INTRO to WOMEN'S STORIES of THAILAND

Who is this? CLICK for QuickTime on line video feature

FACTS:

 

Who is running the gauntlet?

This is a photo of the spectacle of media-coverage of Tiger Woods (off-stage) who is being escorted out of camera-view by the Nike entourage in a hotel in Thailand. You can see women Nike workers holding up a banner that says "Tiger Woods: Stop Putting Around" (For more See Boje, 2000).

One of the Nike workers is dressed as an executioner swinging a Swoosh (Golf-Ax). 100 sacked Nike employees in Bangkok staged this carnival of resistance, wanting to get Tiger Woods, who was in town performing in the Johnnie Walker Classic (and aware that his mother is Thai) to pose for a photo-opportunity in their carnival theater. A phalanx of Nike bodyguards and officials insured that no such photo would happen. The 100 demonstrators said they were part of a group of 1,016, mostly women workers who were still waiting to be compensated a total of 41 million baht (932,000 dollars) after being laid off by Nike in September. You know I asked a Nike executive (Amanda Tucker) in a conference panel session, we shared in New Orleans, about these women. Her reply, "that is not a Nike factory." Clever. The factory contract is void, the contract having moved out of Bangkok into peasantariat regions of Thailand where women are less apt to engage in the carnivalesque theater of Photo above.

HEADLINE: Tiger Woods faces anti-Nike protest during visit
to Thailand - DATELINE: BANGKOK, Nov 14, 2000

The world's top golfer Tiger Woods was Tuesday forced to run the gauntlet of about 100 sacked Nike employees who staged an angry protest inside the lobby of the Bangkok hotel where he is staying.

RECOURCES:

Point: The women's work life is planned, as is the cover story and spectacle theatrics of predatory capitalism; Lap & Lek are carnivalesque, they resist corporate spectacle with staged protests.

 

QUESTION: How do the stories of Lap Nguyen in a  Vietnam factory, Monina Wong of the  Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee, and Lek Yimprasert of Thai Labour Campaign relate to Global Capitalism?

Example - Recently, factories producing for Nike in Thailand have been shifting production to subcontractors and non-union facilities and to the provinces where wages and benefits are even lower.  For example, unionized workers formerly producing for Nike at the Thai Iryo Garment factory in Rangsit were laid off while Nike production shifted to the Garment Tech factory in Bangkok and VT Garment in Sathupradit. Many workers have been laid off from the unionized Thai Iryo Garment and Par Garment factories just to wind up producing the same products for subcontractors and receiving lower wages without legal protection (Thai Labour Campaign,  Coordinator: Lek Junya Yimprasert, November 14, 2000).

Example - Lek worked on a critique of the Global Alliance (PR) study:

After interviewing Luen Thai workers, the Thai Labour Campaign found that "...they felt that the questionnaires were guiding them and tried to encourage them to conduct activities at the community level. The workers questioned why they, the workers, have to do community development while their working conditions were not improved."

Workers' responses were directed to certain select topics. While workers were asked about safety, could they express their opinions on whether or not it is safe to pursue union activities? Is it safe to complain to management about working conditions? Are union activists safe from discrimination? Do workers who speak out about working conditions have to fear persecution? These issues were not covered by the Global Alliance study...

Is this GA doing research or merely paid consulting to produce junk science? Lek reports that, "The researchers refused to disclose any information on this research, claiming that as soon as they finished their work, the Global Alliance took all the primary sources data and all the files from their computers. The CUSRI had to sign an agreement with the Global Alliance that they would not publish any of the information from the study; if CUSRI violates the contract they will have to pay a penalty."

Face Validity? .. The company threatens workers that there will be no orders if the workers complain about their problems to outsiders. These kinds of threats are very powerful control mechanisms exerted over workers. 

Source http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies/nike00-09-15-1.htm 

Junya Yimprasert
Thai Labour Campaign

Can Corporate Codes of Conduct Promote Labor Standards? Evidence from the Thai Footwear and Apparel Industries published December 2000 research conducted 1997-1999 by Junya Yimprasert and Christopher Candland 

These companies subcontract from Nike, Adidas, and Timberland, for which the main markets are the United States and Europe. 

