WASHINGTON
— One of the world’s biggest clothing buyers, the United States government
spends more than $1.5 billion a year at factories overseas, acquiring
everything from the royal blue shirts worn by airport security workers to the
olive button-downs required for forest rangers and the camouflage pants sold to
troops on military bases.
But even though the Obama
administration has called on Western buyers to use their purchasing power to
push for improved industry working conditions after several workplace disasters
over the last 14 months, the American government has done little to adjust its own
shopping habits.
Labor Department officials say that
federal agencies have a “zero tolerance” policy on using overseas plants that
break local laws, but American government suppliers in countries including
Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan and Vietnam show a
pattern of legal violations and harsh working conditions, according to audits
and interviews at factories. Among them: padlocked fire exits, buildings at
risk of collapse, falsified wage records and repeated hand punctures from
sewing needles when workers were pushed to hurry up.
In Bangladesh, shirts with Marine
Corps logos sold in military stores were made at DK Knitwear, where child
laborers made up a third of the work force, according to a 2010 audit that led
some vendors to cut ties with the plant. Managers punched workers for missed
production quotas, and the plant had no functioning alarm system despite
previous fires, auditors said. Many of the problems remain, according to
another audit this year and recent interviews with workers.
In Chiang Mai, Thailand, employees at
the Georgie & Lou factory, which makes clothing sold by the Smithsonian
Institution, said they were illegally docked over 5 percent of their roughly
$10-per-day wage for any clothing item with a mistake. They also described
physical harassment by factory managers and cameras monitoring workers even in
bathrooms.
At Zongtex Garment Manufacturing in
Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which makes clothes sold by the Army and Air Force, an
audit conducted this year found nearly two dozen under-age workers, some as
young as 15. Several of them described in interviews with The New York Times
how they were instructed to hide from inspectors.
“Sometimes people soil themselves at
their sewing machines,” one worker said, because of restrictions on bathroom
breaks.
Federal agencies rarely know what
factories make their clothes, much less require audits of them, according to
interviews with procurement officials and industry experts. The agencies, they
added, exert less oversight of foreign suppliers than many retailers do. And
there is no law prohibiting the federal government from buying clothes produced
overseas under unsafe or abusive conditions.
“It doesn’t exist for the exact same
reason that American consumers still buy from sweatshops,” said Daniel Gordon,
a former top federal procurement official who now works at George Washington
University Law School. “The government cares most about getting the best
price.”
Frank Benenati, a spokesman for the
Office of Management and Budget, which oversees much of federal procurement
policy, said the administration has made progress in improving oversight,
including an executive order last year tightening rules against federal
suppliers using factories that rely on debt bondage or other forms of forced
labor.
“The administration is committed to
ensuring that our government is doing business only with contractors who place
a premium on integrity and good business ethics,” he said.
Labor and State Department officials
have encouraged retailers to participate in strengthening rules on factory
conditions in Bangladesh — home to one of the largest and most dangerous
garment industries. But defense officials this month helped kill a legislative
measure that would have required military stores, which last year made more
than $485 million in profit, to comply with such rules because they said the
$500,000 annual cost was too expensive.
Federal spending on garments overseas
does not reach that of Walmart, the world’s biggest merchandiser, which spends
more than $1 billion a year just in Bangladesh, or Zara, the Spanish apparel
seller, but it still is in a top tier that includes H & M, the trendy
fashion business based in Sweden, Eddie Bauer and Lands’ End, sellers of
outerwear and other clothing.
Like most retail brands, American
agencies typically do not order clothes directly from factories. They rely on
contractors. This makes it challenging for agencies to track their global
supply chain, with layers of middlemen, lax oversight by other governments, few
of their own inspectors overseas and little means of policing factories that
farm out work to other plants without the clients’ knowledge. When retailers,
labor groups or others inspect these factories, the audits often understate
problems because managers regularly coach workers and doctor records.
The United States government, though,
faces special pressures. Its record on garment contracting demonstrates the
tensions between its low-bid procurement practices and high-road policy
objectives on labor and human rights issues.
The Obama administration, for example,
has favored free-trade agreements to spur development in poor countries by
cultivating low-skill, low-overhead jobs like those in the cut-and-sew
industry. The removal of trade barriers has also driven prices down by making
it easier for retailers to decamp from one country to the next in the hunt for
cheap labor. Most economists say that these savings have directly benefited
consumers, including institutional buyers like the American government. But
free-trade zones often lack effective methods for ensuring compliance with
local labor laws, and sometimes accelerate a race to the bottom in terms of
wages.
Along a dirt road in Gazipur, about 25
miles north of the Bangladeshi capital, riot police fired tear gas shells,
rubber bullets and sound grenades in a fierce clash with garment workers last
month, sending scores to the hospital. The protesters demanding better
conditions included some from a factory called V & R Fashions. In July,
auditors rated that factory as “needs improvement” because workers’ pay was
illegally docked for minor infractions and the building was unsafe, illegally
constructed and not intended for industrial use.
