Fw: Nicaragua and Globalization

["Nello Margiotta" <animarg@tin.it>]

 Feb 18, 2001 - 12:28 PM
 
 
 EXPLORING THE GLOBAL ECONOMY Accused Sweatshop in Nicaragua Becomes
 Thorn in Side of Globalization
 By Filadelfo Aleman
 Associated Press Writer
 
 
 TIPITAPA, Nicaragua (AP) - Contending that her bosses treated her like a
 slave, the young seamstress joined a four-day strike last summer to
 demand better pay and working conditions at a factory that sews blue
 jeans for the U.S. military.
 Today, Johana Auxiliadora Reyes and her husband are unemployed -
 blacklisted, she claims, by the Taiwanese plant, one of 48 foreign firms
 that hires tens of thousands of Nicaraguans to work in factories in the
 country's free-trade zone.
 
 No matter how bad the job was, Reyes says making $62 a month sewing
 pockets onto jeans was better than nothing. "We're unemployed, and
 nobody will give us work," said Reyes, one of 400 of the factory's 2,000
 workers fired in August after the qtrike.
 
 Such sentiments aren't surprising in the small Central American nation
 where unemployment runs at 60 percent and foreign-owned garment makers
 bring sorely needed jobs.
 
 What's unusual is that the Chentex strike, with the subsequent firings,
 has become a symbol of globalization's downside, casting a harsh light
 on the extraordinary power of foreign factories and mobilizing sweatshop
 opponents as far away as Wisconsin.
 
 Activists in the United States have sued a U.S. unit of the Cheltex
 factory, owned by Taiwan's Nien Hsing business consortium. The case in
 U.S. District Court in Los Angeles accuses Chentex of unfairly shutting
 out unions, paying low wages and maintaining poor working conditions.
 
 One worker, who spoke only on condition of anonymity for fear of losing
 her job, said the Taiwanese "trainers" who taught workers how to sew
 blue jeans often screamed insults at slow learners. She said the
 treatment has improved since the firings.
 
 Workers also complained about poor ventilation, hot working conditions,
 limited bathroom breaks and even physical abuse, said Daisy Pitkin of
 the Campaign for Labor Rights, a Washington-based anti-sweatshop group.
 
 Activists have demonstrated against Kohl's department stores in
 Milwaukee, one of several large retail chains that sells $30 jeans from
 the factory - half a month's pay for the workers who sew them. Chentex
 workers were seeking raises of up to 50 percent.
 
 The spotlight puts the United States, which has enacted laws linking
 trade privileges to labor conditions, in the uncomfortable position of
 defending an accused sweatshop that supplies its armed forces with jeans
 sold in stores on military bases nationwide.
 
 U.S. officials say they found no evidence of abuse or poor working
 conditions when a delegation visited the Chentex plant. "We went down
 there, checked it out, and we saw that things were up to par," said
 Capt. Eric Hilliard, spokesman for the Army and Air Force Exchange
 Service.
 
 However, the General Accounting Office, the congressional arm that
 oversees federal spending, plans to look into the allegations at the
 request of members of Congress, a GAO spokeswoman said last week.
 
 Chentex denied the accusations, saying that the factory treats workers
 fairly and that it paid each fired worker a month's salary for each year
 worked at the plant, as required by law. Workers were fired for
 encouraging other workers to hold violent protests, not for striking,
 said plant manager Carlos Yin.
 
 "The accusations of mistreatment are false," he said.
 
 Nicaragua's government backs that position and went so far as to bar an
 American activist from entering the country in 1999 after he criticized
 the plant. The American was accused of fomenting labor unrest and of
 meddling in Nicaragua's domestic affairs.
 
 Nicaragua's "maquiladoras" - assembly-for-export factories - pay workers
 nearly $60 million a year in salaries, directly generating 40,000 jobs,
 mostly to single mothers, says Gilberto Wong, director of the Free-Trade
 Zone Corp. in the maquiladora area.
 
 But some say Chentex wields too much sway.
 
 Pedro Ortega, a Nicaraguan union leader who asked American activists to
 file the lawsuit, says Chentex threatened to cancel plans for a second
 plant if Nicaragua insisted that it rehire the workers laid off in
 August. Chentex denies any such threat.
 
 More broadly, a confrontation with the factory could put Nicaragua at
 odds with a powerful foreign benefactor. Since 1992, Taiwan has given
 more than $180 million in aid to Central America - including $14 million
 to build Nicaragua's presidential palace and its foreign ministry.
 Central America, for its part, is a rare stronghold of support for
 Taiwan in its efforts to resist mainland China's attempts to strip the
 island of international recognition.
 
 Wong accused the lawsuit's supporters of trying to recover U.S.
 factories that have shut down in favor of plants south of the border
 with cheaper labor.
 
 "To coopare the salaries in this country with those in the United States
 is an aberration," said Wong, the Nicaraguan president's former
 spokesman.
 
 "Nobody denies that a U.S. worker makes much more than a worker in
 Nicaragua. ... The jobs and salaries at the maquiladoras aren't the
 best, but they help solve the unemployment problem."