The report concludes that "Nike, Adidas and Gap must pressure the Par Garment Company to withdraw the court case against the thirty union committee and its members and allow these workers to return to their former positions. Nike and Reebok should ensure that the workers in Lian Thai are not dismissed after applying to be union members. Corporate codes of conduct must be assessed within the context of the commodification of life, increasing income inequality, exorbitant salaries and benefits for senior management, and declining real wages. When asked what recommendations they had for improving labor conditions, workers report that most of all they would like to be treated asif they are human beings."

Press here for the Full report.

 

What about Adidas?  In April 2000 a Belgian TV crew made a reportage on labour conditions in the sportswear industry in Thailand to looking into the compliance at the factory level with the Code of Conduct of Nike and Adidas ... Adidas refused entry to their suppliers. ... Adidas stopped sourcing its footwear from Thailand all together and turned even more to countries like China and Vietnam, countries where reports show labour rights are much violated and trade unions are state controlled (CCC).

QUESTION: What about the war?

This is a letter Lek wrote to me after September 11th.

I send Lek this qute from the WB President.

Global Development Briefing --- Bin Laden's 40,000 Other Victims To: "Global Development Email

 

World Bank President James Wolfensohn, quoted in the International Herald Tribune newspaper, describing how the recent terrorist attacks will cause an increase in poverty around the world.

 

"We have seen the human toll from the recent attacks, with citizens from some 80 nations perishing in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania....But there is another human toll that is largely unseen and one that will be felt in all parts of the developing world, especially Africa. We estimate that between 20,000 and 40,000 more children will die worldwide and some 10 million people will be condemned to live below the poverty line of one dollar a day because of the terrorist attacks....When you have a combination of global downturn and severe drops in commodity prices and a huge reduction in international trade, the people who suffer most are clearly in the developing countries."

Lek's Reply to me is quite wonderful:

 

Dear David,

 

I don't know whether my words will be relevant to the situation that is occurring the US now.

 

I just like to say that, in any case, we are not alone on this planet. Globalization has bridged the borders of countries through free trade, liberalization of financial instruments, global conglomerates, and military superior power, to name a few. That means that few people in the world enjoy the profits, while the majority of people are starving.

 

Please remember that over 2 million people in the poor countries die every year of hunger, even though we have too much food to feed the whole world. Think of the chicken company that chose to dump 100,000 chickens into the sea instead of giving it to the poor just to maintain the price. Or, all companies of brand name shoes that choose to damage 10,000 pair of shoes that cannot be sold instead of giving to those who are in need, simply to keep their brand name and price image.

 

Also please tell your students that I don't think of only Thai people when I work. I think of the many faces of people and friends I have met in more than 25 countries during the past ten years of my work, and reflect on their hope and suffering.

 

The faces of the women in India who offered me their costumes, which is so meaningful because they have so few. The faces of people eating only rice and corn in the sugar cane plantations in the Philippines. The face of an eight year old Mexican girl who told me her dreams to go to Disneyland and of wanting to be a doctor, so that she can take care of her parents. [unfortunately, because of her family's situation it will be quite difficult for her to make those dreams come true, but it is better to have dream to aim for in life] And, I think of a lonely walk I had in a most civilized country like Canada, but could not talk to anyone. Through these experiences and the memories I have, nationalism has come to mean something to me that extends beyond only my nation. This is what I want people around the world to think.

 

I don't want all of us to lose touch with other people. Please think of other the people that are suffering, and how we can help them and teach them how to enjoy life the way we do. Also, please distinguish ordinary people from a country's political or religious differences.

 

I think this is that I would like to say to you and your students. Have a successful class!!!!

 

In friendship,

 

Lek....

 

I think this is very profound and insightful. It deserves to be read by many. If our societies could shift from Nationalism to Globalism this world would be a much better place to live. America on some level has attempted a form of Globalism manifested in various forms of aid to other countries. But how much of that is a superficial attempt to gain something; be it power, position, or political leverage? It would be nice if we could all move past our own agendas, just be concerned with the human condition, and embrace all human kind as our brethren. from - CB

 

 

QUESTION: Is this scientific management?

