Introduction

When you put your clothes on tomorrow morning check the tags of each article to see where they were made. The tags may say, made in Thailand, or made in Indonesia, or made in China, or made in El Salvador or a host of other far away countries that you might only know from the evening news with Dan Rather. Before you continue with your morning routine, stop and think about the fact that you probably paid more for what is on your body than what the people who made your clothes get paid in a month. Interpret the reports you remember of the Kathie Lee Gifford hoopla of 1996, which described unjust working conditions for people who may have made your clothes. Be aware that the companies who sold you the clothes that you are wearing might make more money in a year than some of the countries, where your clothes were made, are worth.

It was these types of thoughts that made me interested in researching sweatshops. I wanted to find out if what I saw and heard on the evening news was true. I also wanted to know how a sweatshop fits in with (what every politician and government official seems to be talking about these days) the ‘global economy.’ A trip to El Salvador raised my curiosity of this topic even further. It was while I was there that I discovered my most important source of research- a woman who works with sweatshop workers. I also witnessed, for the first time in my life, how a third-world country operates and how globalization can affect a poor society. Using traditional research methods as well as my experience in El Salvador, I came to a conclusion that the current utilization of sweatshops by manufacturers, as part of the globalization process, denies upward mobility to the poor.

When I began this research I quickly realized that sweatshops and globalization, especially, are extremely complex issues. I knew my topic had to be as focused as possible or the paper would turn into an unclear mash of unconnected information. Therefore, there will be many parts of the story left untold. I decided not to involve myself too much with the current political debate about sweatshops. I don’t see room in this paper for politicians’ responses to human rights groups’ demands, or Corporate CEO’s press releases promising improvement. This paper will not contain in-depth information about political activists’ or advocacy groups’ participation in the debate, either. I also found that it would be impossible to define and describe the entire complexity of the global economy. I truly wonder if anyone really does know how it all operates. So, there will be little research and analysis of how the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), post-Cold War policy, monetarism, neo-liberal ideology, or structural adjustment shape globalization and sweatshop conditions. What this paper will have, I hope, is solid yet simple research and analysis to support my thesis.

Current Definition and Situation of Sweatshops:

In 1996 when Frank Gifford claimed that his wife, Kathie Lee, was working hard to improve conditions of sweatshops, and that his children are sometimes driven to tears by people who criticize their mother for permitting workers to toil in sweatshop conditions, Charles Kernaghan, head of the National Labor Committee, had this response: “It is nothing in comparison to the lives of the hundreds of thousands of young women locked in factories throughout the world, behind barbed wire and armed guards, who are stripped of their rights and paid starvation wages and who go home to one-room hovels without running water and raise their children on coffee because they can’t afford milk, that is a real problem” (5).

The very word “sweatshop” comes from the apparel industry, where profits were “sweated” out of workers by forcing them to work longer and faster at their sewing machines (1). Today, assumedly, all of us have heard of the word sweatshop. If one has paid any attention to the news in the last few months in Madison he/she has probably seen or heard something about student protests regarding University of Wisconsin apparel and sweatshops. Many of us might associate the word sweatshop with third world countries, poor wages, and bad working conditions, and all of those associations would be somewhat accurate. However, I would be willing to venture that many don’t know the extent of what a sweatshop is and how it contributes to the world’s economy. I wonder how many people while purchasing a shirt at Wal-Mart stop and think about where that piece of clothing was made, who made it, and who profited from it?

