Date of publication: October 26, 2008

Source: Arkansas Democrat Gazette

» http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Business/241490/

By Steve Painter

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is sparring with a small labor rights group that says it has documented worker abuse at a garment factory in Bangladesh that helps supply the Bentonville-based retailer’s stores.

SweatFree Communities says its report “Sweatshop Solutions: Economic Ground Zero in Bangladesh and Wal-Mart’s Responsibility” is based on interviews with more than 90 workers. Those workers, the report states, cite instances of co-workers being kicked or slapped for minor infractions, including one claim that a pregnant woman miscarried after being kicked by a line supervisor.

When Wal-Mart inspects the plant, the report contends, factory managers know ahead of time and workers are coached on what to tell the inspectors.

Wal-Mart said it could not confirm any of the allegations; the company did make an unannounced inspection of the plant in August before the expected release date of the SweatFree report. The company said it offered to work with the labor-rights group in an attempt to verify the allegations and end any potential abuse in exchange for not releasing the report.

SweatFree Communities first contacted Wal-Mart via e-mail June 13 about a report that purported to document worker abuse that dated back several months, the company said.

“It surprised us that Sweat-Free waited nine months to advise us that they conducted interviews which suggested ‘a particularly abusive factory’ and ‘one of the worst in this export industry intensive area,’ as quoted in the report,” Wal-Mart said in a statement e-mailed by Richard Coyle, senior director for international corporate affairs.

Kathryn Ward, a sociology professor at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale who has been studying the lives of Bangladeshi women, including many garment workers, since 2000, said she wasn’t surprised at the working conditions described in the report.

“What they found is a very common thing in Bangladesh,” she said, but added, “Not all the garment factories are what I would call sweatshops.”

Despite pay levels that are extremely low by the standards of developed nations — the minimum wage is about $ 24 a month — the garment industry jobs are important to the economy of Bangladesh, Ward said. As the largest buyer of garments in the region, she said, Wal-Mart could set a higher standard for pay and working conditions.

“They could be much more a leader in doing the right thing in Bangladesh,” she said.

At a conference in Beijing on Wednesday, planned long before the report was released, Wal-Mart said it intends to require importers and suppliers of private-label and nonbranded products to identify the name and location of each factory in the supply chain, and that by 2012 it will require suppliers to produce 95 percent of their goods from factories that rate highest on the company’s environmental and social standards. “Make no mistake. We expect from suppliers a firm commitment to meet social and environmental standards,” H. Lee Scott, Wal-Mart’s president and chief executive officer, said at the conference. Suppliers who fail to meet the company’s standards will be barred from future Wal-Mart business, he said.

TWO SIDES ENGAGE Wal-Mart said a company executive first spoke by phone with Bjorn Claeson, executive director of SweatFree Communities, on June 27, and that subsequent discussions led to an Aug. 12 memorandum of understanding between the two parties.

Wal-Mart said it agreed not to order from the factory while it investigated the allegations and corrected any violations of the company’s supplier standards. In return, the company said, Claeson agreed not to release the report until at least Aug. 31.

But by Aug. 20, according to the timeline Wal-Mart supplied, a reporter from Business Week magazine contacted the company seeking comment on a draft of the report.

Wal-Mart said it sent inspectors into the factory unannounced Aug. 14 and interviewed about 30 workers the next day.

Claeson acknowledges releasing the draft to Business Week. But he says the group expects Wal-Mart to abide by the conditions of the memorandum. He said that, based on the group’s inspection of U. S. port import / export records, Wal-Mart’s business accounts for more than 80 percent of production at JMS Garments, the factory in question. “They certainly have the clout and wherewithal to make dramatic improvement in this factory on their own,” Claeson said. The apparel his group tracked arrived at U. S. destinations from the Port of Chittagong, the city where JMS Garments operates in what is known as an export processing zone, according to the report.

