Fashion vs. Fish: In the Pursuit of Good….Shrimp

When it comes to a cheap, protein – a pack of tasty king prawns will always, hit the spot. Slightly salty, a bit juicy and not quite as fishy as most of our other finned friends – when you’re tucking into your King Prawn Bhuna – the last thing on your mind is where the prawns have been farmed.

Yet according to a report published by the ‘American Solidarity Centre’ the global shrimp industry, now worth a staggering $13 billion, is responsible for some of the world’s worst labour rights abuses.

According to the report, workers in small plants located along Bangladesh’s coastal regions earn below the 3000 BDT minimum wage, work excessive hours (over 12 hours a day) with over-time generally going unpaid (generally shrimp preparation is piece rate). In surveys, many of the workers were exposed to damaging levels of ammonia – forced to pay for protective gear out of their already low wages. It’s actually worse than most clothing factories – proven by a recent video published on the Guardian website which has got many members of the public questioning exactly what all the fuss is about.

The report charts and compares the industry in Bangladesh to Thailand. In Bangladesh the industry is now worth $188 million fuelling predictions that it will become the next big export industry – offering diversification away from over-reliance on garments. But unlike the garment industry shrimp does not get the same amount of media attention – comparing the ‘love fashion-hate sweatshops’ t-shirt campaign it’s hard to envisage the same for “I <3 my pink prawns”…

Yet without the massive attention of the world’s media – the shrimp workers are largely ignored. Like the garment industry, most of the worker’s employed are young females, though not because of ‘nimble finger’ debates, just because their deemed fragile, powerless and easy to manipulate – often an un-married burden on their families. Compare their employment to the males of the domestic dried fish industry, there is no skill, respectability or pride.

And when you look further into it, it’s enough to put you right off your dinner. Located in sketchy areas, the shrimp are crammed into tiny ponds quickly catching and spreading disease. In turn, manufacturers pump into the water copious amounts of drugs and chemicals to combat the risk, which are all then absorbed into the fish we eat. According to the report, as many as 13 different drugs are pumped into the average fish pond- many of which are actually illegal. Yummy.

Then finally there’s the massive destruction of forest mangroves, displacement of indigenous people and killing of the poor sea turtles.

No one want’s to think their dinner is killing Squirt.

I’m off prawns for a little while –next post will attempt to look at the alternatives.

Francis: “Like the First Women of The Cabinet”

You know the scene, Francis ‘Baby’ Houseman and Johny Castle in his bed pondering over Baby’s real name:

Johnny: Baby, What’s your real name?

Baby: Francis, like the first women of the cabinet

Patrick: Frances. That’s a real grown up name.

(cue kissing and cuddling)

But did you also know that Ms Francis Perkins, was not only the first lady to hold position in the US Cabinet (she was Labour Secretary from 1933 – 1945) she was also the longest serving, making huge gains for women’s rights, social security and decent work.

Historical accounts portray her as an upper middle class ‘do’ gooder. Privately educated, (she gained a university degree from a liberal arts college – studying hard science no less), and later a masters in Economics and Sociology at New York’s Colombia.  While studying for her undergraduate, her economics teacher Professor Anna May Soule, by the sound of it a-typical “school-marm” type, decided that her girls needed to be made aware of their own privaledge. ”There are some people much poorer than yourselves girls“  and “in life not everybody has comfort and security”. So she sent them all off to observe the workers in the local factories.

This experience set the course for Perkins to dedicate her life to the cause of the worker. After finishing college she applied for a job at the Charity Organisations Society, forced herself upon the organisations director, and was sent away with a copy of How the Other Half Lives by Jacob Riis and advised to “take up teaching”.

She thus moved to New York, taking up a position as a sociology lecturer at Adelphi College, University of Colombia, while also spending summers volunteering at a community settlement in Chicago. The Hull House was a meeting place for the local textile community and here she started organising the women into the first female only trade union’s – becoming very close to Gertrud Bernam (herself quite a notable women in the women’s trade union movement establishing the National Trade Union Women’s League).

Moving to New York she joined the National Consumers League – the first organisation to campaign for better legislation and spear heading consumer labelling. At the time, small workshops of un-organised workers in downtown New York were employing migrant women (mostly Jewish and Italian) for 18 hour days, making clothes to sell on the fashionable Fifth Avenue. The world’s first sweatshops. 

