Victoria's Secret Sweatshops

The Victoria's Secret workers work 14 to 15 hours a day, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m, seven days a week, receiving on average one day off every three or four months. All overtime is mandatory, and workers are normally at the factory 98 to 105 hours a week. If that’s not bad enough managers and supervisors scream at the foreign guest workers to move faster to complete their high production goals.Workers who do not meet their production goals or make minor errors can be slapped and beaten. Besides being forced to work five or more overtime hours a day, the workers are constantly shortchanged on their legal overtime pay. Workers can get cheated up to $18.48 each week in wages due them. Although this might not seem like a lot of money, to these poor workers it is the equivalent to losing three regular days of wages each week. These workers are only given 3.3 minutes to sew a $14 Victoria’s Secret bikini while they are only paid four cents. The employees at Victoria’s Secret receive less than 3 percent of the retail price of the merchandise. Management arrested six workers who protested against them. A strike was later formed and management threatened workers to be deported back to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. If these workers are deported they will never be able to pay off their debts which can ruin their lives in their country.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-tasini/victorias-secret-slave-_b_74261.html

Speedo Sweatshops

Speedo is the top selling and best-known swimwear brand in the world and was an official sponsor of the 2008 Olympic Games in China but workers in China producing Speedo sporting goods are under abusive treatment. One worker said “what lies in front of us is a blanket of darkness. We have no hope.” Workers producing Speedo products were forced to work overtime during peak season. This can last up to nine months with a routine 14 hour shifts a day from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week. Some employees went several months without a day off. Overtime is mandatory and there are sometimes 15 and 17 hours shifts in a day. There is a required 44 overtime hours per week which exceeds Chinas legal limit on overtime by 430 percent. One worker was forced to work a 23 hour shift at a molding machine where he actually shed tears because of the exhaustion he endured. He was terrified to stop for if he did his hands could be possibly crushed by the motion of the machine.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2165761

Coca Cola Sweatshops

Coca-Cola leads factories in the abuse of workers' rights, assassinations, water privileges and worker discrimination. From 1989 to 2002, eight union leaders from Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia were killed after protesting the company's labor practices. Hundreds of other Coca-Cola workers who have joined or thought of joining the Colombian union “sinal trainal” have been kidnapped, tortured and detained by guards who were hired to intimidate workers to prevent them from unionizing. In India, Coca-Cola destroys local agriculture by claiming the country's water resources. In Plachimada, Kerala, Coca-Cola took more than1.5 million liters of deep well water, which they bottled and sold under the names Dasani and BonAqua. The groundwater that was taken was used up. This affected thousands of communities with water shortages and destroyed agricultural activity. The water that did remain became contaminated with high chloride and bacteria levels that lead to scabs, eye problems, and stomach aches in the local population. Coca-Cola is known as one of the most discriminatory employers in the world. In 2000, more than 1500 African-American employees in the U.S. sued the company for racial discrimination and in pay and promotions.


http://www.doublestandards.org/exchange1.html

Wal-Mart Sweatshops

Wal-Mart is the biggest corporation in the world. It owns more than 5,000 stores worldwide and has more than 1.3 million workers in the United States. This doesn’t include the millions of factory workers. Wal-Mart runs local supermarkets and small grocery stores out of business. There has also been a record of worker abuse in Wal-Mart as well. From forced overtime to sex discrimination, Wal-Mart is known for its sweatshop conditions. Other worker rights violations that have been found in factories that produce goods for Wal-Mart include locked bathrooms, starvation wages, pregnancy tests, denial of access to health care, and workers being fired and blacklisted if they try to defend their rights. Child labor and union busting are other issues relating with Wal-Marts poor reputation. Wal-Mart has also failed to provide their workers with health insurance. The reason why Wal-Mart is able to maintain low prices is because of the substandard labor conditions that employees work in overseas to produce goods. The company continues to demand lower prices from its suppliers which make workers conditions more abusive to meet Wal-Marts requirements. In 2005, the International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against Wal-Mart by it workers in more than 3 countries.

