Category Archives: Hours of Work

Social Alterations: Forum

How can education foster sustainable change toward socially responsible fashion and apparel design and manufacturing practices?

Social Alterations hopes to foster socially responsible fashion design education through aggregating relevant material that will inspire fashion/textile and apparel instructors, researchers, designers and design enthusiasts to get on board with thinking about consequence in the industry.

Sign up to the Social Alterations Forum if you’re interested in sharing and contributing ideas on curriculum, research, projects, materials, design, etc. with this community.

New NLC Report on Human Rights violations in Jordan

NLC

A new report out of the National Labor Committee today cites multiple human rights violations at the Muse Textile Ltd. garment factory in Al Hassan Industrial City, Irbid, Jordan.

Human Trafficking
Primitive Dorm Conditions
Substandard Food
Forced Overtime and Seven-Day Work Weeks
A Failure to Communicate

Check out the full report, as well as the Ministry of Labor Report from July 19^th. These workers still have 11 months left on their contract. The NLC is calling for the factory to be brought up to international standards and Jordanian law of compliance immediately.

Source: NLC

Oxfam Hong Kong launches new CSR report for the Garment Industry

Oxfam CSR Guidebook

Oxfam Hong Kong has just launched a new guidebook for the garment industry titled Good Fashion: A Guide to Being an Ethical Clothing Company.

Although they encourage the use of the guidebook for educational use, as well as for research, advocacy and campaign purposes, be sure to notify them if you are going to use the guidebook so that they may assess its impact.

“As an active promoter of corporate social responsibility (CSR), Oxfam Hong Kong launches the first corporate social responsibility guidebook: Good Fashion: A Guide to Being an Ethical Clothing Company today. Good Fashion targets to support the garment sector in Hong Kong to further develop and implement CSR policy. In producing Good Fashion, Oxfam aims to raise awareness within the business sector on the importance of CSR and to encourage them to put CSR principles into practice.

The 71-page Good Fashion, which is divided into four sections, is a comprehensive guidebook containing practical tips for implementing CSR throughout the production process, such as merchandising and manufacturing. Good Fashion also includes CSR insights from various stakeholders, including workers, community organisations, union representatives, and other groups. Online resources and a simple checklist are also included for companies’ reference.”

You can download the full report in English (PDF) here.

Also, be sure to check out Oxfam Hong Kong’s previous reports. In 2004 they published Turning the Garment Industry Inside Out – Purchasing Practices and Workers’ Lives. They have also published two transparency reports: Transparency Report – How Hong Kong Garment Companies Can Improve Public Reporting of their Labour Standards (2006) and Transparency Report II: Have Hong Kong Garment Companies Improved Their Reporting on Labour Standards (2009).

Source: CSR Asia

Women Exploiting Women

The National Labor Committee released a report last week citing sweatshop conditions in a Guatemalan factory manufacturing clothing for Briggs New York (80%) and Lane Bryant (remaining 20%) clothing.

If you don’t want to read the full article, here is the abstract:

“Young Mayan women sew Briggs New York and Lane Bryant clothing under abusive and illegal sweatshop conditions at the Nicotex factory outside Guatemala City. Women in the U.S. are unknowingly purchasing clothing made by other women who are being exploited.

All overtime at the Nicotex factory is mandatory, and 14 2/3-hour shifts, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:40 p.m. including six hours of overtime, are uncommon. The women are routinely at the factory up to 72 hours, forced to toil 20 to 25 hours of overtime. Women unable to remain for overtime work, even if they have family emergencies, are fired. The workers are allowed just 10.2 minutes to sew each Briggs New York blouse for which they are paid 19 ½ cents. The women and their families are trapped in extreme poverty, earning just 76 cents to $1.15 an hour, which comes nowhere close to meeting even their most basic subsistence level needs.

Workers and their children are cheated of health and maternity care, including paid maternity leave, which they paid for and is supposed to be guaranteed under Guatemalan law. Workers are also robbed of their vacation and severance pay and are shortchanged of their legal bonuses.

The Nicotex garment workers have no rights. U.S. company audits are a sham, and the workers have never even heard of a “corporate code of conduct.”

At least some officials of the government-run Social Security Institute appear to be involved in a widespread corruption scam, along with factories such as Nicotex, to defraud the workers and their children of the healthcare they pay for. This scam is an open secret in Guatemala, and it has devastating consequences for the workers.

The Nicotex sweatshop is just another example of how the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement has badly failed to enforce even Guatemala’s most minimal labor laws. US-CAFTA has certainly not empowered workers through respect for their legal rights, nor has it helped raise them out of extreme poverty.”

Source: NLC

For those of you who don’t know who Charles Kernaghan is, he is “The Man Who Made Kathy Lee Cry”. He also heads the National Labor Committee. He discusses what he calls ‘the science of exploitation’ and his work with the NLC from the film The Corporation. You can view the trailler for the documentary in the videos section of this site (on the left hand side).

