The Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights released a report in 2012 about the conditions experienced by the workers. The report states that workers are paid little over a dollar, work in horrid conditions, and are forced to work overtime. On top of this, the works have production goals of 1,000 pieces and if this is not completed the workers must work overtime without pay until the goal is reached. In other cases, the goal is suddenly changed from 1,000 to 1,500 pieces. The living conditions are also awful. The company dorms are filthy, garage everywhere, overcrowded rooms, and no mattresses. The workers describe the cafeteria food as awful and say there is rarely any meat.
Another example is the Harvest Rich company, who supplies to Hanes, Puma, and Wal-Mart, Target, Reebok, and Motherswork. In 2006, The Institue for Global Labor and Human Rights also released a report about Harvest Rich. The report estimates 200-300 children working at the Harvest Rich plant in Bangladesh. They report beatings, 12-14 hour work days, some all-night 19-20 hour shifts, often working seven days a week, and wages as low as six and a half cents an hour.
Both cases are examples of trafficking. But what can be done to stop it? A possibility is for large corporations to state that they will no longer import from companies using slave labor. If a huge corporation, such as Walmart, announced that they would only buy from fair-trade companies, I suspect many companies would change their ways in order to keep doing business with one of the largest corporate companies in the world. The Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights suggests that the large corporate companies importing these goods should not stop buying from these factories, instead they should provide wage and education stipends to the children, which will cost less than $70 a month per child. $70 a month per child may seem like a lot, but to a corporate giant it is a doable amount. Large corporate companies have the power to change the forced labor industry.
I think this is a fantastic post, Samantha. Although I don't personally believe that all corporations that import from companies that use slave labor are totally ignorant of the situation at hand, determining whether a company uses unfair labor practices is more difficult than one would think, but some corporations are getting better about this. For instance, Professor Murphy once told us her experience with a Walmart representative who reached out to her personally in order to find signs of human trafficking in Walmart's supply chains.
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