http://www.doublestandards.org/exchange1.html

Kader Industrial Fire

In Hong Kong, a company named Kader Industrial, was said to be the "worst fire in industrial history." On May 10, 1993, a sweatshop in Bangkok, Thailand collapsed within 20 minutes of being set. Viroj Yusak, a factory worker carelessly dropped a cigarette butt in a textile storeroom. With the doors locked no alarms or no sprinklers went off. With fake fire escapes, the factory was a death trap. The lack of fire escapes lead to many workers leaping out of fourth floor windows. People did this so that families can identify their bodies. 188 workers were killed in the sweatshop, and almost 500 suffered injuries. Only 14 males died in this tragedy because most workers were woman aged from 17 to 25. Some workers were as young as 14 years old. Many of these female workers did not receive money for maternity leave and some were forced to work 20 hours a day and sleep under their machines. Not only did the building's fire cause the death of the factory workers but the collapse of the building killed many other people as well.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kader_Toy_Factory_Fire

Doall Factories In El Salvador

Doall is a Korean owned company that sets up factories in El Salvador. All of these factories sew clothing for Liz Claiborne which the company has a contract with. Over 2,500 young women work in Doall's three factories. Two of them are located in the San Marcos Free Trade Zone and the other in the Progreso Industrial Park. Doall also has contracts with Leslie Fay, Chaus and Ann Taylor in which they sew for as well. Doall has been sewing for Liz Claiborne since 1992. Doall operates behind locked metal gates, barbed wire and tight armed security. No visitors are allowed at these factories either. In these factories workers work 13 to 15 hour work shifts and 85 to 92-hour work weeks. They are forced to work overtime and sometimes given mandatory night shifts working seven days a week. One worker complained that he only received three days off in a nine day period. Another worker complained that their feet swell up due to excessively long hours.

http://www.nlcnet.org/article.php?id=440

Reebok Sweatshops

In sweatshops affiliated with Reebok, there are workers as young as 13 years old who work below the minimum wage and are forced to work overtime."Not only are Nike and Reebok violating the most basic tenets of Chinese labor law, they're also flagrantly violating their own codes of conduct," said Chan Ka Wai, assistant director of Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee. Despite the underage labor, children are employed in the sewing,handwork and cutting departments of the factory. These factories constantly violate minimum wage laws and workers are forced to work up 72 hours a week. This violates the company's code for a 40 hour week and China's labor law, 44 hours a week. Those who refuse overtime can be fined, docked an entire day's pay, or even fired. Workers who become pregnant are often fired.This violates China's labor law granting workers maternity leave. Workers lose fingers and hands using the machines and are exposed to dust and chemicals that cause anemia and leukemia. The chemical is so toxic that it has been banned from the US and Europe. Even talking are punishable by fines and a deduction of pay. Workers have even reported to have been beaten on the job by security guards and verbal abuse by supervisors.


http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_45/b3706008.htm

Bed Bug Infested Sweatshops

Workers in China who make holiday toys for Disney, Hasbro and RC2 including Bratz dolls are suffering from a serious infestation of bed bugs in their dorms. Workers reported that their bodies are often covered with red welts from the bug bites. These bites can easily become infected if the wounds are scratched. An entomologist said to the National Labor Committee that it would be very possible for bed bugs to make a ride to the U.S. if they hid in the cardboard toy boxes.These Disney toys are produced at the Daewi factory in Dongguan, At these factoriesworkers are at the factory 96 hours a week, work 15 1/2 hour shifts from 8:30 a.m. to midnight, seven days a week. Any worker missing an overtime shift will be docked three days wages and workers are cheated of up to 40 percent of the wages that are due them, paid below the minimum wage and shortchanged on their overtime pay. A worker arriving 30 minutes late will also be docked three days wages. Working in 95 degree temperatures, workers are drenched in their own sweat. Eight workers share each dorm room, sleeping in double-level bunk beds which are infested with bed bugs.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article399202.ece

