APRIL 1996 · VOLUME 17 · NUMBER 4
B E H I N D T H E L I N E S
APRIL 1996 · VOLUME 17 · NUMBER 4
B E H I N D T H E L I N E S
YIELDING TO SEVERE PRESSURE from consumers and labor advocacy groups, apparel maker Jessica McClintock Inc. agreed in March to take responsibility for conditions in its contractors' garment factories.
In an agreement reached with the Asian Immigrant Women Association (AIWA), a labor advocacy group based in California, McClintock promised to take steps to check the ongoing violations of wage and hour laws in garment factories owned by its contractors and subcontractors.
For more than three years, despite protests and calls for boycott by AIWA and other labor advocacy groups, McClintock had refused to take responsibility for sweatshop-like conditions in its contractors' factories.
AIWA started a boycott campaign in early 1992 when a McClintock contractor, Lucky Sewing, refused to pay 12 Asian immigrant women $15,000 in back wages [see "Worker Rights Unravelled," Multinational Monitor, March 1994]. Noting that McClintock sold Lucky Sewing dresses that women workers were paid $5 to make for $175, activists demanded that McClintock make up the women workers' back wages.
The agreement calls for "cooperative" efforts by both parties to insure workers' rights as well as to promote awareness of fair labor practices, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, which helped broker the agreement.
McClintock told AIWA that it would help set up a garment workers education fund for the women workers sacked by the Lucky Sewing. McClintock also expressed its willingness to provide two toll-free numbers, staffed by English- and Cantonese-speakers, to handle garment worker complaints or labor-law information requests.
In return for these promised steps, AIWA agreed to put an end to its boycott campaign against McClintock.
"We are quite pleased. We hope it [the agreement] will stop further exploitation of garment workers," says Stacy Kono, an AIWA spokeswoman.
Rejecting Irradiation
TWO LEADING FOOD CORPORATIONS recently rejected food irradiation, further setting back the irradiation industry's efforts to promote the technology, which is designed to prolong food's shelf life.
While the Food & Drug Administration considers approving beef radiation, International Beef Processors (IBP) and Marsh's Supermarkets, announced, in March 1995, that they will not use irradiation technology on their meat products.
"We do not irradiate any of our meat products, nor do we have plans to begin," wrote Robert L. Peterson, chair of IBP, in a letter to the Walden, Vermont-based consumer advocacy group Food & Water. "We agree that current irradiation procedures can affect traditional meat flavors."
Other major U.S. food corporations that have already rejected irradiation technology include McDonald's, Perdue and General Foods.
Experts believe that the use of irradiation technology depletes vitamins and nutrients in fruits and changes chemical properties in meat, which some believe may be a health hazard.
Isomedix, a New Jersey-based irradiation company, filed the petition for beef irradiation with the FDA and irradiated Hawaiian fruits last year which Marsh's sold at several smaller markets in the Midwest.
"Isomedix needs to face the reality that consumers and major food corporations want nothing to do with the dangerous irradiation technology," comments Michael Colby, executive director of Food & Water.
Sanctioning Pakistan
PRESSURE FROM U.S.-BASED HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS forced the Clinton Administration in March to impose partial trade sanctions against Pakistan for its failure to abolish bonded labor and child labor.
The U.S. government's punitive action will lead to suspension of Pakistan's benefits under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) program in three categories of goods when it is reauthorized by the U.S. Congress in December, officials say.
Though confined to only three categories of goods, the GSP suspension is likely to cause Pakistan to lose millions of dollars in exports to the United States. The three categories of goods are hand-made carpets, surgical instruments and sports goods.
In 1995, export of these goods to the United States earned Pakistan about $88 million.
The U.S. Department of Labor estimates there are one million children in servitude engaged in the carpet industry in South Asia -- more than half of them in Pakistan and India.
Describing the U.S. decision as "appropriate," Patricia Gossman, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, says, "It can be a good pressure device to force the Pakistan government to enforce labor laws."
But some Pakistani scholars and activists disagree.
"This is no way to solve the problem of child labor and bonded labor. Such actions will only add to the miseries of the poor over there," observes Dr. Manzoor Ejaz, a Pakistan-born U.S. economist.
Ejaz says that pressure from global financial institutions -- controlled by the United States and other rich nations -- is part of Pakistan's problem. "The World Bank and IMF continue to exert pressure on Third World countries for export-oriented growth, which makes it easy for corrupt government leaders to shrug off responsibility for workers' rights." -- Haider Rizvi