Tens of thousands of garment workers in Lesotho waged a successful one-day strike for unpaid wages, returning to work after the government agreed over the weekend to honor the agreement it made in April to pay workers during the novel coronavirus lockdown.
Some 50,000 workers will now receive the $47 pay they were promised in April when their unions negotiated three months’ salary with the government. After paying one installment, the government refused to provide the rest of the negotiated wages. The workers are represented by the United Textile Employees (UNITE), National Clothing, Textile and Allied Workers’ Union (NACTWU) and the Independent Democratic Union of Lesotho (IDUL).
“The strike was very successful because workers have now realized that without them coming together as one, there is nothing that they will get,” says IDUL Deputy General Secretary May Rathakane.
“They have realized that without unity, there is nothing and unions working together made them realize the importance of unity.”
Unions say the government deployed special forces in the capital, Maseru, and surrounding areas, with police shooting one worker three times with rubber bullets, and beating and arresting others.
Workers at the Myan Mode garment factory in Myanmar (Burma) are celebrating the return to the job of many recently fired union members.
Following a two-month fight against the factory’s attempt to use COVID-19 to destroy their union, they won an agreement May 30 that immediately reinstates 25 fired union members and brings back within two months 50 workers who joined strikes to protest the employer’s actions. It also guarantees the recall of hundreds of other fired union members when operations return to normal as the pandemic eases.
In March, Myan Mode permanently fired all 520 union members working in the Yangon factory, citing a decrease in orders due to COVID-19. Yet the owners retained more than 700 non-union workers and continued to operate the factory. The workers were fired minutes after union leaders held a contentious meeting with management in which they demanded an end to mandatory overtime due to fear of contracting COVID-19.
The move has been repeated around the world by employers seeking to use the novel coronavirus pandemic as a means to eliminate unions and weaken workplace rights. In a key provision of the new agreement, the employer agrees to not break the union and that “no discrimination against the union shall occur for any reason.”
“This was not an easy fight,” says Mg Moe, general secretary of the factory-level union, which is affiliated to the Federation of Garment Workers Myanmar (FGWM). “We wanted all our unfairly dismissed union brothers and sisters to be immediately reinstated.”
During negotiations with the union, factory management repeatedly resisted retrenchment plans that would not discriminate against union members. Myanmar authorities and global apparel brands doing business with Myan Mode failed to compel the factory to do otherwise, despite the company’s actions having violated labor law and the brands’ ethical codes of conduct.
‘Our Union Members Stood Strong’
“The central factor in our victory was that our members stood strong”, says Moe Sandar Myint, a union leader at FGWM. “Although we could not achieve full justice, the employer and the brands could no longer ignore our demands entirely. Our workplace union fought doggedly to win the survival of our union, and we now live to fight another day.”
The workers conducted ongoing actions to protest the dismissals, initially staging a five-day sit down at the factory gates but switching to creative uses of social media as authorities banned gatherings due to COVID-19 concerns. Their sustained efforts garnered international media attention and solidarity support from worker advocates around the world, including the Solidarity Center.
“We are also fighting against union-busting in other factories that supply clothes to the same brands that do business with Myan Mode,” says Moe Sandar Myint. “These brands promise to uphold worker rights in their contracts with their factory suppliers but we see little action from them to enforce those commitments. We will continue to struggle against injustice using strong unions in the factories and international solidarity, and will not rest until the entire garment industry is humane for workers.”
To ensure the agreement at Myan Mode is honored, the company has agreed to form a monitoring committee with a third party that is neither the company nor the union. The committee, created in consultation with nongovernmental organizations that include the Solidarity Center, will assess whether laws and company regulations are being followed as dismissed workers are rehired, and it will operate until at least the end of 2020.
As garment factories in Haiti begin reopening after shuttering for up to four weeks to prevent spread of the novel coronavirus, workers risk exposure during their crowded work commutes and at factories, while most have not received the wages they were promised during the factory closings, according to several garment worker unions there.
Meanwhile, workers say the price of some basic goods is skyrocketing, with reports of rice rising from 1,400 gourdes ($14.45) for one bag to as much as 2,200 gourdes ($22.70). Export apparel workers are paid a daily minimum wage of 420 gourdes ($5.07).
Workers returning to garment factories face crowded, unsafe conditions.