Toy Sweatshops In China

As of December 10, 2005, the rights of the Lungcheong Toy workers continue to be violated. Article 72 of China’s Labor Code requires that companies inscribe their workers in social
health insurance and pension programs. The Lungcheong factory continues to violate this code. No new workers receive health insurance. This is one of the areas where there has been a change in respect for the law. In the past, the factory insured at least the employees working in the most hazardous areas, which are the metal and mold injection units. In order to get a job now, new workers must first sign an agreement that if they are injured on the job they acknowledge that the company bears absolutely no responsibility. In the spray paint department illnesses are common. Workers are constantly working with oil-based paints containing toxic solvents such as benzene and other chemicals. No safety precautions have been taken yet. The workers do not have gloves or a mask. If a worker gets ill, from what they call “poisoning,” They are given a small amount of money by management and asked to leave the factory. Workers who want to keep their jobs have to spend money out of their own pocket to try to cure their job related illnesses.


http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=ind_focus.story&STORY=/www/story/12-11-2008/0004940447&EDATE=

Boycott of DKNY

In 1998 Latina and Chinese women workers spoke out about the sweatshop conditions from long hours, no overtime pay and padlocked bathrooms that they endured while sewing clothes for DKNY in a factory in NYC. DKNY was more abusive to the Latina women who were forced into lower paying jobs, frisked daily, accused of stealing, and barred from sewing with machines because they were too "clumsy" and their "eyes were bigger than the Chinese". After years of mistreatment, the workers couldn't take it any longer. With the support of NMASS and Chinese Staff & Workers' Association, workers came together to organize more workers, take legal action, and launch a boycott. The Boycott DKNY campaign was successful because it organized and relied the garment workers themselves instead of relying on consumers. With this perspective, it was able to bring forth one group of workers after another, and the campaign quickly grew into the national and international arenas.

http://www.nmass.org/nmass/news/11242003%20celebrate%20dkny%20&%20first%20amendment%20victories!.htm

Disney Sweatshops

Reports from international humanitarian groups on Disney sweatshops show that in China young people are forced to work 10-13 hours a day producing Disney’s children’s books six or seven days a week. The workers are paid 33 to 41 cents an hour (below even the Chinese minimum wage of 42 cents an hour). It is common for the workers to be cheated of their overtime pay. 8 to 12 workers are put in bad conditioned dorm rooms sleeping on double level bunk beds and fed horrible food at the factory canteen. Workers often faint from exhaustion and the unbearable heat in the factories. Workers have no health insurance or pension. They have no right to freedom of association or to organize. Factories coach workers on how to answer inspectors' questions when they come to monitor and one factory issued fake time slips while concealing the real ones showing illegal hours.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/08/18/news/international/disney_china/index.htm

Sweatshops In Jordan

Sweatshops are businesses that has been booming in Jordan. This country has been exporting products to America for the past 20 years. Last year Jordan exported $1.2 billion to the United States. Some franchises in America that have set up shop in Jordan are Target, Wal - Mart and other American retailers. Many of these sweatshops are now complaining of dismal conditions. Workers said that they worked up to 20 hours a day, didn't get paid for months and were hit by supervisors and put in jail if they complained. Majority of workers in Jordan are from Bangladesh and China. Workers from Bangladesh said they paid $1,000 to $3,000 to work in Jordan but when they arrived, their passports were confiscated. This took away their ability to leave, keeping them to jobs that pay less than promised and less than the country's minimum wage. Nargis Akhter, a 25 year old Bangladeshi said "we used to start at 8 in the morning, and we'd work until midnight, 1 or 2 a.m, seven days a week." He also said "when we were in Bangladesh they promised us we would receive $120 a month, but in the five months I was there I only got one month's salary and that was just $50." The National Labor Committee found substandard conditions in more than 25 of about 100 garment factories and is set to release its reports.


