Democratic, militant and international labour
Picture: Remake.
When apparel companies move production outside the countries where they were headquartered, they do so in search of the lowest wages and a more docile workforce, to countries which restrict the right to organise and primarily hire workers considered less likely to speak up. These include young women, migrant workers and workers on precarious contracts. Major garment producing countries, such as China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, The Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam belong to the worst countries for workers to organise in. Wheras in some countries, freedom of association and collective bargaining is considered a human right, in these countries, the governments themselves work to curtail the rights for workers to form their own unions and to strike, in order to stay attractive to foreign brands. Prospective unions may face high thresholds for registration and arbitrary denials; strikes may be violently repressed. Other tricks of the trade include firing union-leaders and striking workers and closing or relocating a factory to get rid of a union. South East Asia-based labour organiser and writer Andrew Tillett-Saks is a labor organizer and writer who works to build a democratic, militant and international labour movement. Interviewed late last year, he speaks about how garment factory are using the pandemic as an excuse to bust unions, how brands are turning a blind eye and what people around the world can do to support workers.
Follow him on Twitter: @andrewtsaks
Bel: What have you been working on during the pandemic?
Andrew: I’ve been trying to help defend garment worker unions which are massively under attack. As despicable as it is, employers - meaning the garment factory owners - are using the pandemic as an opportunity to break down the unions that have been forming over the last few years to try to improve the working conditions. So, whilst progress has been made over the past years, quite a few have been wiped out during the pandemic.
Typically, what has been happening during the pandemic is that the employers claim a need to downsize and they dismiss all of the union members while allowing non-union workers to continue working, essentially busting the union and ridding the factory of any organisation amongst the workers that can speak upon the workers’ behalf.
Before the pandemic, in several countries, workers were on the offensive, organising to improve working conditions in garment factories. The pandemic has shifted that momentum towards the employers. It’s like putting out fires constantly right now. Every week, we have to try to respond to typically two or three new cases of mass dismissals of union members.
Almost universally by any type of international labour standards - and by most standards of human rights - the workers have the right to organise a union without retaliation. And that’s just being trampled upon.
In the garment factories in Southeast Asia, workers are typically treated as if they have zero political rights, as if they’re not citizens, they’re not human beings. They’re just hands that make the garments, then make the profits for the factory owners and for the brands. We’re seeing that scale up even further during the pandemic.
Bel: We’re talking about the classic countries like Bangladesh, India … or everywhere?
Andrew: Some countries are worse than others, depending on where workers have been more on the offensive, but it’s pretty universal. Generally, every country I work in says they’re experiencing the targeting of union members and the use of the pandemic as an opportunity to roll back some of the organisational and material gains that garment workers have made over the last few years.
Bel: How do you support the workers when stuff like this happens?
Andrew: That’s another change that’s happened during the pandemic. Historically, the main tactic workers used to improve working conditions and to demand concessions from the employers was strikes. That is the main power that workers have. But, during the pandemic, for both economic and political reasons, strikes have been very difficult to undertake. Firstly, it’s obviously more difficult for workers to strike when the demand for labour goes down. But also, many countries have passed pandemic-specific regulations about assemblies. In Myanmar, for example, no more than five workers can assemble without getting thrown into jail. So we’ve had quite a few unionists imprisoned after strikes, which obviously hinders the ability and willingness of other workers to strike.
Now, we’re trying to put pressure on the brands through social media and press, what we call ‘air-war organising.’ We’re trying to put a spotlight on these awful abuses of workers’ rights and working conditions in general and trying to shame brands into taking action. And we’re still trying to figure out ways to pressure the employers through direct action in the factories. It’s been a mixed bag. From my experience, direct action from the workers on the ground is much, much more effective. We’re working with what we have at the moment, but at some point the workers and unions will have to get back to industrial actions on the ground if real progress is to be made in the garment factories.
Bel: How do you work with groups like Remake, who ran the #PayUp campaign?
Andrew: I act like a conduit between the workers on the ground and organisations that specialise in pressuring the brands, be it Remake, Clean Clothes Campaign or WRC. Those organisations do honourable, important work but we shouldn’t kid ourselves. In order to make working conditions humane, decent, dignified in the garment factories, the workers have to be organised and take action themselves.