THE ALLEGATIONS Claeson works from Bangor, Maine. National organizer Liana Foxvog is in Florence, Mass., and Midwest organizer Victoria Kaplan is in Goshen, Ind. SweatFree Communities ’ board of directors includes members of several other labor-rights groups. Its focus is persuading governing bodies of schools, cities, counties and states not to spend tax money for materials produced under what the organization deems to be sweatshop conditions. For the Bangladesh report, Claeson said his group worked with a nonprofit organization there, founded by a former garment worker, which educates workers about their rights under the laws of Bangladesh.

The group’s name in the report, Garment Research Group, and the names of all workers are pseudonyms to conceal their identities from factory supervisors, he said. Pictures of two Bangladeshi women appear on a page of the report describing the anonymous workers quoted in the report. On the same page, the report says that “the workers in the photograph below do not work at JMS Garments.” Among the abuses that the research group says workers reported: “Today a supervisor kicked an operator for a little delay in work. And the operator lay down on the ground after the supervisor kicked her.”

“If any worker talks with other workers, or makes a mistake, or can’t fulfill the target, managers slap the worker’s neck or throw the spool of thread.”

“Maybe the worker is looking back to tell her co-worker something. The supervisor will come and slap the worker for talking.”

Workers also reported delays in getting paid and being paid for fewer hours than they worked. Work shifts stretch as long as 19 hours a day at a minimum wage that is currently about $ 24 a month, according to the report. Bangladesh’s low wages have attracted businesses, especially to its export processing zones. And Bangladesh has long been the source of reports of abuse in its garment factories, including a series of hidden-camera investigations by the NBC news show Dateline in 2005.

THE COMPANY RESPONDS In its statement, Wal-Mart said it promptly investigated the latest allegations and engaged a third party to assist management in future operation of the factory. “We honored our commitments and engaged in confidential discussions as when SweatFree first contacted us. We continue to work with the factory and we pledge to work with other parties who are truly interested in improving work conditions,” the company said.

Wal-Mart said one of the plant’s owners flew to Bentonville on Aug. 21 to meet with the company’s ethical standards team. The next day, the company said, it held a conference call with SweatFree and offered to form a coalition with the group, other retailers, trade associations and apparel companies using the JMS factory to “bring systemic change to the garment industry in Bangladesh.”

But the company said it continued to question the accuracy of the SweatFree report, and told the organization it would not create the partnership if the report was published, according to Wal-Mart’s statements. Since SweatFree Communities released the report, Wal-Mart said, the company has been the subject of an e-mail campaign and “form letters have been filling up the e-mail accounts of several of our executives.”

WAGE PRESSURES Ward, the sociology professor, said many garment factories in Bangladesh pass inspections. But subcontractors’ factories that Wal-Mart and other apparel buyers are not aware of often evade inspection, she said. Pressure on manufacturers to keep costs low is constant, she said. “The buyers keep pushing the wages down. If they would pay just pennies more a piece, it would make a big difference in the lives of women workers,” she said.

For her research, Ward has visited Bangladesh eight times, most recently last summer. She estimated that 85 percent to 90 percent of the workers are female, and supervisors are mostly male.

Trina Tocco, campaigns coordinator for the International Labor Rights Forum, said the report is further evidence that Wal-Mart has more work to do to weed out abusive workplace practices at supplier plants.

The Washington-based group has made Wal-Mart, including supplier factories in Bangladesh, a focus of its activities since 2004.

“They need to be given a real clear signal that Wal-Mart is serious about the codes of conduct,” she said. In its statement, Wal-Mart said it conducted 14, 400 audits in 9, 175 factories last year and provided training for more than 10, 100 suppliers and factory personnel. The company also pointed out its role in forming an industry coalition to condemn the use of forced child labor in Uzbekistan. On Sept. 30, the company said it instructed buyers to halt purchases from that nation to pressure the government to ban child labor in its cotton fields. Wal-Mart has changed its recent practice of issuing an annual report on ethical sourcing. It says the next such report will be included with the company’s sustainability report at a date yet to be determined. However, the company says it intends to issue an update in the next few days covering an 18-month period beginning in January 2007.

To contact this reporter: spainter@arkansasonline. com