http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13567

Child Labor Laws

Child labor is work for children that harms them or exploits them in some way (physically, mentally, morally, or by blocking access to education). Child labor was used for a long time until the emergence of schooling and the concepts of workers and childrens rights. Children working under age is still common in places were the school leaving age is low and in third world countries. Some work that children are employed to do are mining, prostitution, cleaning, assembly llines and many other tedious jobs. Most work done by children are informal. Meaning many things gets sold on the streets and far from labor inspectors and media. They work in all weather conditions and for extremely little pay. There is about 250 million children from the age of 5 to 14 in child labor worldwide.

http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist8.html

Sean John Sweatshop

Expensive designer clothes are costly to purchase but usually cheap to produce. Customers pay a lot of money for these merchandises. Sean John is a famous brand that is known for its expensive clothing. The public was surprised to hear that Sean Combs aka P. Diddy was allegedly using sweatshops in Latin America for his Sean John clothing line. This is not surprising to hear because it’s hard to imagine someone turning down such a great profit especially when he’s not the one managing and running the factory where the garments are made. The investigation started when a 19 year old Honduran worker came to the United States and said that she worked in a factory producing Sean John clothes which had horrible working conditions and called it a "sweatshop." She also said "Sean Combs was using a sweatshop in Honduras to produce tens of thousands of shirts for his Sean John fashion company. She explained that the factory managers cursed and yelled at the employees and were forced to work overtime. She also stated that some employees were fired for bring pregnant.
The executive vice president of Sean John commented after hearing about the investigation and said " We have absolutely no knowledge of this situation. However, we take these matters very seriously, and will have our director of compliance look into the matter immediately." Later Charles Kernaghan, president of the National Labor Committee tried contacting Sean Combs many times and never received a response. A political statement was made that the people involved in the Sean John clothing line had no feelings toward the situation and investigation that was being done.


http://www.playahata.com/pages/papi/seanjohnsweatshop.htm

Womens Conditions In Sweatshops

Within the last few decades, many sweatshops have moved overseas and unions against sweatshops have become more powerful. Budget cuts by both Reagan and Bush limited the administration of the US Department of Labor (DOL). There are now only 800 wage and hour inspectors employed by DOL to inspect six million work sites in the United States. This makes it easier for companies to avoid inspection. "The equipment is really just a few sewing machines, just rent space, pay the electric bill and you're in business” said by Ginny Coughlin of UNITE. Women make up 90% of sweatshop workers. Most of these women are between the ages of 15 and 22. Companies that use sweatshop labor are taking advantage of young women in need of living. Women are paid as little as six cents an hour and work ten to twelve hour shifts. Some women are allowed only two drinks of water and one bathroom break per shift. Sexual harassment, corporal punishment, and verbal abuse are all punishments used by supervisors to keep workers in fear. Many factories in which women work in are crowded, filthy, and rat-infested. They are located behind barbed wire fences that are monitored by armed guards. Women are also not allowed to have visitors. In some Indonesian sweatshops, women were forced to take down their pants and show the factory doctors that they were menstruating in order to leave. Managers also lie to women for better job conditions for sex. In an investigation in Spain, some women were forced to have abortions to keep their jobs. Women in sweatshops have little to no choices and are prohibited from forming unions.


http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/sweatshops.html

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 was the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York. It caused 146 workers to die from the fire or workers who jumped to their deaths. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York City until September 11, 2001. The fire led to improved factory safety standards and helped increase the growth of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, which fought for safer and better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Building is also known as the Asch Building and as the Brown Building. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, in New York City at the intersection of Greene Street and Washington Place, east of Washington Square. It occupied the last three floors of the building. The company manufactured women's blouses, which at the time were called “shirtwaists.” The company employed approximately 600 workers, mostly young immigrant women from different places in Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe. Some of the women were as young as 12 or 13 and worked 14 hour shifts in a week. According to Pauline Newman, a worker at the factory, the average wage for employees in the factory was $6 - $7 a week. On March 25. 1911 a fire began on the eighth floor, which was said to be sparked by a lit match or a cigarette or because of faulty electrical wiring. A New York Times article stated that the fire may have been started by the engines running the sewing machines in the building. To this day, no one knows whether it was accidental or intentional. The only outside fire escape, which was poorly-anchored, twisted and collapsed under the weight of people trying to escape. The elevator had also stopped working. The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames because there were no ladders that could reach past the 6th floor. The Asch building survived the fire and was fixed. Frederick Brown later bought the building and donated the structure to New York University in 1929 now known as the Brown Building of Science. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was named a National Historical Landmark in 1991. The building also was listed as a New York City Landmark in 2003.The building is now a part of New York University and has been reconstructed into the chemistry building. Two plaques in the front of the building commemorate the women who lost their lives in the fire.


