, but she is aware of what it could be. "I know Nike is a company that orders clothes from June, but I don't know who wears them," Deth says. "They only give me the cloth and I sew it. But now I've heard that maybe we won't have any more clothes to sew. I'm very worried because I don't want to be a prostitute again." Deth is a pawn in the worldwide struggle over globalization. From Seattle to Phnom Penh, protesters are fighting the incursion of supposedly rapacious multinational corporations. American college campuses are abuzz with the dangers of free trade, which activists say allows rich companies like Nike to exploit workers like Deth. But Deth is just worried about losing her job. There is no doubt that working in a Cambodian garment factory is tough. The hours are long and the pace is relentless. Nor is there much doubt that children can be found in many plants, unable to attend school or simply to play. Since the factories are making goods for the global market — items that might retail for more than a worker's monthly wage — it seems right and proper that manufacturers be pushed to meet at least minimum labor standards. But as do-gooders struggle to save abused workers, their efforts can backfire. "I don't believe that the people who buy Gap and Nike want these girls to work in brothels because they lost their jobs at the garment factory," says Neil Hawkins, country director for CARE Cambodia, a non-governmental organization (NGO) that helps factory managers and workers on health matters. "We are not apologists for child labor, but this is a poverty issue." Deth's worries began in September with the production of a British TV documentary featuring an interview with a June Textiles worker who said she was just 14 years old. That is one year younger than Cambodian law allows. The company, the government and even some union officials said that the report was not true, that the girl had lied, but Nike and Gap swung into damage control mode — and stopped their contracts with June. Together, the two labels account for three-quarters of the output of June's 3,800 workers. The factory and the U.S. clients are still talking, but the outcome is uncertain. "If the situation continues, it will affect the workers," says C.K. Chang, June Textiles' Malaysian deputy general manager. "We won't be able to keep all of them."
"My living condition was very bad," Deth says, explaining her decision. "I had nothing and things kept getting worse and worse, so I became a prostitute. No one in my family ever did anything like that." It was a decision she regretted. Day and night, she was pressured to bring in more customers. "In the brothel, I worked 24 hours a day," she says. "We only slept when there were not guests." On average, she serviced four men a day. If she did not get at least three, she would be scolded and sometimes beaten. For each customer, she earned about 50 cents. After a year of selling her body and enduring physical abuse from both clients and the brothel owner, a cousin told Deth about the great job she had at a garment factory and urged Deth to apply. Now, Deth earns about $60 a month, including overtime — more than triple what she used to — sewing T-shirts and shorts. She works from 6:15 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. with a half-hour lunch break. If she volunteers for overtime, for which she gets paid time and a half, she works from 2:15 p.m. to as late as 10:15 p.m., with a half-hour break for dinner. Overtime used to be mandatory, but about six months ago the factory made it voluntary, she says. She also works on most holidays, for which she is paid double. Best of all, she no longer has to lie to her family about her job. "Garment factory jobs are very good for women because we would be prostitutes if we didn't have that opportunity," Deth says. "My condition is much better now. I have a good reputation and society doesn't consider me bad." It is still not an easy life. Deth now has five children, three daughters and two sons. She had married, but her husband left her two years ago. However, she is now able to support her family on her own and lives with her children in a $10-a-month room in a wooden house near June Textiles. There is a mat on the floor, a hammock, and a few boxes and plastic bags filled with clothes. None of her children go to school. Her two oldest children, girls aged 10 and 8, help out by chopping wood, earning 18 cents for each pack of 100 pieces, and looking after the younger ones. Deth wants her sons to attend school, but cannot afford the 15 cents per term fee for each. She hopes her daughters can follow in her footsteps and become garment workers when they are old enough. It is a humble hope that her daughters share. "It's easy to work here," says Huon Kong Kea, 8. "If I go back to the province, there is nothing. When I get older, I can sew, too." Sewing has been an economic lifeline not only for women like Deth but for Cambodia as a whole. "After so many years of war, we had to start from scratch," says Sok Siphana, secretary of state at the Ministry of Commerce. "We didn't even have one industry, we were a craftsmanship society, very primitive. The garment industry has been the blood injection to our economy." The approximately 200 garment factories in Cambodia employ some 150,000 workers or just over 1% of the population, and account for 90% of the country's export earnings. Last year the industry shipped abroad products worth $600 million, mostly to the U.S. and Europe, compared to $20 million in 1995. While foreign investment overall has dropped in recent years, the garment industry continues to grow, with a 38% increase in investment for the first nine months of 2000 over the same period last year. The economics of Cambodia's garment factories highlight the misunderstandings of many well-intended anti-globalization activists. Sure, investors put money into Cambodian garment factories because they can pay employees little and work them hard. But if the minimum $45 a month salary earned by garment workers seems shockingly low, it is still three times that of judges and doctors in Cambodia. With overtime included, garment workers can earn triple the average annual income of $268. "It's a very easy thing to do to compare the developing world with practices of the developed world and make judgments based on that," says Urooj Malik, country representative for the Asian Develop-ment Bank. "The fact is that any job in this country is a good one because poverty is so pervasive." Not that the pay and conditions can't be improved. Earlier this year, thousands of workers from Phnom Penh garment factories went on strike, demanding a minimum wage of $70 a month. The then-prevailing level of $40 had been set in 1997, while the Cambodian Labor Organization, a local NGO, estimated that a family of five living in the capital spent $191 a month. After six days and several violent clashes, the strikers got a $5 raise. Other issues