Vol. IV, Bulletin No. 8. April 27, 1999
Only One in Seven Refers to Right of Workers to Organize
Codes of Conduct and Their Anti-Union Policies
"I will fight this thing to the very end," vowed Henry Clay Frick, the industrial tycoon of a century ago. "I will never recognize the union, never, never."Henry Clay Frick's hostility toward unions survives among the chieftains of today's business world. The same prejudice, though seldom as frankly expressed, can even be detected in what corporate codes of conduct say or fail to say.
In a survey of some 200 codes, a United Nations agency, the International Labor Organization, found what it called support for the elimination of union activities in the formal policies of the Sara Lee Knit Products (SKP) multinational. Among its "international operating principles":
"The company believes in a union-free environment except where laws and cultures require [SKP] to do otherwise,...[and] believes that employees themselves are best able to voice their concerns directly to management."The code of another modern corporate giant, Caterpillar, stated a policy of operating "the business in such a way that employees don't feel a need for representation by unions or other third parties." However: "Where employees have elected in favor of--or are required by law to have some form of--union representation, Caterpillar will endeavor to build a sound company-union relationship."
Another code, that of DuPont, read: "Employees shall be encouraged by lawful expression of management opinion to continue an existing no-union status...."
85% of Codes Silent on the Most Basic Worker Rights
The ILO survey found that the most common code approach on the right to organize was to ignore it. Only about 15% of the codes studied mentioned freedom of association or collective bargaining. "The paucity of treatment of this issue is remarkable," the ILO study commented, "given the degree of unanimity on its essential nature between employers and workers at the ILO level."
The codes did better on five other major standards:
- Roughly 25% prohibited forced labor, sometimes including prison labor.
- About 40% expressed some type of commitment on decent wage levels.
- About 45% prohibited child labor, often mirroring the ILO standards of 14 or 15 as the minimum age of employment, but ignoring restrictions the ILO sets.
- 66% prohibited some forms of on-the-job discrimination.
- About 75% contained provisions on protecting occupational health and safety.
An Update on Sweatshops in the Toy Industry
A young toy worker in China's Guangdong province wrote her older sister a letter with this complaint: "We work five hours in the morning, six in the afternoon, and another four in the evening. Every one of us who came here together [from rural Sichuan province] can't stand it anymore."
A few months later the writer of that letter met death in a fire that engulfed the Zhili toy factory, one of the 87 workers who died, trapped behind locked doors and barred windows. Shaken by that 1993 tragedy, government officials and owners finally adopted some safety and fire prevention measures in the hundreds of toy factories that dot Guangdong province. Little else, however, has changed in them during the past six years. Most of the factories are still sweatshops.
Night Brings Golden Bear Workers Just a Short Break for Sleeping
Contrary to Chinese law, excessively long working hours--10 to 16 hours a day, six or seven days a week--still prevail. Seldom do workers get time off even on any of the seven statutory holidays provided by law. At one factory, Dor Lok, its 1,600 workers sometimes must work far into the night, with only four hours of sleep, before resuming work on Teletubbies for Golden Bear Products in the morning.
Among the other abuses to which toy workers, most of them young women, are subjected:
- Forced leave without pay. In slow seasons workers are put on unpaid leave but unable to take another job for weeks, because their employer maintains a hold on them through various devices, such by keeping possession of identity cards and withholding wages for the previous 20 to 45 days of work.
- Harsh management. Beatings, though rare, and verbal abuse, which is more frequent, are enough of a threat to instill fear even among those not directly victimized. Wage deductions (an illegal practice) are routinely imposed for breaking company rules. At the Happy Crafts factory, workers who are late for work lose nearly a day's wages.
- No recourse on grievances. The factories have no unions, except the occasional imitation of one which, as part of the state's bureaucratic apparatus, is almost never helpful to workers. Local offices of the Labor Ministry also are generally indifferent to worker complaints.
In analyzing possibilities for progress, the report stresses that violations of human rights are bound to continue until the workers themselves win the right to organize. In the meantime, "a strong [consumer] movement that exerts pressure from outside is very important."
Codes of Conduct Called 'A PR Tool'
What about codes of conduct? "Perhaps some [companies] have good intentions," the report says, but thus far "these codes are ineffective and the implementation of the codes is obviously full of defects." To which May Wong, one of the Center researchers, adds in an email to HRFW: "Most of the workers were not aware of [any code]. One company posted its code on the wall side by side with the rules on punishment....The codes are a PR tool only to please consumers in the West."
(For background, check a 1996 HRFW Bulletin at bu2.htm and a supporting document at campaign.htm.)
China Provides Data on Exploitation of Shoe Workers
An illustration of how the global economy exploits working women and men has come from an unusual source: Zhu Rongji, prime minister of the People's Republic of China. In a talk at MIT in mid-April, Zhu said that of the $120 retail cost of a pair of athletic shoes, only $2 goes to the Chinese workers who assemble them.
Zhu's revelation is a welcome addition to scarce data on the unit labor costs of overseas production. Thus far, such statistics have been publicized only by worker rights advocates. The National Labor Committee, for example, has calculated that the direct labor cost to assemble a $90 pair of Nike sneakers is approximately $1.20. (For more wage data, check the Committee's Website at http://www.nlcnet.org/nike/wagememo.htm.)
Only 2% of Price of Shoes Goes to Shoe Workers
Thus, the wages of women making sneakers amount to 2% of their retail price, according to Zhu, or 1.3%, according to the National Labor Committee. Either way, overseas workers earn so little that just a penny added to each dollar of unit labor costs could increase a worker's pay by more than 50%. Or a factory could upgrade labor standards in other ways that economists often falsely claim developing countries cannot "afford"--like installing ventilation equipment to protect workers against poisonous fumes.
Zhu presented his analysis in trying to explain China's high trade deficit with the United States (briefly, China imports the components for shoes [though not from the U.S.] and only assembles them). But the Prime Minister would do well to reflect on why China's workers do so poorly and on what China might do to improve their lot in the global economy.
Here's some free advice to him. As part of its campaign to enter the World Trade Organization, China should embrace the idea of the WTO's adopting a "social clause" with enforceable labor standards. That would be in China's own interest. I developed the reason why that's so in the summer 1998 issue of the journal China Rights Forum. The article is reproduced in these pages at wtoprc.htm.
Vietnam's Freedom: a Cause That's Very Much Alive
- "We Have A Dream" is the theme of a candlelight vigil that 19 Vietnamese-American youth groups are holding on Saturday, May 1, in Washington, D.C. The program, beginning at 8 p.m. at the Lincoln Memorial and culminating with a march to the Vietnam Memorial nearby, will honor the 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam and the uncounted Vietnamese in Vietnam who are still struggling for freedom.
- The fifth annual Vietnam Human Rights Day will be commemorated on Tuesday, May 11, again in Washington. Congressional leaders and human rights advocates from the United States and Canada will participate in the program, which will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. in the Dirksen Senate Office Building under the sponsorship of the International Committee for the Non-Violent Movement for Human Rights in Vietnam.
Human Rights for Workers: Bulletin No. IV-8, April 27, 1999
http://www.senser.com
Robert A. Senser, editor
Copyright 1999
hrfw@senser.com. (Send e-mail)