This is not the first go-around for the garment industry, in terms of sweatshop conditions where workers are treated like slaves. We saw this in the US in the early 20th Century. There was a massive wave of strikes and union organising amongst workers; thousands of workers were imprisoned, many died. There were violent battles with the police, with employers, and that’s the struggle through which the industry became more dignified. It wasn’t through ‘social dialogue’ with employers or the ethics of employers or government; it was bitter struggle of organized workers.
And then those jobs got exported, because employers and fashion brands didn’t want those jobs to be dignified. Dignity costs more; that’s the way they view it. So we’re going to have to go through that struggle again. There’s no shortcutting that by appealing to brands’ moral consciences. We have to do everything we can to support workers’ self-organisation in the factories, to the workers building up their own union movement and taking action themselves.
Bel: You’ve been pretty forthright about greenwashing and sustainability initiatives. You sent out a tweet contrasting what Guess actually published on their page about corporate responsibility, and how they’ve just fired almost 300 union members. You’re very sceptical about the efforts of brands.
Andrew: Let me be blunt. In my opinion, the entire sustainability industry - meaning the brands’ embrace of ideas of sustainability as well as many of the NGOs that work with the brands - it’s all bullshit. And it all serves as a preservative defense of the awful working conditions, as a shield against criticism rather than any headway towards an actual solution. Almost every brand today has some public commitment to “sustainability”. I can really only speak to labour conditions, not environmental issues, but almost every large brand I’ve come across treats its workers horribly and knowingly makes their clothes in atrocious sweatshops. In garment factories in South East Asia, conditions are universally abysmal, in terms of wages, how fast workers are expected to work, how long the days are, in terms of health and safety - and yet every brand is publicly declaring their belief in ‘sustainable’ working conditions. The ruse is clear.
The only time we can get brands to care is when the workers take action in the factory or when we can put real public pressure on the brand. So, to me, those ‘sustainability’ commitments are complete nonsense and only serve to deflect criticism and curry favour and sales among ethically or socially conscious consumers.
We do ourselves a great disservice when we act like those sustainability initiatives mean anything because they don’t to the workers on the ground. All brands are doing is creating a façade, as though they have any care at all about the awful humanitarian crisis taking place in the factories that produce their goods.
If you see the actual working conditions amongst the workers, making $3 a day, on average working 11 to 12 hour days, living in squalor, working in squalor, being driven to work at insane speeds that destroy their bodies for the rest of their lives… And then you contrast that with what the brands say on their websites, in their flowery sustainability initiatives, it’s disgusting. It’s night and day, black and white. And the gall of these brands, it makes me angry. These are generally very wealthy, very profitable western brands whose officers and owners are living quite well. The gall of them to trot around talking about ethical and social conscious principles and ideals while they oppress and exploit millions of workers, making money off their squalor and their awful living and working conditions. It’s incredibly audacious and I encourage everybody to recognise it for what it is. Perhaps that is the first step towards change, recognizing the situation.
Bel: If we encourage Western consumers to stop buying so much stuff, when a lot of cultures such as Bangladesh are built on the production of fashion, what happens to workers’ livelihoods?
Andrew: It makes complete sense to me if people want to consume less for the planet, as a personal, political choice, I support that. But I don’t foresee a situation where enough people stop buying these things that the jobs are going to disappear - or that they’re going to tear down the apparel market. I also don’t think individual consumption choices are going to impact working conditions in factories around the world. The industry is not going to change because you make the specific decision to only shop at places that have good labour practices.
My problem is when [personal choice] becomes people’s political solution to the mass sweatshops, mass poverty and to the oppression of garment workers around the world. If the workers call for targeted boycotts, I think people should stand in solidarity with the workers as part of that campaign but the thing that’s going to change the industry wholescale is going to be a workers’ movement.
Bel: So the individual consumer has less power than we think. What can we do?
Andrew: I think brands and employers want people to think in these individualistic terms. They want socially conscious consumers to think that, if you just make a smart and socially conscious decision about where you buy, you can solve the problem of the oppression of workers in the industry and mass poverty. These brands and other corporations even advertise about ‘social change’, but always specifically as a personal consumer choice. I think they want people to think that precisely because they know it’s not an actual threat to the system where they can exploit the crap out of these workers and make tons of profit. What’s actually a threat to that system is if there’s a mass movement of the workers who make their goods demanding better conditions or they’re going to stop making those goods - and if there is a real link in terms of campaigns between the consumers and between the workers in an organised fashion.
