Check the label of that new shirt or pair of pants you just bought at Wal-Mart. Was it made in Bangladesh? Maybe it was made by one of 1,000 young workers at the Beximco plant in the Dhaka Export Processing Zone. According to a new 9 page report by The National Labor Committee, the shirts and pants that are made for Wal-Mart and other retailers at this factory are made by workers who often work 12 hours a day, seven days a week, or an 80 hour work week. They are sometimes forced to work a 24 hour shift straight through the night. They are paid less than one-third of the country’s legal overtime rate. Although the official work week in Bangladesh is 48 hours plus a limit of 12 hours overtime, these workers are way over the legal boundary. In 1998, goods shipped from this “export processing zone” rose by 56% to $186 million. Labor is very cheap, and there is a state guarantee of no unions. The south Korean and Japanese often own these factories employing Bangladesh workers. Wal-Mart workers who sew clothes make 20?? an hour, says the NLC, even though the official legal wage is 33?? an hour. Helpers who work with the sewers only get 9?? an hour. These companies working under Wal-Mart contracts give their workers no maternity leave, no health coverage, and even restrict their access to bathrooms. Although Wal-Mart says it has a “code of conduct” for its vendors, none of the workers in Beximco have seen the Code, and none was posted at the workplace. To top it off, Wal-Mart pays no taxes to sew their clothes in the EPZ. Wal-Mart pays nothing in tariffs, even though Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world.
The National Labor Committee is asking all of us to contact Wal-Mart and demand that their vendors respect local labor laws around the world, including wage laws in the EPZ. They don’t want Wal-Mart to pull out of these factories, for fear that the workers would be left with no employment or source of support. The NLC wants Wal-Mart to publish the names and addresses of the factories that make the Wal-Mart goods we purchase, which the company has thus far refused to do. To contact Wal-Mart, call 501-273-4000, or fax your comments on their labor policies to: 501-273-4894. You can email them at: [email protected]. For your own copy of the National Labor Committee study on Wal-Mart sweatshops in Bangladesh, contact the NLC at 212-242-3002, or email them at [email protected].