ANSWER - Transnational corporations put contracts out for bid to factories, that plan every body motion of a work down to the hundredth of a second, as in Taylorism.  Time and Motion studies are done before a contract is let, to determine a work quota of so many seconds allowed for each operation by each type of work on each type of product.  Yet, this is not what Taylor had in mind (nor is it what Adam Smith wanted).  This is a port of Taylorism (not the full implementation, See difference of this to Taylor who wanted living wages for workers, breaks, differential pay for performance, etc. This is just sweat work. ).

 

EXAMPLE: Women workers in El Salvador are paid according to how many pieces they sew. Each woman is a specialist racing through the same monotonous operation, hour after hour, to reach her assigned daily production quota. An example:


Women who specialize in attaching the sleeves to Nike T-shirts must sew 2,000 sleeves in the 8.5 hour shift in order to meet their quota and earn the minimum wage of $4.80 a day. This means she must sew 235 sleeves an hour, or one every 15.3 seconds, non-stop all day. She is paid 11.5 cents for every bundle of 48 sleeves she sews, or .0023958 cents for each operation. (Read full account) (Corporate Response).

THE POINT - Sweatshops are not even Tayloristic. By setting excessively high production quotas (e.g. women must attach 2000 sleeves to Nike T- each shift, sewing one sleeve every 15.3 seconds nonstop for 8.5 hours – paid two-tenths of a cent for every sleeve they sew.). As Nike (or Adidas, or Reebok) sets the plan of seconds per motion of each worker, the subcontract must agree to the plan or not get the contract,  Nike measures its production time and motion, as carefully at Frederick Taylor, but this is not Taylorism.  Taylor planned work, to be DIFFERENT than a SWEATSHOP. Taylor, saw his scientific management, as going beyond the sweatshops of the early 1900s. This is NOT TAYLORISM!. 

Now think this through. If, a corporation plans every second of the work day for the subcontract factory work, then do they also plan the ways in which people are treated (humanely or not) in those same factories? In other words, are sweatshops an accident, exception, oversight, or are they planned to be exactly that way?  Nike, Adidas, and Reebok contracts contain Statistically Allotted Minutes (SAMs) for each worker task from cutting a pattern for a T-shirt, to stitching a collar, to sewing on a label.  Then the factory is given a production quote, which they must meet to keep their contract.  Who is in control of the labor process?

What is sweating? - This is plain and simple SWEATING, working a person to the point of physical exhaustion.  We postmodernists call it PERFORMATIVITY (See Marx, Working Day: Work until you drop dead). 

Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks. The time during which the labourer works, is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour-power he has purchased of him (Marx Chapter 10 of Das Kapital).

Marx (1867: 203) wrote, “the vampire will not lose its hold on him ‘so long as there is a muscle, a nerve, a drop of blood to be exploited’.” Sucking the living blood of labor is not a kindly corporate image.

 

 

Why would Marx make such a statement? Because he studied the case of women, like: Mary Anne Walkley who "died from long hours of work in an over-crowded work-room, and a too small and badly ventilated bedroom." Marx believed that workers could overcome greed of capitalist who extracted too much surplus value, by minimizing payment of wages, stretching the labor day, stealing time from meals, and keeping children and young women in state of exploitation and oppression.

KARL MARX -  Another quote for THE WORKING DAY (Chapter 10 of DAS KAPITAL):

     But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working-day. It usurps
the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorporating it where possible with the process of production itself, so that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, reparation, refreshmen" of the bodily powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the working-day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourers' period of repose.

Marx writes of sweatshops, as a managerial addiction, an unrestrainable passion, which plans out the production process to higgle over meals, pay as little as possible, and rob the worker of nourishment, sleep, rest, ventilation, and finally sun light. 

 

WHAT CAN STUDENTS AND FACULTY DO

Photo 3 Naked Feet Campaign

Boje's NAKED FEET Pacifist Protest  - When will Nike, Reebok, Adidas, and New Balance allow us access to their SECRET factories, the ones academics do not get to see on the Virtual Tours.

 

 

USAS project NMSU

Thailand-Globe Project,