A sweatshop is a factory that produces anything from clothing to electronic devices. Apparel and toys are the most common products manufactured by sweatshop labor. Although significant advances have been made in such aspects of production as computer assisted design and computer cutting, the industry still remains low-tech in its core production process, the sewing of garments. The basic unit of production continues to be a worker, usually a woman, sitting or standing at a sewing machine and sewing together pieces of limp cloth (2). The main difference that separates sweatshops from other factories is that sweatshops are used to produce consumer items for large multinational companies, such as Nike or Reebok. When I use the word, multinational, I will be referring to companies that do business in more than one country. The purpose of a sweatshop is to provide inexpensive labor for these companies so they may increase their profit margin. As a result, sweatshop laborers are usually paid far less than their counterparts in developed countries, like the United States. For example, the minimum legal wage in Mexico, which is what most sweatshop workers earn, is 34 pesos, (about $3.53) for an eight hour day, about $78 dollars a month (3). Even though this wage is about half of what is needed for a person to live on, multinational companies have taken advantage of Mexico’s poor economic system by exploiting the laborer for their own capital benefit. It should be noted that a sweatshop is on the bottom of a large global economic totem pole. Licensing and retail companies purchase their clothes from manufacturers who have the clothes made by contractors that they hire. Sometimes, contractors even sub-contract their work out to individual sewing and cutting contractors. If this all sounds confusing refer to an attached addendum, which illustrates this process (see ‘The Clothes Tree’).

It has been well documented over the last few years that sweatshops in Indonesia, where Nike produces most of their sports wear, pay some of the lowest wages in the world. According to many human rights organizations in a joint letter to Phillip Knight, the CEO of Nike, sweatshops in Indonesia that produce Nike products, pay their workers around $1 per day and the workers are expected to work in excess of 65 hours per week. Nike, and most companies, argues that these factories are simply paying a competitive wage. But, would it break Nike’s back if they saw to it that the workers were paid $2 or even $3 per day? I doubt it. What I found was, as a general rule, the sweatshop worker earns the minimum legal salary in each country. Some sweatshops pay by task or quota. A typical quota for a woman in Mexico is to iron 1,200 shirts, standing, in a 9-hour day (3).

Appalling wages and long hours are not the only realities that exist inside a sweatshop. Gruesome human rights penalties, labor rights violations, and the resistance of employers towards organized workers, seem to be synomonous with sweatshops. “If a thread was hanging out of a garment, supervisors would throw the garments in the workers’ faces, screaming at them” (4). In my research I came across other eye opening human rights violations such as sexual assault by employers to young female workers, contaminated drinking water in the factories, inadequate ventilation, and physical abuse used by the employers to punish workers. Labor rights that workers in this country take for granted such as going to the bathroom when duty calls (although this seems like a basic human right to me), taking a fifteen minute break every four hours of work, or having a 30 minute or perhaps an hour lunch break, would be seen as luxuries by many sweatshop laborers. In many factories workers only receive one fifteen-minute break per day and are only allowed to use the bathroom at the supervisor’s discretion. According to Charles Kernaghan, every new employee at the Central American sweatshop Caribbean Apparel must pay for a mandatory pregnancy test, and if the results are positive, the workers are fired immediately (4).

The inability of sweatshop laborers all over the world to organize, in my opinion, is the single most oppressive force the factory owners and the multinational companies use to control its workers. Members of the National Labor Committee, a human rights advocacy group based in New York, posing as investors, visited a Best Form sweatshop in Honduras in 1992. Identifying themselves as U.S. entrepreneurs, they asked questions about labor relations. “Unions created here, they were assured, because of a computerized blacklist ‘weeded out all the labor organizers, religious or human rights troublemakers’” (5). In third world countries where so many are uneducated, organizing people and teaching them their rights is extremely important. In almost everything I read about sweatshop conditions, sweatshop owners were aggressive in firing anyone they felt was associated with a union or some form of labor organization.

