Originally published August 28 2005
U.S. textile companies use overseas "slaves" to make products, professor says
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
The people working for U.S. textile companies in Thailand and Swaziland are paid less than minimum wages, which constitutes near-slavery, according to a University of Buffalo professor.
Before you slip into those jeans made in Swaziland, consider that working conditions in overseas sweatshops have not only helped destroy the U.S. garment industry, but have turned textile workers overseas into the "new slaves" of globalized industrialism.
So says sociologist Piya Pangsapa, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Women's Studies at the University at Buffalo, where she is an adjunct professor of history and Asian studies and directs the Global Citizenship concentration in the Department of Women's Studies.
Pangsapa presented the results of her ethnographic field research, "The Piecework System and 'New Slaves' of the Apparel Industry," on Aug. 14 at the 100th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Philadelphia.
Pangsapa says that while piece-rate production had always been found in sweatshops and home-work systems in many countries, it has been integrated increasingly into the production processes of large textile and garment factories that once operated on an assembly-line system.
"The transition to piecework means that daily wages and overtime are eliminated," she says.
The pay rate for an item may be as little as 30 cents per one hundred pieces or as high as $1 per hundred.
Workers compete to get the more difficult work batches to earn more pay.
"The wages are so low," says Pangsapa, "that workers must labor to the limits of their physical capability just to make enough to cover their basic needs."
"Because workers must constantly compete with one another for work, the cooperative, supportive behavior that marked assembly line production has disappeared.
In one factory I studied," Pangsapa says, "a system of monetary fines was imposed that would automatically take out one-fourth of a worker's meager wages to cover anticipated defects.
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