Although workers earlier this month traveled back to their closed factories to collect half their pay during the height of COVID-19’s spread in Haiti, risking their health in crowded tap-taps (public minibus transport) and at factories, many have not received their wages. And for those who were paid, they received only two weeks’ pay a month late, causing extreme hardship for the impoverished workers and their families. Last year, the Solidarity Center found that garment workers’ daily minimum wage is more than four times less than the estimated cost of living in Haiti.
Referring to employers and government officials, Reginald Lafontant, secretary general of the garment workers’ federation in Haiti, asked:
“How heartless are you, to be eating your fancy chicken, goat, turkey yesterday, Sunday? Meanwhile, factory workers have been home for 24 days without a cent. It has been 24 days since they’ve been told to stay home and they haven’t gotten a cent.
“Workers don’t have a cent to buy even herring or even cod fish to boil for their wives, their husbands, their children,” said Lafontant, who heads the Groupement Syndicat des Travailleurs Textil pour la Reimportacion d’assemblage (GOSTTRA).
Limited Factory Work, Unsafe Conditions
S&H Global garment factory is requiring workers to sign an agreement absolving the company of liability for COVID-19 spread.
Workers and their unions also report that S&H Global at the giant Caracol Industrial Park is requiring workers to sign a document (left) stating that they will take precautionary measures while at work, including wearing face masks and taking their temperatures—and agreeing that if they get sick, they are legally responsible for their illness.
Yet when workers returned to the factory, they were not allowed in, forcing them to gather in front of the gate in crowded conditions, according to the garment unions.
Factories now must operate at 30 percent capacity, with most workers scheduled for three days, forcing them to live on at least half of their usual salary, which was already one-quarter of the living wage.
In addition, since March 29, more than 11,000 Haitians have returned to Haiti from the Dominican Republic. While some are fleeing the rapid increase in COVID-19 cases in that country, others are being expelled by Dominican authorities. Among those are day laborers who work in the Dominican Republic and return to Haiti each day.
On March 26, four national-level unions with members in the garment sector submitted a joint proposal to President Jovenel Moïse calling on the government and employers to respect International Labor Organization (ILO) protocols on COVID-19 in the world of work. The coalition also called on the government and employers to pay workers affected by factory closures the equivalent of the daily wages they earned on average in the three months prior to factory closures.
The unions, all Solidarity Center partners, are Centrale Nationale des Ouvriers Haïtiens (CNOHA), Confederation des Travailleurs Haïtiens (CTH), Confédération des Travailleurs- euses des Secteurs Public et Privé (CTSP) and ESPM-Batay Ouvriye.
The COVID-19 crisis is especially devastating for the 50 million workers who make clothes, shoes and textiles in factories around the world. With declining sales, corporate retailers are canceling orders and factories are laying off workers, most without pay. Those forced to work often must do so in unsafe factories to support themselves and their families. The majority of garment workers are women who are their family’s primary wage earner.
But through their unions, tens of thousands of garment workers in Bangladesh are successfully standing up to employers to ensure they are paid during plant closures and have proper protective equipment if they must report to work.
In Gazipur, factory-level unions and worker union leaders representing 10,000 garment workers at Hop Lun Ltd. factories negotiated key pay and safety measures. Workers will receive their full month’s salary for March as the factory closes from March 26–April 5 during the government lockdown. When they are back on the job, they will have access to hotlines to call if they are ill and need guidance. The phone numbers of the union president and top management also are available so workers can directly access assistance in case of emergency.
The Sommilito Garments Sramik Federation (SGSF) union had recently negotiated a collective bargaining agreement with Hop Lun Ltd. factories that includes a 10 percent annual pay increase.
At Natural Denims Ltd., where some 8,200 workers signed a collective bargaining agreement in January, SGSF worked with factory management to ensure workers receive their full pay during the factory closure. Management also has established a 10-member committee of union members and management volunteers who will assist workers who become ill or face any emergency during the closure, and are developing plans to address worker safety in coming months.
Even so, David Welsh, country director of Southeast Asia of the Solidarity Center, a nonprofit aligned with the U.S.-based labor federation AFL-CIO, said the reforms, in the garment sector at least, risk amounting to a “race to the bottom”–slashing benefits to appease big international brands that can afford to pay. During the three months ended August–the most recent data available–Sweden’s H&M, which has manufacturing facilities in Indonesia, reported a gross profit margin of 50 percent before tax.
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