Marina Rios:

In March of this year I had the wonderful opportunity to visit the Central American country of El Salvador with the rest of my Human Issues classmates. During our two-week stay we had several awakening experiences with the people of El Salvador, and in many ways we got to see how globalization plays its role in a developing country. We also witnessed how people persevere and keep smiles on their faces amidst extreme poverty and social injustice. A few of us, myself included, were fortunate enough to speak with a woman who works for an organization called Melida Anaya Montes (MAM); her name is Marina Rios. She met with us for about two hours on the morning of March 16^th 2000 to talk to us about sweatshop labor in El Salvador. Since my contact with Marina was not in the form of a formal interview I will be paraphrasing most of what she said and adding my analysis of the content. Prior to our departure for El Salvador I thought I might actually be able to visit a sweatshop and use my first hand observations in my research. Not a chance. The grounds of all the sweatshops are protected by barbed wired fences and heavily armed security men guard the doors. Ms Rios told us it takes a well thought out lie to get inside one.

First of all, MAM is an organization of Salvadoran women committed to helping women gain social and economic justice in their self-admittedly machismo society. It is my understanding that Melida Anaya Montes was a distinguished Salvadoran woman, and that is where the organization gets its name. One of the major goals of the organization is to work with maquila (Spanish word for sweatshop) workers in the hopes of educating them about their rights as workers and of the global process with which they are involved. Marina Rios is one of the leaders of this organization and, as I came to realize quickly, an extremely intelligent and dedicated woman. She started out by giving us facts and figures about the maquilas: There are 229 maquilas in El Salvador and currently about 79,000 employees. She said, according to a think tank called Centra, 80 percent of the maquila workers are women and of those 80 percent, 60 percent are single mothers. All of the 229 maquilas are located in the capitol city of San Salvador.

As is the case with most sweatshops I read about, Marina spoke of the grave conditions that these women (and men) face six days a week, usually ten plus hours per day. Most maquilas in El Salvador don’t have adequate drinking water. Granted, most of the people of El Salvador don’t have adequate drinking water, but you’d think these factories, which are contracted by some of the largest companies in the world, would be able to provide clean water for their workers. According to what Ms. Rios told us, the maquilas are poorly ventilated and the temperature inside is usually above 100 degrees Fahrenheit; a glass of drinkable water would probably be beneficial to the worker’s health. Another common complaint by workers with whom Marina talks with was the lack of bathrooms and the opportunity to use them. Apparently, in most maquilas a trip to the bathroom can only take place if a supervisor grants permission. Two bathroom breaks in an eight to ten hour day, she said, is standard. She also noted that many maquilas force their workers to work overtime without pay. The employers pass around a sheet or contract (usually written in English) that they are forced to sign, obligating them to work longer hours.

Marina spoke of one U.S. owned maquila in particular called La Prima. It was fresh in her mind because just a few days prior to our discussion she had talked to a woman who worked there. What this woman told Marina, who relayed the information to us, is not something most of us like to think about. First of all, the women who work at La Prima arrive at work at 6:45am and usually work until five or six in the evening. La Prima is one of the few maquilas that provide breakfast and lunch for their workers. Sounds good right? According to this woman the food leaves a lot to be desired, even for people who would feel lucky to find beans and rice on their plate. The meat that La Prima had been providing was continually crawling with worms; the milk was sour, and the bread moldy. They had two choices; to eat what little wasn’t contaminated or infested, or go hungry. They were not allowed to bring in food or go outside the property to dine out. The woman also told Marina of bathrooms that hadn’t been cleaned in months, cockroaches, and rats. The sad thing about this story is that these conditions likely won’t change until the workers are educated and organized to stand up for their rights.

Even though these conditions with which Marina Rios spoke of were disgusting and frustrating, it became apparent that she, in her mind, had a more important message to give those of us in that room. When she spoke of livable wages and education/organization the level of her voice seemed to increase a bit. She was eager to point out that the average monthly take home salary of a maquila worker is around $110. More eager to point out that the average family of four needs about $450 dollars to, in her translated words, “make it to the next day.” She made it clear that after a woman, especially a single mother, pays rent and utilities, gets the barest of food necessities, and pays for transportation to and from work, there is nothing left for health care, education for her children, clothes for her children, and of course nothing for recreation or leisure. At that point I might not have heard what was said for a few minutes because my mind began to wander, thinking about the injustice of a global economy. Of a system that benefits big corporations, which in turn benefits my life, but steps on so many people in the process. I also thought about the counter argument that claims a global economy also benefits people all over the world by providing jobs, much desired jobs at that. I thought, yes this is true it does create jobs, but how can you justify the low wages and horrible conditions? I was beginning to realize how sweatshops in a global economy purposely, it seemed, aimed to control the poor by not paying or treating them as dignified citizens.

