Aug 12, 2013
At least 21 million people globally toil in forced labor, a problem that stems from a “global governance crisis” in which corporations’ supply chains have gotten so complex and diffuse that current oversight mechanisms are no longer effective, according to a panel of Human Trafficking experts on Capitol Hill. The lack of corporate or governmental oversight of supply chains, especially subcontractors, is a major problem allowing trafficking for forced labor to grow on a global scale.
Former U.S. ambassador and current Georgetown University Professor Mark P. Lagon moderated the July 26 panel, “Business Transparency to Address Human Trafficking.” The panel was convened in anticipation of a House bill on human trafficking, which would require U.S. companies to make information on their supply chains available to the public and to continually investigate sourcing. Advocates of the approach say it gives more power to consumers by enabling them to choose whether to purchase ethically-sourced products and also puts more pressure on companies to ensure that labor laws are enforced throughout their supply chains.
Cathy Feingold, AFL-CIO International Department director, pointed out that improved oversight laws would help prevent companies from doing what many Western retail giants did after the tragic Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh last April—that is, deny responsibility on the basis that they were only linked to the factory through a web of subcontractors, even though their products were made there.
Flor Molina, a trafficking survivor and now an advocate for other survivors in the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (CAST) Survivor Advisory Caucus, shared her harrowing story of coming to Los Angeles from Mexico as a trafficked worker, underlining the urgency of acting to end human trafficking and also the inadequacies of current oversight mechanisms. Molina’s trafficker, who forced her to work 17-18 hour days sewing dresses, withheld her wages and her passport, and forbade her from visiting a doctor, avoided jail time by paying a $75,000 fine. Now, Molina is an advocate for other trafficking survivors, and she believes greater private-sector accountability as well as government oversight will help prevent others from experiencing what she did.
Companies are likely to become more transparent with their sourcing, said Karen Stauss, director of programs at Free the Slaves, noting that several multinationals are gaining a greater ability to see deep into their supply chains, and these companies will pressure others to implement similar mechanisms. Investors are also increasingly seeing the “reputational and occupational” risk of doing business with companies connected with trafficking operations, said Bennett Freeman, senior vice president of Sustainability Research and Policy at Calvert Investments, and more investors are showing interest in socially responsible indexes and mutual funds. He said that in-depth research of product-sourcing, which his firm does, will help weed out companies that are the “systemic bad actors.”
Governments, however, also need to do more to combat human trafficking, said Louis Alexander of the Pan American Development Foundation. In Central America, one of the world’s hubs of trafficking, four countries have formed a coalition to combat the crisis and Alexander hopes that more multilateral state efforts like this one will emerge.
Although the panelists’ views differed on the role of governments in combatting human trafficking, panelists all agreed on a clear agenda of holding companies more accountable for keeping track of their supply chains and providing more public information on product-sourcing.
Aug 9, 2013
The Bangladesh government has re-registered the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS), a move that means the organization can fully function again and pursue its mission of educating workers about their rights.
The Bangladesh government revoked the organization’s registration in 2010 and arrested its leaders, Babul Akhter, Kalpona Akter and Aminul Islam, on criminal charges following protests by garment workers against unsafe working conditions and poverty-level wages. All three, who were held in custody and later released, say they were tortured in prison. In 2012, Aminul’s body was found dozens of miles from his home, severely beaten and tortured.
The government last month dropped charges against Babul and Kalpona and announced it would step up the search for the people who tortured and murdered Aminul. All these actions follow the decision by the U.S. government in June to suspend preferential trade benefits with Bangladesh because of chronic and severe labor rights violations. The Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) reduced tariff benefits agreement is worth $34.7 million a year for Bangladesh.
Despite international outcry, including a U.S. congressional hearing and then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s call for justice in the case, Aminul’s murder has gone unsolved. He had sought to improve the working conditions of some 8,000 garment workers employed by Shanta Group, a garment manufacturer based in Dhaka.
Since his murder, two massive garment factory disasters in Bangladesh have killed more than 1,000 workers, including the April building collapse of Rana Plaza, where 1,133 were killed. On Thursday, another garment worker Monwar Hossain, 22, died from his injuries at Rana Plaza. In the past eight months, there have been more than 40 fire and fire-related incidents at Bangladesh garment factories, according to data compiled by Solidarity Center staff in Dhaka, the capital.
Aug 5, 2013
Both the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions and an election observer mission comprised of trade union activists from southern Africa have raised sharp concerns regarding the presidential and parliamentary elections conducted last week in Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF, and its longtime leader, Robert Mugabe, have claimed victory. Union-led observer teams, like many others, say that irregularities leading up to the vote and on election day were too numerous and systematic to qualify the vote as free and fair.
The Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) led an election observation effort through its regional offices and as part of a coalition of civil-society groups. Along with its NGO counterparts on the network, the ZCTU flagged irregularities and acts of disenfranchisement around the country. In a joint statement, the groups called the election “illegitimate and not reflective of the will of the people.” Prior to the vote, the ZCTU had questioned the lack of pre-electoral reforms and the short time period between ratification of the country’s constitution in May and last week’s election.