If you want to support change, you have to get involved politically - and I think politically always means in an organised way. That means you have to support the workers organisations on the ground or you have to support particular campaigns that are being led against certain brands. There are labour movements in most countries where there are garment factories. There are workers organising and fighting and building movements to demand better conditions in the factories. If people genuinely want to change the industry, they have to seek out these campaigns and organisations and connect with them and support them in the work that they do.
Bel: When the Black Lives Matter movement exploded, it propelled debate around the systemic racism inherent within the fashion chain. Do you see people making this connection?
Andrew: Not enough. Because let’s be clear, the garment industry is built on a foundation of racism and sexism. There is no other way to put it. The garment industry is set up so that you have brands owned almost exclusively by white people based almost exclusively in Western, predominantly white nations. And they go into developing countries and they exploit the workers and citizens of those countries. It’s usually black and brown workers in the garment industry and it’s usually women in the workforce and their labour is exploited to an unbelievable extent. They work so much, so many hours; the pay is unbelievably low; they make enormous profits for these brands and they receive almost nothing in return. Much of the way that this arrangement is implicitly justified is that these are workers of colour, that they’re women and it’s the unsaid implications of global racism that these working conditions are okay because it’s black and brown workers who are doing it. There is no way that these working and living conditions would be accepted in the home countries of the brands or for white workers, quite honestly, or male workers. In essence, the profits of the entire garment industry are based on treating women workers and workers of color as though they have lower standards of what living and working condtions are acceptable. This is, of course, racism, and without it the industry and its profits would collapse.
The same way that colonialism was premised on ideas of racism, the garment industry is also one of the world’s best examples of neo-colonialism. Workers’ labour is viewed by these brands as nothing more than the prime commodity, the prime resource of developing countries. The brands exploit that labor to the brutal extent they do using the same colonial ideas of racism. That’s the way it’s justified, silently. That’s why it goes largely unchallenged. So, when you ask if this brought new attention onto this arrangement, I don’t really think so. The garment industry has been structured like this for years and it continues to be.
Bel: The effects of the climate emergency is going to get worse for some of these countries. There have been terrible floods in Bangladesh and some of the countries that we’re talking about are living through the climate emergency in a way that the Western countries are not - yet. Does this ever come up for you during your work?
Andrew: It comes up in the sense that workers complain about what the factories are doing even within the local communities where they live. The waste they’re producing, the way they disregard the environmental and health aspects of the areas around the factories. And it’s incredibly clear from working with the workers inside the factories and unions that, if we leave the environmental issue to the conscience and ethics of the brands and the factory owners, then we’re screwed. The only thing they consider at all is the profits of the brands and the profits of the factory owners. They are willing to destroy the lives and the bodies - the health - and the general livelihood of millions of workers without a care because they are looking to maximise profit.
So I have zero doubt that they are willing to also destroy the environment if it means more profit. Again, the only solution is real organised political movements taking power and making those decisions for themselves, for working people and for people who care about the future of the planet. If people think that there’s any credibility or substance to what the brands are saying about their environmental initiatives, they’re sorely mistaken. The brands make their decisions based on profit. We have to have our eyes wide open here. The brands are not going to do it. Their sustainability initiatives, their green initiatives, they are not going to do it in any way, shape or form.
Listen: In the Remember Who Made Them podcast, Andrew speaks with garment worker union leaders from Myanmar Tin Tin Wei and Thuzar Kyi and#PayUp initiator @elizabethlcline about how consumer activism can change the fashion industry
Watch: How COVID-19 became a nightmare for unionised workers | Freedom of Association Protocol in the garment industry
Garment brands like H&M and Primark need to act to protect the garment workers in their supply chains. We interviewed some of the worker leaders who have lost their job for being part of a union during COVID-19.
Further reading:
Remake: Garment worker protests erupt
Clean Clothes Campaign on Union Busting. https://cleanclothes.org/union-busting