http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/narrative1.html

The GAP

At The Gap, the net annual profit is $877.5 million and the salary of a Cambodian worker is 21 cents and hours. A report by Unite shows patterns of abuse in 43 Gap factories across 3 continents. Some abuses were desperately low wages, unsafe working conditions, physical abuse, sexual harassment and harsh cruelty when they stand up for their rights. In El Salvador, Gap workers who tried to form a union called the STIT, lost their jobs when the Gap eliminated the work out of their factory. In Cambodia, a union leader was severely beaten with an iron pipe outside The Gap’s factory gates for leading a worker’s strike against harsh working conditions and low pay. In Bangladesh, Gap workers have been threatened by supervisors with physical harm and dismissal if they are believed to be union sympathizers. Workers are also forced to sign two sets of time sheets, one which overstates their wages for inspectors and potential buyers and one which reflects their actual wages. In Lesotho, over 60% of interviewed Gap workers said they had worked without protective face masks and close to half demonstrated a serious respiratory ailment during interviews. In Mexico, 70% of Gap workers interviewed had experienced serious needle punctures due to unsafe machines. In Indonesia, workers report that they work as many as 13 hours a day but are paid for only 40 hours of work a week.




http://www.dartmouth.edu/~greens/thefacts.doc

Sweatshops Around The World

Sweatshops exist throughout the world including the United States. Corporations and businesses search for areas where cheap products can be sold for a greater profit. Sweatshops are normally set up in areas where the environment and families are in need of some type of income. Therefore the people of that community are forced to work there in order to continue living.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweatshop#Pro-sweatshop

Nike Sweatshop Labor

Nike has more than 700 shops around the world and has more than 40 offices in countries outside the United States. Most of the factories are located in Asia. However, Nike does not share information about its contracts or business around the world due to criticism from organizations like Corp Watch and Vietnam Labor Watch. The Vietnam Labor Watch has said that factories contracted by Nike violated minimum wage and overtime laws in Vietnam. Nike has been under intense media pressure for the poor working conditions and exploitation of cheap labor overseas. Majority of Nikes products are manufactured overseas. Nike continues to set up factories were child labor laws are not fully enforced such as Cambodia and Pakistan. The factories in these two countries were used to manufacture soccer balls. Nike has recently changed some of its policies but they still seek areas around the world were labor laws are not regulated. There are many anti-sweatshop groups such as the United States Against Sweatshops and several campaigns that are ran by colleges and universities. Despite these campaigns the annual revenues for Nike have increased from $6.4 billion in 1996 to almost $17 billion in 2007.


http://www.johannorberg.net/?page=articles&articleid=53

Sweatshop Labor

Sweatshop labor is also known as modern day slavery. The violation of child labor laws and hazardous conditions is what makes these sweatshops such a dangerous and controversial situation for workers. Sweatshops exist in many countries (mainly in third world countries) and produce goods from clothing to furniture. What makes sweatshops such a controversy is the positions of the anti sweatshop protesters and the pro sweatshop defenders. The public tries to pressure companies into eliminating sweatshops. Some companies that face these types of protest are Nike and Wal - Mart. Many people blame corporation leaders and people in favor of survival of the fittest or free enterprise.

In my opinion sweatshop labors should be banned no matter how much it may benefit the lives of people who are in desperate need. With the conditions that employees work in, injury or death is at a high percentage and no one would want to claim that responsibility.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweatshop#Activism