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Regarding compensation to victims of workplace accidents, says Solidarity Center Country Dave Welsh, “In every situation I’ve been involved in, and I’ve been involved in a lot, it’s like pulling teeth making the government fulfill its obligation.”
Across Asia, millions of children toil for long hours, earning barely enough to live on, while sewing garments for fashion brands in the West. “Brands chase jurisdictions where there is extreme poverty, the rule of law is weak and it is easy for them to skirt labor laws,” says David Welsh of the Solidarity Center.
As the FIFA corruption scandal widens and pressure builds to move the World Cup from countries tainted by the investigation, a deeper human tragedy may be unfolding: The economically fragile situation of migrant workers who build infrastructure for global sporting events will only worsen if they lose their jobs abroad and have no employment to return to at home, writes the Solidarity Center’s Sonia Mistry.
Solidarity Center Cambodia Country Director David Welsh writes: “Given the global nature of the garment industry, and of its shortcomings, improving workers’ lot calls for a global solution. The most efficient approach is to increase the costs to the big brands themselves of tolerating poor working conditions… [t]he big brands are ultimately responsible for the basic welfare of all the workers who toil for their bottom line.”
In the garment industry, the average union leader is just 26 years old with an eighth grade education and likely migrated to the city from a village. “The learning curve is steep,” said Alonzo Suson, program director of Solidarity Center, an affiliate of the AFL-CIO, which is training union leaders in Bangladesh.
Garment factory conditions have not improved. Manufacturers continue to invest where there is “no rule of law but extreme poverty and an investor-friendly government,” explains labor lawyer David Welsh, who works for the U.S. NGO Solidarity Center in Phnom Penh.
To mitigate the outbreak’s ripple effects, Solidarity Center is currently providing financial assistance to infected workers and for families of deceased workers.
Despite national legislation, poverty leads Cambodian families to help children lie about their age to get a job, while factories turn a blind eye to underage workers. Prospects for the workers, most of them female, are not good, according to Dave Welsh, country director for U.S.-based labor rights group the Solidarity Center. “At the end of their career, at the ripe old age of 35, the majority are left with no savings, no transferable skills and very little education,” he says. “The companies are taking the best years of these young women’s lives and working them to exhaustion.”
“In June 2014 the U.S. government took the rare step of suspending African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade benefits for Swaziland, citing the Swazi government’s systematic violations of fundamental worker rights, including refusal to legally recognize TUCOSWA,” reported the Solidarity Center.
Shawna Bader-Blau, executive director of the Solidarity Center, testified at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. She said the United States has a real opportunity to lead the fight against worker exploitation, especially with regard to upcoming negotiations on the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. “Our diplomacy must be much more robust and aggressive on tackling the root causes” of forced labor, Bader-Blau told the committee, stating her belief that “it’s not too much to ask that we see real systematic changes” in how countries operate before agreeing to anything in trade negotiations.
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