I came back to the conversation just in time to hear Marina talk about what she does on a daily basis: attempt to educate the women workers in the maquilas, to raise their consciousness. It was obvious that she felt the only way conditions and wages can improve is by teaching the women about what their rights are as workers. She and MAM know they can’t hope to organize a united workers force until enough women are in tune with how a factory, as you and I know it, exists. She also told us that it is important that the women know what they are a part of. In her words, “they need to know that they aren’t just coming to work to make shirts, they are part of a global process to make capital for multinational corporations and investors.” She said many women have no idea where the clothes that they make go after they leave their company. She said they aren’t aware that they work for contractors who are making merchandise for large companies that may be located in the U.S., Britain, France, Japan, etc. I wondered if they were aware that maquila-made clothing recently took over coffee as El Salvador’s biggest export? In fact, according to data from a distinguished Economics professor at Edgewood College named Bill Duddleston, apparel is the leading export in other third world countries that use sweatshops such as Indonesia, China, Pakistan, and the Philippines (see attached charts; apparel falls under the MiscMfg. label). I also wondered if the workers knew that I can buy a maquila-made t-shirt at Wal-Mart that seems cheap to me, but would cost them three or four days worth of their salary?

There are two problems Marina, and those who work with her, face when they try to educate maquila workers. First, about 50 percent of the women can’t read. As one might assume, illiteracy makes it difficult to educate people about labor codes, human rights, labor rights, and globalization. So, much of what MAM does is simply teach women how to read and write. This, of course, slows the process and goal of someday being able to form a legitimate organization/advocacy group of maquila workers to stand up against their employers, the global economy, etc. And, unfortunately, MAM does not have the resources to help everyone learn to read. The second problem is the fact that a vast majority of the women, according to Marina, don’t want to even be associated with an organization, or anyone who claims to be in one. The women are flat out scared that if their employer finds out that they are part of a worker’s organization (MAM is not officially recognized as an organization by the Salvadoran government) they will be fired. There is good reason to be concerned about this. Marina verified what I had already assumed; there have been numerous reports of employers firing their workers for suspicion of organizing. She sounded frustrated when she told us that, “even women who know that their rights are being abused, don’t want to risk their livelihood by being associated with ‘left wing conspirators.’” I asked her if she thought the history of brutal murders of left wing organizers throughout the late 1970’s and during the civil war of the 1980’s played a factor in the women’s reluctance to work with MAM. Her reply: definitely. I found in talking and listening to the Salvadoran people that there still is paranoia and a lack of trust in the government that lingers from the atrocities of the civil war.

Marina told us that the women are proud of their status as maquila workers. She said the women feel honorable that they are in the work force, a place so many Salvadorans would like to be. They see no reason to complain when, quite literally, thousands are queued up waiting for this work. In fact, the last thing Marina said to end our discussion was, “maquila jobs are the best women can get.” I should point out that there are better jobs for women, if they are educated, but the fact is only a small percentage of Salvadoran women have a level of education higher than grade school. As we were riding through the streets of San Salvador back to our cushy guesthouse I tried to put myself in the shoes of the women Marina Rios had just been telling us about. All I could think of was; how could anyone feel good about working under the conditions that these people do?