On the afternoon of March 25^th 1911 the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, located in downtown New York and employing around 150 Italian and Jewish migrant women went up in flames. As is the case in sweatshop factory fires even today- the doors to safety were locked and most of the girls either burnt or perished to death in the gas. According to a news report quoted in the autobiography of Robert Reich:

“The afternoon March 25th 1911 – They jumped with their clothing ablaze. The hair of some of the girls streamed up aflame as they leaped. Thud after thud sounded on the pavements…From the opposite windows spectators saw again and again pitiable companionships formed in the instant of death – girls who placed their arms around each other as they leaped”

Francis Perkins in response to the tragedy – became the poster girl for worker representation, dedicating her life to campaigning for worker’s rights at the highest level. While she came from privilege – she put this privilege to good use.  She expanded factory investigations, reduced the workweek to 48 hours, and championed minimum wages, pensions and social security benefits working well into her 80s. Her autobiography is fascinating  - transcripts and snippets are available at the link below.

 Colombia: Notable New Yorkers

Multi….Yawn…..

What exactly are Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives and where do they sit in terms of making clothing and footwear production more ethical?

It has occurred to me recently that while I spend a lot of my time researching MSIs I struggle to explain exactly what they are and what role they play in regulating production in clothing and footwear industries.

Most people drift off when they hear the opening jargon.

So here is an attempt at introducing Multi-Stakeholder activity the bases of which forms my PhD research -all without hopefully not giving too much of the game away!

To set the context it is neccessary to go back to the 1980s with the privatisation and liberalisation strategies of Margaret Thatcher (for a nice overview see Andrew Marr’s ‘History of Modern Britain’) – freeing up regulations on international trade and deciding the best way to govern the economy was by allowing it to govern itself (for more on the rise of neo-liberal economics see here). Up until this point the UK had championed the ‘welfare state’ model – and large scale nationalised industries.

At this time also – technology vastly improved, costs of UK manufacturing increased (fuelled by labour un-rest and increased living costs) and the ‘developing’ economies of South East Asia (including China) were developing their productive capacities – aided by the relatively cheapness of buying a sewing machine itself championed as a key stepping stone towards national development goals. One by one retailers and clothing brands weighed up the economic costs of maintaining production in the west compared to the rising export production in the South – deciding that the best and cheapest option was to shift sourcing strategy and buy from suppliers selling goods overseas.

This carried on for about 10 years bringing  in to common place centralized high streets and mass consumerism. The most successful brands made huge profits and the more money they made – the more complex their supply chains became, sourcing from far and wide and making the most of the different capabilities of various developing nations.

Then, during the mid 1990s came the backlash. Reports by Oxfam of sweatshop conditions within factories supplying to Nike made their way into the Western media -fuelling campaigns against global sports brands accruing huge profits off the backs of gross human rights abuses. Added to this the continued losses of manufacturing jobs in the west put pressures on governments to increase accountability and regulation. But the regulatory climate had changed. And it was no longer possible to reconcile conditions through national regulatory law. The answer would need to be cross-border global regulation -but in reality this could never go beyond idealogy.

So the onus was pushed onto the firms. And the governments convened with the brands to create organizations (non-government organizations) to help them monitor their supply chains and make them more accountable and compliant. From this emerged the Fair Labour Association in the US and later the Ethical Trading Initiative in the UK (there are a number of others: the Fair Wear Foundation in Europe; Business Social Compliance Initiative – again in Europe and the Workers Rights Consortium, coming from the slightly different angle of the United Students Against Sweatshops movement). The idea being that these initiatives engage with the different stakeholders involved in clothing production – suppliers, workers, labour rights NGOS and the consumer, to make supply chains more compliant or ‘ethical’ (itself a loaded term) – hence the term ‘multi-stakeholder initiative’.

And what I want to find out in my current research, is the extent to which these movements, positioning themselves as ‘multi-stakeholder’ are in actuality effectively engaging the workers to which they seek to represent – examining the work of one of these movements on the ground in Bangladesh.

More on MSIs from the Clean Clothes Campaign And Labour behind the Label

And some more history on the Rise of Ethical Fashion:

Shirahime

Ethical Fashion Forum

No Sweat Coalition

War on Want Love Fashion: Hate Sweatshops Campaign

Dhaka 3 months in…

This is my first blog post for a while. I have written others but for one reason or another they have either been too sensitive, accusative or just plain boring to post. I wrote this while I was on a bus from Shamoli, my Dhaka home, to Gulshan, North Dhaka.

