Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

Here’s another story from the margins. That you won’t hear about in the marketing campaigns that flash across our screens and sell our magazines.

From Samima.

My name is Samima Akther. I am twenty-one years old. I have been working in garment factories for three years. Since February I have been working in Shah Makdhum as a sewing operator.

I produce shirts including Disney’s “Pooh” label. My operation is joining the side seams of the shirt. In my factory, each line has thirty-three machines. Each line produces 120 shirts per hour, a total of 1,320 shirts a day if we work eleven hours.

Until recently, I had to work from 8 am until 10 pm each day. We get only two days off a month. I walk to work and back because I cannot afford to take a bus or bicycle rickshaw, which would cost 450 taka a month. In dollars that would be $7.84 or 27 cents a day. The factory is three kilometers away, and it takes thirty minutes to walk. I normally get home at 10:30 pm.

I get a regular wage of 1,650 taka a month, not counting overtime. In dollars this comes to $28.75 (a month), or 14 cents an hour.

Because we have to work very long hours, seven days a week, we have no family life, no personal life, no social life.

If the last sentence doesn’t remind you of slavery, then you’re blind. Samima is nothing more than a cog in a machine that produces “fluff” for us. We buy our kids toys. We buy ourselves toys. We buy ourselves clothes to make ourselves look good. Meanwhile, people . . . real people work 28 days a month, 12 hours a day, for $28. Meanwhile Disney’s shareholders and executives reap insane profits.

Perhaps both the consumer and the producer are just cogs in the machine.

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Globalization, Disney, Colonialism, Sweat Shop Labor[/tags]

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

Here’s a short 1 minute video of Jenrain’s story that I made last week. Forgive the cheesiness of my voice-over reading.

And here’s another story of a worker who makes things she can’t afford and can’t enjoy so that we can have excess. Sadly, this is what would be considered an “above average” work life in an overseas factory.

I don’t share these stories as a pompous detached white boy. But rather to show you how full of contradictions I am. For example check out the first four photos from our Sunday house cleaning session. We have a table full of stuff. Made 2 trips to Goodwill. Threw away 2 garbage bags. And have 7 rubbermaid tubs full to the brim. And that’s just what we cleaned out of our cabinets and closets. That’s just the stuff we don’t use on a regular basis, i.e. 6 months or so. And we only live in a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house. Less than 1500 square feet. Talk about embarrassing gross excess.

Anyway . . .

From Samima.

I cannot support myself with the wage I am getting. I have rice and lentils for breakfast, rice and mashed potato for lunch, and for supper rice and vegetables. I eat chicken once a month when I get paid, and maybe twice a month I buy a small piece of fish.

If we want to use the bathroom, we have to get permission from the supervisor, and he monitors the time. If someone takes too long for any reason, the supervisor shouts at her and humiliates her, calling her names. If someone makes a mistake, the supervisor docks four or five hours of overtime wage, or lists her as absent, taking the whole day’s wage.

In my factory there is no day care, no medical facilities. The women don’t receive maternity benefits. The overtime is mandatory, but we are always cheated on our overtime pay. The supervisor makes us sign two separate payroll sheets. One tells the truth – that we worked four or five hours of overtime each day. The other says that we only worked two hours of overtime each day, as our labor law requires. That is the one they show to the buyers.

Our lives have been stolen. We are treated like animals, and any workers who attempt to get together a union are fired immediately and may be blacklisted. We feel that we have been born only to serve the needs of the owners.

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Globalization, Colonialism, Sweat Shop Labor[/tags]

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

I thought I might revisit the idea of Corporate Responsibility Mondays. But instead of focusing on a specific company – which we can dismiss if we don’t typically buy from them – I’ll take a look at the general industry and economic model that globalization and colonialism has built for us. And for which we are usually the sole benefactors of it’s successes and profits. I’ll do this by giving you letters from typical overseas workers who make the things that we enjoy. The things that we typically wear for a few years until it goes out of fashion, at which point it goes into our closet, attic, or thrift store.

People are more important than things.

From Jenrain.

On the production line there are thirty machines with thirty operators and ten helpers. The supervisors give us a production target of 370 caps per hour (college university hats), but we can barely complete 320 caps per hour, so we have to work as fast as we can. But because of this, we sometimes make mistakes, and then the supervisors shout at us and call us bad names, or they slap us, or hit us with a stick or a cap, or jab us with scissors. Sometimes we cry because of this rough treatment, and then they threaten us not to cry.