As I thought about this some more it didn’t sound so unbelievable. In the two weeks I was in El Salvador I saw the poorest people I have ever seen in my (short) lifetime. I saw people living in ‘buildings’ Wisconsinites would use as ice shanties, raw sewage streams flowing through people’s houses, and many, many jobless people. I began to understand the honor the women felt just to have a job. In the most desperate of situations maquila jobs must give women hope that somehow their future and their children’s future will improve. As they say, ‘any job is better than no job.’ But, as I tend to do sometimes, I began thinking of the larger picture. Is a job better than no job? Is it acceptable that millions of people throughout the world, like the 200,000 women in El Salvador, work for meager wages and in squalor conditions while multi-national companies and developed countries incomes continue to climb?

Marina Rios and the organization she is so involved in are trying to change a system that is much larger than most people can imagine. She is determined that education from the ground level will someday result in a better life for her fellow Salvadorans. She is also confident that solidarity with citizens from developed countries, especially North Americans, is essential in moving forward. Groups such as the Madison Arcatao Sister City Project, which co-sponsored our Human Issues trip to El Salvador, and numerous others, are working closely with maquila workers. And it is important that these groups are in good communication and coordination with the people of El Salvador. Marina emphasized this point. She warned how an all out boycott by North American consumers of an apparel store which sells maquila-made products does not coincide with what Salvadorans want to happen. A boycott could result in a company pulling out of El Salvador, resulting in loss of jobs. Marina and her peers would rather see North Americans demand that multi-national companies insist that conditions and wages are improved in the existing maquilas.

There is reason to be hopeful that through education and activism labor conditions can change for the better. We have seen a growing number of citizens in the United States voice their concerns about international labor injustices. The protests in the streets of Seattle, in the city of Washington D.C., and on college campuses have raised people’s consciousness. With even more people getting involved and connected with workers from all around the world, the pressure will mount for politicians, corporate CEOs, and world trade officials to listen to the concerns. `

Globalization:

“It is widely asserted that we live in an era in which the greater part of social life is determined by global processes, in which national cultures, national economies, and national borders are dissolving. Central to this perception is the notion of a rapid and recent process of economic globalization. A truly global economy is claimed to have emerged or to be emerging, in which distinct national economies and, therefore, domestic strategies of national economic management are increasingly irrelevant. The world economy has internationalized in its basic dynamics, it is dominated by uncontrollable market forces, and it has as its principal economic actors and major agents of change truly transnational corporations, that owe allegiance to no nation state and locate wherever the global market advantage dictates.” – Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, “Globalization in Question”

In laymen’s terms, I think Hirst and Thompson are pointing out that globalization

(along with technological advances) has made the world a smaller place, economically speaking at least. More and more countries are living under the same economic policies, policies that are controlled by multi-national corporations, and the free market and assisted by institutions such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO). We can use El Salvador as an example. Many of the maquilas are located in an area known as a Free Trade Zone which, to the best of my knowledge, is a piece of property that is its own entity. Legally a free trade zone in El Salvador would not be considered a part of Salvadoran soil. Therefore El Salvador cannot enforce its tax and tariff laws on multinational companies that “set up shop” in this area. A company looking to get ahead of its competitor would find this free trade zone very attractive. Of course, the cheap labor is enticing as well. But, the government and people of El Salvador are, basically, forced to live by standards that are set by international economic institutions. Albeit the current political administration backs policies such as this, but it isn’t unusual that democracies in third world countries like El Salvador don’t fully represent the concerns of the majority of its citizens.

Globalization is not a system that suddenly fell from the sky enlightening corporate CEOs, politicians, and investors. As Karl Marx predicted, without developing the term, globalization is part of the continuing process of capitalism. Globalization must be seen in part at least as the outcome of an idea, and specifically the idea of a free market (7). Assumedly, we all know about the free market and how capitalism works. But I’ll use the Edgewood College bookstore as an example to compare local capitalism with economic globalization.