In addition, an international observer team from the Southern Africa Trade Union Coordination Council (SATUCC), which represents trade unions from 13 countries, dispatched observers to six provinces in Zimbabwe—Harare, Bulawayo, Masvingo, Manicaland, Midlands and Mashonaland West—to monitor 87 polling stations. The monitors reported numerous voters being turned away from the polls, among other problems. In a statement released over the weekend, SATUCC said the elections “lack credibility and fail to pass the free and fairness test.”
With the results now official, Zimbabwe’s civil society is weighing options for democratic participation in what could be an unstable period.
Aug 4, 2013
Women around the world work make up the vast majority of workers in dangerous, difficult and low-paid jobs—and in Bangladesh, garment workers, the majority of whom are women, often risk their lives for a chance to support themselves and their families. More than 1,100 workers were killed in the most recent garment factory disaster when the eight-story Rana Plaza building collapsed in April.
Morium Akter Sheuli, elected this year as general secretary of the 100,000+ member Bangladesh Independent Garment Workers Union Federation (BIGUF), was 9 years old when she began work in a garment factory. At age 14, she began organizing co-workers to gain a collective voice on the job to improve workplace safety and wages.
Bangladesh has “more than 4 million garment workers, of which 80 percent are women (and) almost 70 percent of all women employment in the nation’s manufacturing sectors,” said Morium. She spoke last week in in São Paulo, Brazil, during a July 30-31 Solidarity Center conference, “Women’s Empowerment, Gender Equality and Labor Rights: Transforming the Terrain.”
Although garment exports account for 75 percent of Bangladesh’s exports, workers in the country’s 5,000 garment factories are paid a minimum of $38 a month while enduring dangerous and deadly workplaces.
Following the Rana Plaza tragedy and other mass deaths at Bangladesh garment factories, the United States in June suspended its Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) reduced tariff benefits agreement with Bangladesh. In July, Bangladesh passed a new labor law, one that Morium says “is not enough for workers.”
“In some ways, the previous law was better than this one,” Morium said through a translator, in an interview with the Solidarity Center. “Workers are not very happy with the new law after Rana Plaza, thinking it is imposed on them.”
Although the government has made registering unions easier in recent weeks, the new labor code still does not apply to the hundreds of thousands of workers in the country’s export processing zones where a large number of garment workers are employed, according to an analysis by the AFL-CIO. The International Labor Organization (ILO) has found that current law that regulates labor relations in the zones violates core labor standards.
Like conference participants from a variety of countries, Morium, who has been actively involved in various union leadership positions and union organizing efforts, described how international support has been essential to improving women’s working conditions. She sees hope in the international Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legally binding agreement committing the more than 80 major corporations that signed on to funding safety and building upgrades and holding independent factory inspections.
“I think that it will be a better tool for our workers in Bangladesh,” she said.
Jul 31, 2013
Working in large-scale agriculture creates a whole new set of challenges for women—exposure to harsh pesticides and chemicals, isolation, sexual harassment and violence and a production quota that seeks to “turn women into machines.” But women in agriculture also have the opportunity to earn wages that can better themselves and their families, said Samantha Tate, Solidarity Center country program director for Peru.
Tate opened the Tuesday afternoon plenary session at the Solidarity Center conference in São Paulo, Brazil, “Women’s Empowerment, Gender Equality and Labor Rights: Transforming the Terrain,” where 100 union and community activists from 20 countries are meeting to share strategies, network and build collective strength.
At the plenary, “Women Worker Rights in Agriculture: the Reality, Challenges and Opportunities,” four women working to empower female agricultural workers—in Peru, Honduras, Morocco and Brazil—discussed the hardships of women agricultural workers and the successes they have achieved.
“While the sector grows and grows, we as workers are not growing,” said Rosa Julia Perez Aguilar, secretary of women’s, child and adolescent affairs at the union confederation, FENTAGRO, in Peru. Although the monthly salary for a woman working in agriculture is $234, a family of five in Peru needs a minimum $546 a month to live, she said. Salaries are so low, “children are forced to work” to enable families to survive—and as a result, they receive little or no education, perpetuating the cycle of poverty.
Women in all four countries face similar struggles and, in words of Alessandra da Costa Lunes, are fighting to “break the invisibility.”
“Overcoming inequality will mean full citizenship for women,” says Costa, vice president and women’s security at CONTAG, a 22 million-member union confederation in Brazil.
In Central America, Irís Munguía is among those holding leadership trainings and empowering women in the banana, pineapple and sugar cane industries to take on important roles in their unions and their communities. Munguía, the first female coordinator of COLSIBA, the Latin American coordinating body of agricultural unions, also has helped spearhead a contract framework agreement for multiple Central and South American nations that women can adapt during bargaining.
In Morocco, women working in agriculture in Morocco are taking part in unique trainings tailored for a workforce with low literacy, said Touriya Lahrech, coordinator of the Confederation Democratique du Travail (CDT). In turn, these women go on to train other women in isolated rural areas about such issues as the involvement of international financial institutions in their local economies, a situation “not unique to Morocco but … a shared reality with other women, the fruit of economic policies that deny women their social and economic rights.”
And in Brazil, union women taking part in the gender equality conference plenary session now have a new network of sisters and brothers in working in agriculture from around the world.
Says Lahrech: “The moment we go back to our countries, I will tell my colleagues and sisters we are not alone. Our solidarity as women coming from across the globe can only move forward our positions as women.”
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