I have to ask permission to use the bathroom, and they give you only two minutes. The supervisor checks the time. If I need more than two minutes, the supervisor yells at you and calls you bad names.

We only have tap water to drink, which is filthy and makes us sick. The workers often have diarrhea, jaundice, and kidney problems. Because we have to sit on stools with no backs working so many hours, the workers also suffer from backaches.

The factory is cloudy with dust. It is not well ventilated; it is without enough air and light. The air of the factory is polluted with dust from the cloth. This dust goes into our noses and makes us sick with coughs and respiratory problems.

God, may we allow these stories of your children to haunt us. Bring them to mind when we aimlessly or purposefully walk through stores. Stir in us an imagination to dream up new ways of providing jobs and resources for people who have none without making them slaves. Stir in us eyes to see and ears to hear the voices suffering at the margins. In the name of the Father who creates, the Son who rescues, and the Spirit who inspires. AMEN.

[tags]Corporate Responsibility, Globalization, Colonialism, Sweat Shop Labor[/tags]

Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

Well I know this will sadden all of you who love this daily dose of negativity. But for various reasons . . . this will be the last week of this series for a bit. I think in it’s place I’ll talk about something happy like puppies. Or what I ate for breakfast. Because those things are constructive. Sarcasm implied.

With that being said . . . Ariah and I will be discussing socially responsible investing. Ariah’s thoughts can be found here where he discusses some of the tension that exists within such an ambiguous area like “socially responsible investing”, as well as suggesting some positive investment strategies.

This is a rather tricky subject. One that Ariah highlights very nicely. So I’ll leave it to him to explain the difficulty in selecting a “socialy responsible investment”. But it’s extremely difficult simply because there are not necessarily clear cut lines. Black and white demarcations between “good” and “bad”. Even those that are considered “good” at some point along the social line do things corporately that have a negative effect on the environment, labor, or ethics.

But in the wise words of Nicholas Fielder – something is better than nothing.

The thing that makes investing such a difficult topic is that most of us don’t have enough money or experience to invest with single stocks (companies). We tend to have our retirements tied up in mutual funds and other group investments. So while it is easy to avoid investing in singular companies like Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola . . . it’s extremely time consuming and difficult to sort and sift through group funds.

For example . . . let’s take a look at Playboy. A company that most people would agree is probably not the pillar of family values and ethical behavior. Although I hear the articles are good. Take a look at their shareholder breakdown. Wells Fargo owns 2.6 million shares of stock making it the company with the 2nd highest percentage of stock in Playboy. And when it comes to mutual funds . . . Fidelity’s Small Cap Fund owns 2.4 million shares of stock (which amounts to 27 million dollars).

Now I could probably walk up and down the aisles of my old conservative church. And 99% of the people would be red in the face with anger if I said we should support Playboy. But if I went up and down the aisle and found all the people who had an investment in Fidelity’s Small Cap Fund . . . for most this would be the first time they had heard anything about it . . . and for others they would justify it somehow by extolling the virtues of capitalism.

The point is if you wouldn’t support Playboy as a company by buying their magazines and videos . . . then why would you have a portion of your investments going to a fund or company that owns a substantial percentage of the company? Or better yet 65% of the company is owned by mutual funds. With over 15% of those being owned by Fidelity. So I don’t know what the math is on 15% of 65% (a little help Eric . . .) but it’s probably close to 5% of the company. So technically you have a 5% investment in Playboy.

Do you see how quickly it starts to get tricky? You can easily see how blind many of us (including myself) make our decisions.

And I guess that’s the point of this whole little series. That started with ME wanting to find out where my money was going with the companies that I regularly support. Needless to say it was eye-opening for me.

So despite the perceived negativity that some have found . . . I hope it was an informative and challenging look at what happens when we spend our money blindly. Bottomline . . . we shouldn’t support things with our money that Jesus wouldn’t support with his. And to be even more blunt . . . we should deliberately subvert those things that he wouldn’t support, flipping over the tables if need be.

I want to thank Ariah for taking the time each week to post a topic that provides hopeful alternatives. That is a much more difficult task than me taking one company and ripping all of it’s bad virtues. So for that I am thankful to Ariah for his time and insight.

P.S. What do you want to be that my spam count will go through the roof now that I’ve used the word Playboy within a post?

[tags]Playboy, Socially Responsible Investing, SRI, Fidelity, Wells Fargo, Corporate Responsibility[/tags]