such as forced overtime and intimidation of union organizers remain unresolved. But child labor is not a major problem in Cambodian garment factories. Quite simply, adult workers willing to take low-paid jobs are plentiful in this impoverished country. "People portray us as if we're all gangsters," says Roger Tan, secretary general of the Cambodian Garment Manufacturers Association. "The truth is that when we are recruiting, thousands of girls will show up for 100 openings, so we don't need to look for children to work for us." Last month, U.S. government inspectors, who monitor a landmark 1999 deal that links increases in Cambodia's quota of textiles and garments for the Amer-ican market to labor conditions, also gave the nation a clean bill of health on child workers. "Obviously there can always be [individual cases], but we don't have any data that it is a significant problem," said Deputy Undersecretary of State for Labor Andrew Samet. Those individual cases can be hard to stop. Factory managers do check their workers' identity papers to make sure that they meet age requirements set by local laws as well as rules imposed by scandal-shy Western customers. But fake papers are easy to get. "You can pay $30 to change your name or fake other papers. You will do whatever you can to get a job," says Mar Sophea, a project coordinator for the International Labor Organization in Phnom Penh. That is a lot of money in Cambodia, but just a few weeks wages in a factory. "When girls lie about their age to get jobs in the garment factories, it is not usually the fault of the employer, but the problem of corruption in general that Cambodia is facing," he says. Worker advocates say that factories, Western customers and officials should do much more to combat child labor and other abuses. Chea Vichea, president of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia, helped the British TV crew find child laborers. When officials said that the girl — alleged to be 14 — interviewed for the program was actually 18, he pointed out that her new identity papers were issued after her story came to light. Chea blasts the government for trying to whitewash rather than tackle the problem. But he has publicly appealed to Gap and Nike to stay in Cambodia. "Of course, I don't want companies to leave," he says. "We need them because Cambodia is very poor. That doesn't mean that the workers can't fight for their rights. The balance is that factories and workers must both respect the law." The major Western brands do run extensive monitoring operations to make sure subcontractors respect the law, and often impose more stringent codes of conduct. Gap has a network of over 80 staffers who monitor factories in 50 countries. Nike has internal and external auditors who oversee some 700 sites worldwide. Nike says its decision to cut off June Textiles was only partly due to the television report on child labor. It says its monitors had already found that the factory was not living up to Nike's code of conduct on other matters such as too much overtime and not enough days off. (Not that either Nike or Gap noticed the underage workers at June.) But to avoid sudden layoffs, the U.S. company will keep working with June until its current contract ends in December. Nike holds out hope for June Textiles. After December, it will monitor the factory to see if it has made progress in improving working conditions. If so, it may do business with June again. The U.S. company knows that more than June's managers will suffer if its contract is not renewed. "It's a very difficult issue because we have to uphold our standards," says Vada Manager, director of global issues management for Nike. "But what is the alternative if we weren't there? That's the big question and the answers aren't very good in places like Cambodia and Thailand. I think the Western media doesn't understand that." Gap spokesman Jack Dougherty also says the door is not yet completely closed on June. "We were relieved to hear reports from experts that the garment industry in Cambodia does not appear to employ underage workers," he said. "We're currently in discussions with June Textiles about our current and future relationship." June Textiles' Chang says that the local garment industry is striving to improve its own monitoring systems. Factories want to keep clients like Gap and Nike happy, partly because those corporations pay more. Nike will pay $8 for a shirt, as opposed to the $6 paid by lesser known buyers. "Working to improve labor conditions has already become a permanent part of the industry because of human rights groups, corporate buyers and the U.S. quota system," Chang says. "We are aware of all of them when we are dealing with our workers." But improvements can carry a cost to workers. Officials from Gap recently came to town to go through employee documents at the 25 factories in Cambodia that make clothing for the company, check workers' ages and train factory managers on its code of conduct. It all sounds good. But at Best Honour International Garment, 37 workers have been fired so far for not being able to provide adequate proof that they are at least 18. More are likely to go as managers sift through 1,200 employee files. "We feel very sorry for the girls because they cried when they were fired and begged us to let them stay," a manager at Best Honour says. "But Gap is one of our best buyers so we have to listen to them." Local Gap officials declined to comment on the layoffs. Meah Kunthea, 17, has been told she will be let go, although the factory has not given her a termination date yet. She lied about her age when she first began working at Best Honour when she was 15, telling factory managers she was 18. (The minimum legal working age was 18 until it was cut to 15 last year.) She is worried because she and her 22-year-old brother, who also works at the factory, are the only breadwinners in her family of five who live in Banteay Meanchey province near the border with Thailand. "I'm worried that I will be sold to a brothel, because right now virgins are very popular and I can be sold for maybe $300," she says. There are no easy answers. Unless powerful Western buyers, pushed by conscience-stricken customers and the media, play hardball with factory managers, workers may be subject to terrible abuses — use of children, forced overtime, limits on toilet breaks, locked fire escapes. But cracking down on bad practices can hurt innocent workers as well. For Deth, there is only one certainty. "I don't know what the fate of my children will be if I lose my job," she says. "But even if it's hard, even if I have to do something bad, I will always feed my children." Although she sews, she may not reap. Write to Asiaweek at mail@web.asiaweek.com Quick Scroll: More stories from Asiaweek, TIME and CNN
|
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||
| Back to the top | [an error occurred while processing this directive] | |
ASIAWEEK'S
LATEST