I’m on my way to a meeting with one of the cities factory owners. It’s so loud. I’m dressed in western clothing. The research is going really slow. All I did today was take notes on t factory owners I was able to locate through face book – I’ve even resorted to creating a completely different facebook account for this purpose…

It’s weird being here as a researcher. It’s not that I don’t feel safe, I just feel out of place. Actually, sitting on this bus in the dark I feel invisible. I think I’ve broken a social code. And it’s so loud outside. So loud. The horns, all sounding at different pitches. Thousands of them. Exhaust pipes. What seems like decade old beaten up buses. The thumping hands against the iron when the bus needs to stop. More horns. Bright lights. People. Men. Dust.

Not for the first time I can’t decide whether it’s beautiful or not. It’s heady. Recently I think the traffic has got worse. As winter begins to shift to spring it has bought with it even denser traffic.  You can be stuck in the heat for 2 hours or more.

Yet at the same time turn a corner and instantly you’re in the middle of peace and quiet. The main areas of Dhaka are actually comprised individual small village communities linked up by the congested roads. One of my favorite things to do is just take a rickshaw round the side-streets of an evening. It’s beautiful. You don’t need to go anywhere or do anything, you just sit in the carriage, watch, listen and let the world pass you by. You see everything – people going about their lives in their small workshops – stitching, crafting, gossiping at the cha stands, calling out ‘how are you’ confidently and proudly in broken banglish.

Two weeks ago I was in Nepal. The break was amazing but it feels good to be back. Dhaka has guts. When you’re tired in this city you feel exhausted – but when things go well – it’s like adrenaline. Feeling good here feels really good – like the satisfaction and confidence which comes from taming a wild beast.

One of the buzz- words I keep hearing in this city is ‘women’s empowerment’. To ‘empower women’. To give them the power or authority to do something,

To increase their spiritual, political, social, educational, gender AND economic strength. Yet what is its corollary? Powerlessness? Arguably everyday life for the majority population of this city takes a great deal of power – everyday the newspaper reports the recovering of bodies from various predicaments – road traffic accidents; killings; lootings, disappearances, suicides – gender or no gender. Arguably, at it’s best just living, surviving and combatting this city is empowerment in itself.

Christmas in Dhaka

The 25^th December in Bangladesh is in fact a national holiday – on Dhaka’s crowded streets however things continue as normal. In fact outside of our humbly decorated apartment – (paper chains, home made Christmas crackers, sparkly streamers and toilet roll) – it’s just another day, as loud and buzzy as any other.

Being that the westerners residing in the AMRF apartment are largely German – Christmas was celebrated on the 24^th. Myself and a friend stayed up most of the night on the 23^rd listening to Bollywood music, drinking whisky and putting up decorations. Trying to make the grey, smoky stained interior of the Alternative Movement for Resources and Freedom Society (AMRF) apartment slightly more colourful – we were one step away from painting the walls a nice shade of orange!!

 The 24^th was then spent preparing a Christmas feast – as close to a traditional Christmas dinner as possible. The large proportion of vegetarians in our party meant we cooked a nut roast – attempting to roast vegetables and potatoes with the various spices we found in the cupboard. Some worked, some didn’t – the veg certainly tasted a bit funky.

Then came the evenings celebration and my first taste of the pressures involved in being a good Bengali wife. Being that I tend to take these things a little too seriously, am the oldest girl – and was probably a little too excited about Christmas – somehow I was propelled into party instigator and host. Like it or not – it was my Christmas party.

 And wow. It seems in Bangladesh if you invite people round your house –the expectation of roles and duties is high. Under no circumstances must you eat, rest, or generally enjoy yourself until your guests are seated and contented. I actually think you are supposed to watch your guests eat. Awkward.

 Of course my culturally retarded self ignored all these rules – served the food late, ate first and then spent most of the evening dancing ‘Ooo la la la la la la’ with our guest’s children. All I needed was a glass of wine in hand – and I could have almost have been at home.

Christmas day then came and went. Having somehow acquired (thanks Jan!) a nice apartment in the smart end of town some AMRF friends and I, cooked a stir-fry and watched a film – interspersed with Skype calls home. Don’t know if being able to wave hello to all your friends and family together in one place, showing off the culinary talents and prepping themselves for the turkey makes being away from home easier or harder – especially when the whole family decides to sing ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ from half way across the world! I’m blaming this one on the booze.