Unsafe and Repressive
Like dozens of other factories in the
area, V & R makes clothes for the American government, which is constantly
prowling for the best deals. In interviews, workers at a half-dozen of these
suppliers described the effect of such cost pressures.
At Manta Apparels, for example, which
makes uniforms for the General Services Administration, employees said beatings
are common and fire exits are kept chained except when auditors visit. The
local press has described Manta as one of the most repressive factories in the
country. A top labor advocate, Aminul Islam, was organizing there in 2010 when
he was first arrested by the police and tortured. In April 2012, he
was found dead, a hole drilled below his right knee and his ankles crushed.
Several miles from Manta, 40 women
from another supplier, Coast to Coast, gathered late one night to avoid being
seen publicly talking to a reporter. Dressed in burqas, the women said that
prices of the clothing they make for sale on American military bases are now so
cheap that managers try to save money by pushing them to speed up production.
In the rush, workers routinely burn themselves with irons, they said, often
requiring hospitalizations.
Work does not stop, they said, when it
rain pours through a six-foot crack in the ceiling of the top floor of the
factory — a repurposed apartment building with two extra floors added illegally
to increase capacity. Even after the manager swipes their timecards, they say,
he orders them to keep sewing.
While giving a tour of the plant, the
manager described the building crack as inconsequential and too expensive to
repair. He denied the workers’ other allegations. The owner of Manta declined
to comment.
Conditions like those are possible
partly because American government agencies usually do not know which factories
supply their goods or are reluctant to reveal them. Soon after a
fire killed at least 112 people at the Tazreen Fashions factory in
Bangladesh in November 2012, several members of Congress asked various agencies
for factory addresses. Of the seven agencies her office contacted, Representative
Carolyn Maloney, Democrat of New York, said only the Department of the Interior
turned over its list.
Over the summer, military officials
told Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, that order forms for
apparel with Marine Corps logos had been discovered in Tazreen’s charred
remains but that the corps had ties to no other Bangladeshi factories. Several
weeks later, the officials said they were mistaken and had discovered a
half-dozen or so other factories producing unauthorized Marine Corps apparel.
On Sunday, the owners of Tazreen and 11 employees were
charged with culpable homicide.
President Obama has long pushed for
more transparency in procurement. As a senator, he sponsored legislation in
2006 creating the website USASpending.gov, which open-government advocates say
has made it far easier to track federal contracting. However, procurement
experts fault the website for requiring agencies to name their contractors, but
not identifying the specific factories doing the work. Some states and cities
already require companies to disclose that information before awarding them
public contracts, said Bjorn Skorpen Claeson, senior policy analyst at the International Labor Rights Forum.
Federal officials still have to
navigate a tangle of rules. Defense officials, for instance, who spend roughly
$2 billion annually on military uniforms, are required by a World War II-era
rule called the Berry
Amendment to have most of them made in the United States. In recent years,
Congress has pressured defense officials to cut costs on uniforms.
Increasingly, the department has turned to federal prisons, where wages are
under $2 per hour. Federal inmates this year stitched more than $100 million
worth of military uniforms.
No sooner had the Transportation
Security Administration, or T.S.A., signed a
$50 million contract in February for new uniforms for its 50,000 airport security
agents and other workers, than the agency was attacked from all sides.
Union officials, opposed to
outsourcing work overseas, objected because the Mexican plant making the
clothing, VF Imagewear Matamoros, was the same one that had treated uniforms
with chemicals that caused rashes in hundreds of T.S.A. agents. Congress called
an oversight hearing, where some lawmakers questioned why two-thirds of the
uniforms would be made in foreign factories, saying the deal was a missed
chance to stimulate domestic job growth. Other lawmakers faulted the agency for
spending too much money on clothing, especially on the cusp of a federal budget
crisis, no matter where the merchandise was made.
“Bottom line,” John W. Halinski,
T.S.A. deputy administrator, told Congress, “we go for the lowest-cost uniform,
sir.”
The hunt for lower costs and the
expansion of free-trade pacts have meant that more of this work is being done
abroad, often in poor countries where the Obama administration is trying to
spur competition and development.
While the Dominican manager of a
garment factory in Codevi says the industry is helping improve lives, a worker
says conditions are bad for people like him.
Next year, BKI managers hope to double
the amount of camouflage clothing made for the American government, part of a
contract worth more than $30 million between a division of Propper
International, a Missouri-based uniform company, and the General Services
Administration, which outfits workers for more than a dozen federal agencies.
Three years ago, much of this
camouflage clothing was made in Puerto Rico, where workers earned the minimum
wage of about $7.25 an hour. By 2011, many of these jobs moved to a factory in
the Dominican Republic called Suprema. Wages there were about 80 cents per hour
and unpaid overtime was routine, according to workers in recent interviews and
a 2010 audit. Since then, most of these jobs have migrated again, this time to
BKI in a Haitian free-trade zone called Codevi. Average hourly wages at BKI are
about 8 cents less per hour than those at Suprema, according to workers.
