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posted by n1 on Saturday June 17 2017, @09:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the fashion-sweatshops dept.

The Guardian reports:

The Guardian has spoken to more than a dozen workers at the fashion label's factory in Subang, Indonesia, where employees describe being paid one of the lowest minimum wages in Asia and there are claims of impossibly high production targets and sporadically compensated overtime.

The workers' complaints come only a week after labour activists investigating possible abuses at a Chinese factory that makes Ivanka Trump shoes disappeared into police custody.

The activists' group claimed they had uncovered a host of violations at the plant including salaries below China's legal minimum wage, managers verbally abusing workers and "violations of women's rights".

In the Indonesian factory some of the complaints are similar, although the wages paid to employees in Subang are much lower.

[...] PT Buma, a Korean-owned garment company started in Indonesia in 1999, is one of the suppliers of G-III Apparel Group, the wholesale manufacturer for prominent fashion brands including Trump's clothing.

[...] When Alia was told the gist of Ivanka Trump's new book on women in the workplace, she burst out laughing. Her idea of work-life balance, she said, would be if she could see her children more than once a month.

[...] Carry Somers, founder of the non-profit Fashion Revolution said: "Ivanka Trump claims to be the ultimate destination for Women Who Work, but this clearly doesn't extend to the women who work for her in factories around the world."

In March, Indonesia was called out by President Donald Trump for having an unfavourable trade balance with the US. The president took issue with Indonesia's $13bn surplus last year and vowed to penalise "cheating foreign importers".

Bad pay, unrealistic production requirements, unpaid overtime and verbal abuse are among the complaints of the workers. Ivanka has factories in China, and Indonesia where wages are even lower. Does textile production really have to be like this? Can we really not afford buying clothes made in humane conditions?


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by n1 on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:24PM (1 child)

    by n1 (993) on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:24PM (#527112) Journal

    We don't have to follow the authors intention, we can see this and perhaps consider the source of our clothing more carefully in the future.

    We didn't run this story casually, it was discussed at length if it was valid or appropriate. Due to the official capacity Ivanka has in the current government, and their position on local manufacturing and other nations 'cheating', the difference between public ideology and private business practices was worth highlighting.

    This has been an equal opportunity topic, at least in the UK... It was front page news in many places last year, and I would have had no hesitation in running this story. [thesun.co.uk] ... But then of course, the media is now portraying Corbyn's Labour party as 'just the same as trump' because he's not from the standard school of politics.

    Poverty-stricken workers are paid 30 PENCE an hour to make £10 t-shirts – that help fund Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign

    [...] One Bangladeshi factory worker Abdul, 35, told Mail Online: “I feel angry that a politician is using T-shirts created with our back-breaking work to make a statement about workers’ rights when he clearly doesn’t care about our rights at all.”

    The problem would normally be, career politicians are just that and don't have notable business interests or experience that so obviously contradict their grand political ideals... but when you have people with the explicit background in business to run the country, you do have a history to work from... They were in part voted in for their business acumen to be transferred to running a country, but then we actually have a track record to look on to see how that leadership works in practice, for everyone involved, not just the business owners and C level managers. Has the Trumps (organization) ever run a publicly listed company with thousands/millions of shareholders, and public financial statements with the addition of diverse long and short term interests across multiple industries?

    As someone who has run their own business... I don't do things just because 'everyone does it' (pay below living wages, outsource manufacturing, unrealistic productivity targets)... I have my own moral and ethical standards, try to treat people who work for me as i'd like to be treated myself, but maybe that's why i'm not so successful compared to the Trumps.

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  • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:29PM

    by Gaaark (41) on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:29PM (#527116) Journal

    I'm gladdened when i hear about people with ethics and morals: proper up-bringing and 'mindfulness': if more people acted ethically and treated their workers like family, the world would be a faaaaaar better place.

    We need more people with ethics in politics.... or maybe that is 'we need SOME people in politics with ethics. Not sure if there are any right now (or ever?).

    --
    --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---