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Two worker-driven initiatives in El Salvador First published in Briarpatch magazine in May, 2006 HILDA CASTRO LIVES IN El Salvador near the capital, San Salvador, where she cares for her three children and works in a maquila, a garment assembly plant. Her hands leave no doubt as to the hard work she does to put food on the table for her family. Hilda’s sense of humour and her enthusiasm are readily apparent when she speaks. Marta Sonia Diaz, like Hilda, has three children. She exudes cheerfulness and enthusiasm when she speaks about them, about her work, and about her union activities. Her relative youth belies the wealth of her experience and the many struggles she has witnessed over the years. Marta’s commitment to the struggle for fair working conditions and her capacity for sacrifice are inspiring. Marta is the secretary of the Union of Textile Workers, and works closely with the Just Garments factory. Hilda is a founding member of the Cooperativa de Madres Solteras (the Single Mothers’ Co-operative). Marta and Hilda are both veterans of the Salvadoran maquilas—they are the foot soldiers of the global garment industry. They saw the Salvadoran garment industry flourish in the 1990s, when it employed thousands of labourers. Now they are witnessing its decline as the maquilas are relocated to countries with more “competitive” conditions. But rather than remain passive victims of global trends, Marta and Hilda have become active builders of viable—if risky—alternatives that have attracted the support and captured the imagination of a global solidarity movement. As a result of their work with Just Garments and the Single Mothers’ Co-operative, Marta and Hilda, together with their fellow maquila workers, have made significant advances in the struggle for workers’ rights, but they face a very difficult road ahead. Their initiatives emerged in response to recent upheavals in the global garment industry that make it increasingly easy for contractors to jump from country to country in search of the lowest wages possible—and increasingly difficult for workers to make ends meet. The New Maquila Order The fundamental challenge facing their factory remains: How to compete with corporate globalization? THETHE MULTIFIBER AGREEMENT, signed in 1974 by the United States, the European Union, and Canada as a way to protect their domestic markets, was a collection of quotas and tariffs designed to regulate the international garment industry. The agreement established the amount and type of textiles and clothing that a producing country could export to another country for consumption. Its expiration on January 1, 2005 marked another milestone in the gradual deregulation of the global market, and a profound shift in the global balance of forces driving the garment industry Under the agreement, countries like Bangladesh or El Salvador had been restricted to a predetermined quota of T-shirts or trousers when exporting to the American or European market. Retailers were in some instances forced to outsource their operations to as many as fifty countries around the world in order to maintain their inventory. With the complete phasing out of country-of-origin quotas on December 31, 2004, however, North American and European retailers are now free to import textiles and clothing from the lowest bidder. Consequently, maquilas have further shifted operations towards the countries offering the lowest wages, the loosest regulations, and the biggest tax breaks. As one of the workers at the Single Mothers’ Co-operative commented, the factories in El Salvador are closing “because the price of labour increased. It is hard to compete with the other countries.” In what was already a poorly regulated and exploitive industry, this pressure to compete eroded labour standards even further. The pressure exerted on the maquilas to remain competitive trickles down to the workers, who are forced to produce more for less. While these changes have had devastating effects on maquila workers and their communities, in certain instances the changes have forced workers to consider other alternatives. Thus, much like the people involved in the unemployed workers’ movement that erupted in Argentina during the economic crisis of 1999-2002, maquila workers like Marta and Hilda have been struggling to build alternatives that will allow them not only to feed their families, but to do so with dignity. Just Garments and the Single Mothers’ Co-operative are two initiatives that seek to do just that. JustShirts and the Single Mothers’ Co-operative JustShirts is a Canadian-based co-operative that formed to facilitate the production and sale of fair trade clothing. Its objective is to connect producer co-operatives with organizations or individuals who wish to purchase responsibly produced clothing. JustShirts supports the development of producer cooperatives and uses an open-source purchasing and costing model to make the production process transparent, informing prospective consumers about where the products were produced and how much it cost to produce them. Furthermore, profit—the difference between the retail price and the cost of production—is reinvested in the producer co-operatives and their communities. The Single Mothers’ Cooperative, operating out of San Salvador, is the first producer co-operative to partner with JustShirts. The co-operative was formed by a group of three single mothers determined to provide for their families at a time when more and more workers were losing their jobs as maquilas chased lower production costs to other countries. These mothers have years of experience working in the garment industry and have the skills to produce clothes that are in demand in the North American market. Like No Sweat and Just Garments, both JustShirts and the Single Mothers’ Co-operative have faced a series of operational challenges. The relatively small size of the co-operatives’ operations keeps material and distribution costs high. The Single Mothers’ Co-operative pays more for textiles than a conventional maquila would because they do not have the capital to purchase large, discounted quantities of textile. The co-operative’s current production capacity also affects shipping costs: limited to exporting small quantities, they incur higher per-item transportation costs. For these reasons, JustShirts has been soliciting bulk orders of T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts which can be made by the Single Mother’s Co-operative and supplied directly to customers in North America. The first order was to the campus community radio station CKLN in Toronto. Their support enabled JustShirts to place another order with the Single Mothers’ Co-operative. This positive experience encouraged JustShirts to look for alternative ways to distribute what the women in El Salvador produce. They are trying to avoid for-profit retail outlets and are concentrating their attention on non-governmental organizations and co-operatives to help promote their initiatives. Volunteers and labour and non-governmental organizations play a fundamental role. These alternative forms of distribution allow JustShirts to offset some of the production costs incurred. But in spite of JustShirts’ efforts in North America, there are still hurdles to overcome. Some of the workers at the Single Mothers’ Co-operative note that “the number of orders is not enough to sustain the co-operative. People cannot work one week and then not another. At this stage there is not much work, nor is it constant.” Hilda and her co-workers want JustShirts and their co-operative to grow. “We want to be able to have enough money so that we could buy our own cloth,” she says. To avoid the feast or famine syndrome of a major order one month followed by several months of decreased production, it is important for the workers to have regular and manageable orders. On this end of the continent, the challenge for JustShirts is to increase orders and keep them steady by building awareness of their services and attracting multiple long-term contracts. Fair trade is about revealing what globalization keeps hidden: the exploitation of people kept conveniently out of sight and therefore out of mind. But it’s also about the varied and innovative alternatives to globalization that are emerging all around the world. If these alternatives are to become visible and viable, producers and consumers need to reach across borders and stand united in the struggle for just labour practices and fair trade. Sound like a challenge? No sweat! Daniel Martinez and Claudia Quintanilla are graduate students and research associates with the Centre for Public Interest Accounting at the University of Calgary. They recently travelled to El Salvador to visit and speak with workers in the garment industry. |