Standing near the factory entrance,
several BKI workers said they were proud of the clothes they made for the
American government. “We push hard because we know they expect better,” said Rodley
Charles, 29, a quality inspector at the factory.
But there is basic math: the average
pay of 72 cents per hour (which is illegal and below Haiti’s minimum wage)
barely covers food and rent, said Mr. Charles, who has since quit, and two
other BKI workers.
These wage pressures may soon
intensify. Codevi will soon face new competition from another industrial park
called Caracol, which is being built partly with money from the United States
Agency for International Development as part of reconstruction efforts after
the earthquake of 2010.
American officials predict that
Caracol will eventually create 60,000 new jobs. Current wages there? About 57
cents per hour, or roughly 15 cents less than typical wages at Codevi.
Big Business
At a military store in Bethesda, Md.,
Tori Novo smiled as she looked over a pair of $19.99 children’s cargo pants
made in Bangladesh that sell for $39 in most department stores. The best part
of living on base, said Ms. Novo, a 31-year-old Navy recruiter, was “savings
like these.”
Known as exchanges, these big-box
stores on military bases around the world offer a guarantee: to beat or match
any price from rivals. That promise puts the exchanges in direct competition
with the deep discounts offered by stores like Gap and Target. It also adds to
already intense pressure to lower costs by using the cheapest factories,
industry analysts say.
These stores, run by the Defense
Department, do big business, selling more than $1 billion a year in apparel
alone. Exempt from the Berry Amendment, the exchanges get more than 90 percent
of their clothes from factories outside the United States, according to
industry estimates. The profits from these tax-free stores mostly go toward
entertainment services like golf courses, gyms and bowling alleys on bases.
Though the Government Accountability
Office criticized the exchanges over a decade ago for exerting less oversight
than private retailers and for failing to independently monitor their overseas
suppliers, little has improved.
The Marine Corps and Navy still do not
require audits of these factories. The Air Force and Army exchanges do, but the
audits can come from retailers, and defense officials fail to do routine spot
checks to confirm their accuracy.
For example, Citadel Apparels, a factory
in a seven-story building in Gazipur, has cut, stitched and shipped more than
11 metric tons of cotton boys’ T-shirts and other clothes for sale at exchanges
on Army and Air Force bases in recent months. This summer, lawmakers in
Congress asked the Defense Department for proof that Citadel was safe. Defense
officials produced an audit conducted for Walmart, another client of the
factory, showing that it had an “orange” risk ranking in July 2012, the same
high level of alarm that Walmart had given the Tazreen factory before the fatal
fire there last year.
While allowing the factory to stay
open, the audit offered an alarming statistical snapshot.
Sixty-five percent: number of workers
barefoot, some on the building’s roof. Fifty percent: workers without legally
required masks to protect against cotton dust. Sixteen percent: workers missing
time-sheets, a common sign of forced overtime. Most serious infractions: cracks
in the walls that could compromise the building, and partly blocked exit routes
and stairwells.
By January, Citadel’s auditors
concluded that most of these dangers had been fixed. However, a half-dozen
Citadel workers offered a starkly different picture. Virtually none of the
original problems had ever been corrected, they said in interviews last month
with The Times.
“We aren’t sewing machines,” one
worker said. “Our lives are worth more.”
For now, Bangladesh’s garment sector
continues to grow, as do purchases from one of its bulk buyers. In the year
since Tazreen burned down, American military stores have shipped even more
clothes from Bangladesh.
Ian
Urbina reported from Bangladesh and Washington. Research was contributed by
Susan Beachy in New York, Poypiti Amatatham in Bangkok, Karla Zabludovsky in
Mexico City, Malavika Vyawahare in New Delhi and Meridith Kohut in Ouanaminthe,
Haiti.
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Will
there be enforcement and accountability? Will women workers have a continuing
presence, inclusion, voice in creating and implementing such programmes? Will
their participation not have employer punitive results? Will their wages be
monitored, and working benefits, decent working conditions? Will there be
unannounced inspections of the factories to be sure the programme regulations
are being carried out?
ILO - International Labour Organization
http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/activities/all/safer-garment-industry-in-bangladesh/lang--en/index.htm
Towards a safer garment industry in
Bangladesh
Major ILO programme has been developed with
the government, workers and employers in Bangladesh, in response to a number of
accidents that have hit the country’s ready-made garment industry.
DHAKA - The Government of Bangladesh (GoB) and the
International Labour Organization have launched a major initiative – including
a new Better Work programme -aimed at improving working conditions in the
ready-made garment (RMG) industry in Bangladesh.
The three-and-a-half year initiative, ‘Improving Working Conditions in the
Ready-Made Garment Sector’ - (RMGP) focuses on minimizing the threat of fire
and building collapse in ready-made garment factories and on ensuring the
rights and safety of workers.
It has been developed in collaboration with government, employers’ and workers’
representatives, in response to a number of industrial accidents in the sector,
including the Rana Plaza building collapse in April, in which more than 1,100
workers died.
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