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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the July 31, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Guess? who sweatshop workers are up against

It's not just cockroach capitalists

By Shelley Ettinger

Sweatshops are supposed to be a thing of the past--in this country, anyway.

Recently labor activists here have spotlighted the appalling abuses endured by employees of U.S.-based companies in other countries--like Disney in Haiti and Nike in Indonesia.

But workers also labor under barbaric conditions here in the United States. Mostly they are immigrants. Many are undocumented.

Two shocking revelations in mid-July should shed light not only on how a few bad bosses operate, but on the worldwide system that creates sweatshops.

RAIDS AGAINST HOMEWORK NEAR L.A.

In the Los Angeles area, representatives of the UNITE union uncovered a network of garment factories where the bosses steeply overwork and sharply underpay the workers, who are mostly Latin American women. California officials conducted a series of raids.

The sweatshop bosses force the workers to labor long hours, sometimes seven days a week. They are locked inside. The owners pay a pittance by undercounting work records in various ways.

One way is having the workers sew at home. In the early part of this century, needle workers struggled mightily to outlaw homework because it was a shortcut to abuse.

Homework was outlawed in the garment industry over 60 years ago. Now union officials say sweatshops and homework are again so widespread that the raids only revealed the tip of the iceberg.

Ironically, the Los Angeles revelations come two years into a national "self-monitoring" program. Apparel makers pledge not to use sweatshop labor. They even hire experts to confirm that they are "sweatshop-free."

The Clinton administration highly touts this program, issuing an annual "trendsetters list" lauding the companies that swear they are not using sweatshops.

Workers launched an organizing drive at one of the most notorious companies, jeans maker Guess?, because they were fed up with not getting paid and being subject to a range of abuses. The company has responded with a broad anti-union attack, in one instance shutting down a shop and moving it to Mexico.

Guess? has also been caught faking compliance with the anti-sweatshop pledge.

DEAF ENSLAVED IN QUEENS

Meanwhile, New Yorkers are horrified at a tale of virtual slavery that has emerged in the borough of Queens. There, 62 Mexican immigrants, including young children, have lived and worked for years in indentured servitude.

All the adults are Deaf or hearing-impaired. They read and write Spanish but not English. They had tried several times over the last few months to appeal for help--approaching police officers. The cops ignored or shooed them away.

The workers were apparently trapped by a web of exploiters who brought them to this country, then forced them to work for no pay. The women and men--and some of the children-- sold pens and trinkets on Queens subway lines, then brought the day's earnings back to the bosses.

They slept on dozens of mattresses crammed in two houses. The women say the bosses raped them repeatedly.

What will become of these workers? The day before they finally won attention to their situation, a federal judge struck down an eight-year-old order barring New York City employees from turning in undocumented immigrants who seek city services.

Once the mostly sympathetic news coverage fades away, deportation hearings will begin. That's what happened two years ago when dozens of Thai women were discovered locked inside a Southern California plant, toiling in indentured servitude.

GO AFTER THE BIG GUYS!

The bosses in both the Los Angeles and New York raids are small-business owners. They exploited the workers brutally, unscrupulously, and should be brought to justice.

Yet because these small-time bosses are Asian and Latino immigrants themselves, news accounts naming them may actually heighten anti-immigrant racism--while leaving the really big culprits off the hook.

Why do workers leave their homelands and come to this country? They endure the unendurable here because conditions are even worse at home.

And why are they driven from their homes in Africa, Asia and Latin America? Because U.S. corporations set up operations there, impoverishing the workers, undercutting native industries and exploiting the resources.

U.S. companies go wherever they will make higher profits. If they can use sweatshops here to get rich by paying workers hardly anything for toil without end, they will. If more profits are to be made by super-exploiting workers in the Third World, they'll set up shop there.

The system of imperialism gives rise to sweatshops all over the world. When its horrors are exposed, as they have been several times lately, the boss class has two basic public positions.

There are those who champion "unfettered capitalism." For public consumption, they try the laughable argument that imperialism's excesses are ultimately good for everyone. It's a recycled version of Reaganite "trickle-down" economics.

Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs, architect of the "shock therapy" introducing the market economy to Russia and Poland, is in this camp. Sachs says sweatshops actually help developing countries by creating jobs and bringing in investment.

"My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops but that there are too few," he told a Harvard panel discussion. (New York Times, June 22)

Ever so slightly to Sachs' left stands President Bill Clinton. Apparently thrilled with the success of his domestic trendsetters list allowing companies to report that they're not using U.S. sweatshops, the president's task force approved a similar international initiative this past spring.

The task force unveiled a voluntary code of conduct for U.S. firms operating in other countries. Among the highlights: Companies agree to pay the country's minimum wage--for example, $3.50 a day in Indonesia.

Companies acknowledge the 60-hour week as the norm. And they hire "independent" monitors to ensure compliance.

One such monitor, former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, just issued his report on Nike's operations in Asia. Young was escorted through the plants by Nike officials and Nike interpreters.

His conclusion--that Nike is treating its workers pretty well--has sparked widespread derision.

Luckily, Nike workers in one country don't have to rely on their U.S. capitalist employer's promises of fair treatment. In Vietnam, the socialist government's labor officials have sided with the unions to guarantee the workers' rights. And a Vietnamese judge just sent a Nike supervisor to prison for six months for mistreating workers.

That's a sharp contrast to Indonesia. There, a regime installed over 30 years ago in a bloody coup backed by Washington has imprisoned every leading young union activist.

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