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The Sweatshop Connection:
From Bangladesh to ISU
Sweatshop Workers Are Paid 1 1/2 Cents to Make ISU Hats
By Nick Berveiler
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 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 an
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 asking universities to keep
production in Bangladesh and improve working conditions. 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 worker 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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