Let’s assume I forgot to bring my notebook to school one day and really needed one because my History professor was giving a fascinating lecture on the Battle of Little Bighorn. Since I didn’t have time to go off campus I was forced to buy a notebook at the bookstore for twice as much as it would cost at any other office supply store in Madison. The reason I had to pay that high price is because Edgewood recognizes a need among students for school supplies. Hence, they raise their prices to make a larger profit. This is simple supply and demand; most of us would call it smart business. But does Edgewood have to charge so much? Could they survive by being fair to their students and charging normal prices? I hardly think the school would go bankrupt by lowering their notebook prices. A maquila in El Salvador recognizes a need (demand) as well. That need is for jobs. In fact, there is such a desperate need that maquilas can get away with paying their workers low/competitive wages. By doing so the company can make a larger profit. Again, this practice complies with basic supply and demand theory and, again, many see it as smart business. The question remains; would a company like Eddie Bauer or the GAP be devastated if they paid their workers a deserving wage and treated them with respect and justice? Or is capitalism something that is not controllable? That last question is a broad one and would be best suited for a different paper, but it is something to think about.

The Global Sweatshop:

In the apparel industry, so-called manufacturers (in reality they are design and marketing firms) outsource the fabrication of clothing to independent contractors around the world. In this labor-intensive industry where capital requirements are minimal, it is relatively easy to open a clothing factory (7). It must be pretty easy to open a sweatshop in El Salvador. While I was there I noticed an advertisement in a tourist publication that was aimed at potential maquila contractors. I kept the advertisement; basically it gives information on why El Salvador would be a desirable place to open a sweatshop. It defines what the benefits of a free trade zone are. “Foreigners, as well as Salvadorans, may establish and operate in a free zone and in doing so receive the following benefits: duty free import of equipment and machinery, duty free import of materials needed for the intended activity, exemption of Value Added Tax, ten year exemption of income taxes, ten year exemption of municipal taxes on the companies assets and patrimony and duty free import of fuel and lubricants, as long as they are not produced locally.”(8) The publication also lists the wages an owner would have to pay his/her workers ($4.40 per day), and states that Salvadorans are “renowned” for being hard workers.

This relative easiness of finding a place to set up sweatshops has contributed to a global race to the bottom, in which there is always someplace, somewhere, where clothing can be made still more cheaply. There probably is truth to the fact that Salvadorans are hard workers, so low wages don’t reflect low productivity, but low bargaining power. In other words, the fact that sweatshop workers throughout the world are denied the right to organize and speak for themselves is the reason they aren’t paid well. Low wages don’t seem to symbolize low productivity. In fact it may be just the opposite, a recent analysis in Business Week found that although Mexican workers are 70 percent as productive as U.S. workers, they earn only 11 percent as much as their U.S. counterparts; Indonesian workers, who are 50 percent as productive, earn less than 2 percent as much (1).

Conclusion:

When I woke up this morning I looked at the tags of every article of clothing I was going to wear for the day. Besides my socks, all of it was made in foreign developing countries. Instead of just thinking and wondering about the process of how my clothes were made, I knew a little about it. I didn’t necessarily have a good feeling as I put my clothes on this morning, but I was aware. I was aware that my clothes represent a flawed system, which exploits millions of poor people throughout the world. I knew that sweatshops which produce clothes for brand name companies that I wear, not only mistreat and underpay their employees, they rely on poverty to stay competitive in a global economy. And, they are a factor in keeping a poor society from making progress on the socioeconomic scale.

The people in El Salvador, and all developing countries, are desperate for the opportunity of employment, and sweatshops do a fine job of providing people with an answer to that need. What sweatshops don’t do is ensure that their employees will climb from below the poverty level, so that someday they can afford to send their children to school and to a proper healthcare facility. It wouldn’t be smart for multi-national companies to financially encourage a healthy lifestyle and education if they want to continue to increase their profit margins. Intelligent, healthy, well-paid people are dangerous for the future of sweatshops and globalization.