So that was it. Today’s the 28^th – back to work and labour compliance. Was a different Christmas but not necesarily bad. Roll on 2012…

Dhaka’s two cities

Having been in Dhaka two weeks the main thing that strikes me is how different the place is, in the company of a man.

 So, my first week in Dhaka was mostly spent in the company of another Phd student – a German guy called Henry doing a Phd on Bangladeshi politics. Both of us having just arrived spent the first couple of days together walking around the city and exploring all its new sights. It was a great couple of days, we wondered around the streets of Old Dhaka and the many markets and everyone we met was friendly and inquisitive, generally just interested in who we were, what country we came from and what were we doing visiting Bangladesh. People assumed that Henry and I were husband and wife – or at least partners, and while people would mostly address Henry first, I was made to feel very welcome as his companion.

Fast forward a week and braving the city by myself, the city feels like an almost completely different place. At best my presence as a single women on the streets of Dhaka is treated with suspicion, at worst the men believe they can get away with inappropriate practices just because you are a white, single female. It’s hard to explain it, but its like the air changes and becomes filled with contention.

The problem is two fold. One, women of a certain class are not deemed respectable if they are found loitering the streets. While men are free to walk around holding hands with their male companions, these same practices are not extended to women.  Where women on the street are found alone, in the eyes of the public they have no respectability – a street women begging for change. In the universities, where women are more frequently found, the frequency of those covering their hair greatly increases, with middle class women distancing themselves with their lower class counterparts.

 Two – there are a number of naive young girls who come to Bangladesh and do not realize the influence of their actions – with respect to covering up. They don’t realize that when we expose our white skin, even to the slightest degree, the men associate it with what they see on ‘sex in the city’– free, easy women, literally gagging for it. This transcends to build an image that all young western women traveling on their own, are an easy target, despite calls to the opposite.

Yet, there are a few hopeful signs that things are changing, owing not in a small part to the presence of Dhaka’s ready-made garment factories. While conditions in these factories in many cases continue to be appalling, their impact in extending opportunities and financial independence to women – outside of the prevailing patriarchal structures – cannot be denied. Within these spheres also, a small number of women can be found forming their own independent trade union organizations – outside of the factory setting and campaigning for their rights both in the factory and wider society in general. To quote a young Bangladeshi women working on the German development program PROGRESS (Promotion of social environmental, and production standards in the readymade garment industry),  ‘if you have a voice –you should raise it’. Something we can all take on board.

Food, Fuel and Fast Fashion

It strikes me how everything is so linked. The clothes on our backs, the food we eat, the cars we drive. All outcomes of the forces which govern our society. To me, the inflated costs of both food and fuel stand as the root cause of the current debt crisis. Yes governments and individuals are guilty of borrowing beyond their means, but costs of living are now higher than ever before.

Without the necessary resources of food and fuel we as a race just do not function. And it is the cost of these items which dictates the final costs of our daily amenities. Agricultural imports drive up food prices, spiralling living wage demands to unobtainable heights. While dependence on fuel from foreign lands leaves consumers powerless to control the proportion of their wages which will go on working transport costs. It is a global problem. The increased demands on pay packets are driving up the production costs needed to bring fashion to market. Indeed increased living costs and high fuel prices are driving low wage production out of China, back to the UK and US. In some cases these production houses are absorbing low wage and illegal migrant labour, giving rise to sweated labour in our own back gardens.

It also strikes me that the billions of pounds of debt procured by our country, could easily be wiped away by utilising the billions of pounds of unproductive finance feeding through the coiffeurs of the city banks and FTSE exchange. You only have to briefly visit some of London’s classiest quarters to realise that there really is a lot of money around – and its closely guarded by the richest minority striving to accumulate at the lowest costs.

Offering a practical solution, Bristolian geographer, Richard Spalding has been monitoring the use of a ‘grow your own vegetable project’ situated on derilict landsite bordering the M32. He posits cities should do more to ‘grow their own food’,  encouraging individuals to take hold of their own  agricultural costs. I’m not sure however how low income families can realistically balance these ideals with the day to day realities of bringing up a family and covering their daily essential needs. It will be interesting to monitor how these projects develop nationally in light of pressured local government budgets and individual daily struggles.

Further more, while we all drive to live sustainably and ethically – these inflated costs eat away at our monthly income, the ethical premium of which remains the privilege of the elite.