They work upward of 12 hours a day, often six or seven days a week. They are allowed two timed bathroom breaks per shift. If their demanding production requirements are not met, they do not get paid for their overtime.
And they receive the equivalent of 15 cents for each shirt they make -- shirts that retail for $40 and more in the United States.
Three Honduran women who worked in factories in their country producing clothing for several large U.S. companies brought their stories to Brattleboro Union High School on Wednesday.
Speaking through an interpreter, the three women told stories of long hours without pay, unrealistic production goals and the threats and acts of violence that they and others at the factories endured when they spoke up against the treatment.
"These women did not make enough money to afford the clothes they produced," said Charles Kernaghan, the executive director of the National Labor Committee for Worker and Human Rights. "The clothes they wear are second-hands from the United States.
"After we wear them and throw them away they get sent back to Honduras and sold to the people who made them originally," he added.
Martha Iris Alberto Lorenzo, a single mother, was fired from the AAA factory, which produces clothes for Nike, Adidas and Hanes. She was fired after organizing a peaceful sit-down that closed the factory in response to a wage reduction.
Fabia Gutierrez, another former factory worker, is now the president of a labor federation and leader of the Regional Maquila Union Coordinating Body, a coalition of unions in Central America and the Caribbean.
Lydda Eli Gonzalez worked at Southeast Textiles S.A. in Choloma, Honduras, where she produced clothes for Old Navy, Polo and other companies. She and 15 others were fired for attempting to form a union.
Gonzalez received international attention recently when she came forward with the sweatshop allegations, asking that hip-hop mogul Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, work to change the conditions at the plant.
Approximately 80 percent of the clothing produced at the factory, according to Gonzalez, is for the Sean John line, owned by Combs. The other 20 percent is for Rocawear, a line owned by rapper Jay-Z and music producer Damon Dash.
"In Honduras, we workers never imagined that they (the shirts) could cost so much," said Gonzalez in a written statement. "We produce more than a thousand of those shirts a day, and just one shirt would pay more than my wage for a week!"
Combs, who is worth an estimated $400 million and performed on rap hits such as "Mo Money, Mo Problems," has denied any knowledge of the abuses at the factory, but promised an investigation. A call to the Sean John Co., in New York City was not returned Wednesday.
Steve Hawkins, the factory owner who moved the operations from North Carolina several years ago, told the Associated Press that the allegations were groundless and that Gonzalez was fired for her poor production skills.
On Wednesday, the three women, along with members of the school's Child Labor Education and Action group, students working with the School for International Training to educate the public on abusive child labor practices, fielded questions from the public
In the audience were approximately 40 students from the Dover Elementary School from teacher Sue Newman's class, who have been working with CLEA on a number of projects.
The students asked questions concerning the retribution that workers face in the factories, how fast they have to work, the country's social system, why large companies pay their workers so little and what people can do about the abusive and illegal practices.
The answers gave a glimpse into the lives of people who work only to survive.
Gonzalez's testimony alleged that workers at the plant are ridiculed and insulted by plant owners and that female workers have to take mandatory pregnancy tests. If they are pregnant, they are fired, she said.
"We have no health care," she stated. "For the last two years our factory has not paid the Social Security fees, and because of this, we have no access to health care. This is illegal."
At the Southeast Textiles factory, workers make the equivalent of between 75-90 cents an hour, explained Gutierrez, which is above the country's minimum wage of 55 cents an hour.
Still, the increased pay at the factory does not make ends meet, she said. A livable wage for the workers would be around $1.02 an hour, she explained, although that would still make budgets difficult to meet.
"They want dignity," she said. "Inflation (in Honduras) is zooming up but the wages are flat or sinking."
Rep. Bernard Sanders, I-Vt., who joined the three women at BUHS on Wednesday, condemned the alleged abuses at the factory, blaming them on trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, passed more than nine years ago.
Such trade agreements are unfair to foreign workers who work for low pay in dangerous environments at the cost of fewer U.S. manufacturing jobs, he said.
Sanders, who was preparing to leave on a trip to Mexico to tour alleged "sweatshops" in the country, said the agreements need to be ended and fairer agreements need to be made.
"In a world in which we have great new technology and workers are more productive than ever, why is it that wages in the U.S. and in countries such as Honduras are going down?" he asked.
When asked why Congress hasn't taken notice of the human rights atrocities carried out by U.S. companies in other countries, Sanders said that some of his colleagues, and President Bush, are friends with those factory owners.
But more and more, Sanders said, politicians on both sides of the political fence are beginning to recognize that the current trade agreements are not working for Americans and others in foreign countries.
"The momentum is with us," Sanders said.
Gonzalez said she is not pushing for Combs to pull out of the factory she once worked at, as the more than 400 other workers there need the jobs.
She just hopes that pressure from Combs will improve the conditions there.
"There is too much injustice in the factory, and that is why I came here, to ask Mr. Combs and the American people for help, in the name of all the workers," she explained. "We sew your clothing. Please demand that the companies treat us with respect."
Molly Ernst-Alper, a senior from Brattleboro and the co-chair of the school's CLEA group, said one of the only ways to combat these rights abuses is through education.
"Write letters to these companies and tell them as a consumer that you do not agree with their practices," she said. "Tell them that you support good jobs for the people who produce their products."
Sanders remarked that he was upset that only one media outlet turned out for Wednesday's press conference to meet the three women. The lack of media attention on such illegal labor practices is one of the many reasons that the abuse is still so prevalent, he said.
"In my view it is an extremely important story," he said.
Vermont Reformer
13 November 2003
Daniel Barlow
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/sweatshops/1262.html
Sweatshops and Globalization
http://www.uiowa.edu/ifdebook/issues/globalization/readingtable/sweatshops.shtml