FIBERcast tweet along

The first FIBERcast, featuring Dr. Marsha Dickson and Mr. Doug Cahn, took place today, February 23, 2008. The broadcast was hosted by Dr. Hye-Shin Kim, of the University of Delaware, and focused on “Social Responsibility in the Apparel Industry”.

For those not following on Twitter, here are my live tweets of the event: searchable under #fibercast, #csr and #sr

· Dr. Marsha Dickson # fibercast: monitoring become the standard, but often does not provide solutions. new book http://tinyurl.com/aqb85w about 2 hours ago

· #fibercast problems are complex and widespread/freedom of association/forced labour/discrimination/child labour about 2 hours ago

· Environmental responsibility does not just have to do with fiber choice. remember the whole life cycle analysis/ #fibercast about 2 hours ago

· CSR to Mr. Doug Cahn# fibercast is about looking at the impact, to mitigate the negative, and augment the possitive about 2 hours ago

· Doug Cahn #fibercast http://thecahngroup.com/ about 2 hours ago

· #csr is not an add-on, its a core issue, supplychain for an apparel company..pay your workers the legal limit, at least make up short fall about 2 hours ago

· disctinction between compliant and non-compliant/the industry is aflling short. yes there is cost, but also have a business case (save$)#csr about 2 hours ago

· #csr #fibercast Dr. Marsha Dickson Answers Q. on WRAP factory certification is important but not the answer http://tinyurl.com/bjckwu about 1 hour ago

· limitations of factory monitoring asks “what?” not “why?” and quality of auditing can be lacking…provides only ‘snapshop’ #csr #fibercast about 1 hour ago

· # fibercast #csr #recession: Cahn finds opportunity in downturn for better integration/restructuring interdepartmental thinking opportunity about 1 hour ago

· #csr #fibercast Dickson: consumer difference perceptions from behaviour. no real ‘no sweat’ label, cannot ensure compliance about 1 hour ago

· #csr #fibercast Dickson believes to look for honest companies working toward real change #nike #adidas (ex) about 1 hour ago

· # fibercast #csr Cahn: government can play a voluntary role, also use trade agreement..ensure internationally approved standards on imports about 1 hour ago

· # fibercast #csr Cahn check out fairlabor.org for opperations and http://www.sa-intl.org/ about 1 hour ago

· # fibercast #csr Cahn, small/med. company: ask questions again and again, collaboration fairfactories.org about 1 hour ago

· #csr #fibercast Dickson stresses importance of multi-stakeholder initiatives and also ngo’s light the fire under companies about 1 hour ago

· #csr #fibercast Dickson to students: we need to educate students on #sr in graduate program, but also integrated into undergrad class about 1 hour ago

· #csr #fibercast #sr Dickson http://tinyurl.com/b3ep9u about 1 hour ago

Sweated Labour, Dell, Transparency and this Blog

The issue of transparency is an important one. So, here’s a little blogging transparency … I write Social Alterations on my ‘Made in China’ Espresso Brown Dell Inspiron 1525.

The National Labour Committee released a report today titled “High Tech Misery in China: The Dehumanization of Young Workers Producing Our Computer Keyboards” Sure enough, Dell is one of the companies manufacturing products in the Meitai Plastics & Electronics factory highlighted in the report in Dongguan City, Guangdong China.

According to the report, the base salary at the factory is 64 cents/hour. Minus room and board, workers take home 41cents/hour. Tax all in, my ‘made to order’ laptop set me back $620.48.

Other companies producing in the factory include Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Microsoft and IBM.

You can view the NLC report here

Message from the Asian Human Rights Commission on the 60th Anniversary of UDHR

Many textile and apparel companies boast a commitment to operating within the legal frameworks of the countries in which they manufacture. It would seem only reasonable to expect as much (Congratulations! You didn’t break the law!). Considering the standard of human rights within such countries, should this fact be celebrated?

December 10th marked the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this video, Basil Fernando, CEO of the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), highlights the issue of “non-rule of law”. According to Fernando, the last 60 years of Human Rights has only worked to establish the conversation of rights. He hopes the next 60 years will see the realization and achievement of Human Rights. On this 60th anniversary, I hope that consumers will consider the standard of the law within the countries their garments are produced, and support companies that promote international labour standards rather than those that hide behind frameworks of corrupt legal systems.

The AHRC has released their annual report on the state of human rights in 11 countries (Bangladesh, Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka and Thailand). You can download country reports here

The AHRC also works to document the countless human rights violations taking place in Asia. To receive notification of the AHRC Urgent Requests, just subscribe to their mailing list. Once you receive an urgent request, it only takes a few seconds to follow the link and send the letter of complaint they have already written for you to the appropriate individuals. You can subscribe here.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkWWWulqanQ]