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FROM FACTORY FIRES to slave labour, the growth of mass manufacturing in Southeast Asia has not been problem-free, but after shedding its “sweatshop” reputation the region could have lessons for Bangladesh.
Last week’s building collapse near Dhaka that left 550 dead or missing has unleashed global concern about conditions in the factories that produce fast fashion — cheap, catwalk-inspired clothes — for top global brands.
Amid talk of consumer boycotts, Bangladesh needs to reform its industry before fashionistas wonder “if they should be wearing bloodstained dresses”, Kalpona Akter of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity told AFP.
Communist Vietnam – which produces clothes for fashion industry giants Zara, Mango and H&M – shows it is possible to have strong labour laws, fair wages and a healthy garment industry, experts say.
Competitive in the long term
“It is not a race to the bottom here,” Tara Rangarajan, programme manager of the International Labour Organisation’s Better Work project in Vietnam, told AFP.
“Sweatshops are part of a short term, immediate payback, low-cost strategy. (Vietnam wants to) be competitive in the long term on something besides just cheap labour” so it is trying to enforce and improve its laws, she added.
Buyers are attracted to Vietnam – where wages are some three times higher than Bangladesh – if “they have reputations they are trying to maintain”, she added.
Conditions in factories have improved over the last decade and workers say they are now treated with more respect by employers – eager to retain trained staff – and receive perks such as free accommodation and meals as standard.
“When I started work the salary was €30 a month, now a good worker can earn €268-306 a month,” Nguyen Huu Linh, who has worked in a Vietnamese luggage factory for 18 years, told AFP.
“Technology has helped – we used to do so much manually but now we have machines,” added 36-year-old Linh, who started on the factory floor and is now a line manager at the Saigon Luggage Company.
Sweatshop model
Garment exports, worth €2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2013, were up 18.3 per cent year-on-year. The government’s “number one priority” is boosting technology, Vietnamese legal expert Nguyen Dinh Huan told AFP.
In contrast, Bangladesh has “specialised in low-cost production” and embraced the sweatshop model rather than investing in technology and upgrading, said Nayla Ajaltouni, coordinator of the campaign group Collectif Ethique sur l’etiquette.
“The industry has grown very quickly, (which) is why we’re seeing this concentration of chronic health and safety issues,” she told AFP.
Outrage over the recent building collapse could prove a turning point, she said. Minimum wages were increased in Bangladesh in 2011 “not for philanthropic reasons but because protests were starting to disturb the supply chain”.
“It is a bit cynical but this disaster is also a critical point where brands can be pushed to move forward – by the media, by citizens,” she added.
In Thailand standards in factories improved significantly after a fire at a toy factory killed 188 people in 1993, although activists say conditions particularly in smaller factories can still be problematic.
In Cambodia, where the garment industry developed in the 1990s, avoiding the “sweatshop” label was a conscious strategy, with the country embracing an ILO Better Factories programme — which union leaders say has only been minimally effective.
But Abdus Salam Murshedy, president of the Exporters Association of Bangladesh, said that Bangladesh “already has world-class factories… some buyers just avoid placing orders there to maximise their profits”.
The trouble is, “consumers are never really presented (with) the real relationship between cheap clothes and labour abuses and health and safety standards, because of marketing, branding,” said Anne Elizabeth Moore, an award-winning author.
Tighten the supply chain
“Buyers really aren’t motivated to care about labour issues unless they’re going for the altruism dollar, which is a long shot,” Moore, who has written extensively on the global garment industry, told AFP.
The recent accident in Bangladesh “is pressuring all companies, whether they were in that building or not, to tighten their supply chain – which is good”, said one Hong Kong-based manager with a global fashion brand on condition of anonymity.
“But ultimately buyers cannot go in and change the system in Bangladesh. (The government) needs to take responsibility,” the manager added, pointing out that unlike Vietnam, Dhaka neither imposes a standard annual minimum wage increase nor allows garment workers to unionise.
Unless standards improve, Dhaka should also realise that its cash-cow industry – which accounts for some 80 percent of export earnings – is at risk, she said.
“A lot of buyers are looking into Myanmar, Kenya, Ethiopia. They don’t see Bangladesh as a long-term hub any more… there are too many problems.”
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Closing my account next week :) Received a letter saying they were closing my cashsave account leaving me with only my current. I need both. With the charges etc coming in it gives me great pride to close my account after 17 years and say “F*ck you AIB” :)
There’s apparently a flood of peeps closing their accounts… what gobdaw (or committee) thought this was a good strategy? Probably the same shmuck who thought up the campaign about how Ann Glynn had cracked it all those years ago!
Really??? Good! I don’t think any thought is going into these decisions at all. The banks are not being run like a business anymore. They have adopted the same attitude of “F*ck’em we are the best, we dont need anything crazy like a good service etc” its all falling around them now.
My rule of thumb is anytime I hear Hobbs speak I turn the tv or radio off.
Denmark winds up two banks. Burns the bondholders and the markets love them.
What kind of morons do we have running this country and who the f*ck is advising them?
Unfortunately finna fail decided to turn banking debt into sovereign debt, we can’t do what denmark did without defaulting on our national debt meaning no return to the markets for a long time. God I hate Bertie and the 2 Brians soo bad.
Perhaps Noonan might address where the money given to the banks (more widely) has gone, because it hasn’t been used to get lending going/ write-off customer debts… I heard Eddie Hobbs claim (on Pat Kenny’s radio show last week) that banks have put huge volumes of cash on deposit with the ECB where higher interest can be earned… that wasn’t what the bailout was for, was it? Can anyone shed more light on Hobbs’s claim?
The money is required to pay for Greek feta for baldy Noonan!
Just accept that the money is GONE and when it’s GONE, it’s GONE!!
Amazing that after 4 years of public interest, the banks asset quality and transparency cannot be assured or even quantified. How many millions wasted on consultants, nama etc and still noone really knows how much of a mess is in there.
“No body wants to buy it at present ”
The foresight of this man is astounding he’ll be up for Nobel prize for economics if he keeps this brilliance up
One half of the chuckle brothers at play
Totally agree with you John! Noonan is only interested in collecting as much cash as possible! No long term thinking is going on here! The bastards in government think that if they keep Europe sweet, nothing else matters! They don’t give a shit about people’s living standards! As long as it doesn’t affect the elite! We the common people are only a necessary evil in their eyes. We supposedly own AIB, but you would never know by the way they’ve been allowed to do as they like. Do Noonan and his cronies think that there’s no limit as to what we are prepared to tolerate? It’s disgusting to hear them beg for a yes vote! Oh how I wish enough of us would vote no on Thursday. Can’t pretend I know for sure what would happen to Ireland if this were to happen, but I know that the common people can’t possibly be any worse off! As for being starved of funding, if what our so called leaders are telling us is true, then our only option would be a complete default! I really don’t think our European friends would accept that scenario! As far as I can see, a no vote would almost certainly force Fine Gael/ Labour out of office! I mean how could they possibly continue after all the effort put into getting the people to vote yes?
The recent sunshine has addled his bald head! Well, addled it more than it was!
How many kilos of feta would buy AIB, Mr Noonan?
Bank of Ireland debt is still guaranteed by the taxpayer. That was a condition for private investment.
As far as I know AIB and BOI bought a lot of Irish bonds at a cut rate to make a profit ,,,,with Irish tax payers cash !
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