Dragon in the toy factory:

...But international rules to pro- of basic worker rights such as banning child labor and meettect the rights of workers...

...Local "A significant shift in the distribution of income and wealth factories, squeezed by competitive pressure, cut corners...

...If you don't allow us to do things our way, we'll close form their own independent organizations...

...At least two were heavily pregBangkok ought to help erase those doubts...

...Suppliers and countries compete against tributed...

...some regular exits were locked have in recent years occurred in Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, or blocked...

...There are no binding international rule 12: 8 October 1993 Commonweal safeguarding the rights of workers...

...They own a dwin- of basic human rights"), Levi Strauss has stopped doing busidling proportion of the plants in the export industries of ness in Burma and is phasing out its operations in the People's developing countries, even though the United States is often Republic of China...

...ing minimal health and safety standards...

...Pressure from consensitivities of advertising departments, commercial TV is ex- sumers and shareholders would help...

...last May destroyed the Kader-owned facility, some 188 Thai The "waste" multiplied in Bangkok two months later when workers lost their lives because their right to a reasonably safe ten female workers, nine of them teen-agers, died in a garworkplace had been grossly violated...

...ing women have become the commodities of newly indus- Levi Strauss & Co...

...To meet the big holiday demand for Ghostbusters, Mickey Instead, trade is primarily benefiting the elites, in both develMouse dolls, and Big Hauler trains, a Kader factory in the oping and developed countries, largely because the international province of China bordering Hong Kong was requiring its young labor market is a jungle...

...the U.S...

...It is easier to be callous prison or forced labor, no long working hours (over sixty hours when the people working for us are Asians on the other side of a week), no "corporal punishment or other forms of mental or the world...

...This in Hong Kong seems to have taken place over the past few can mean no pay for overtime work, no days off even on hol- years...

...it did things "our way" both in China and in dustrializing world for debasing the labor of human beings Thailand...

...One important to oppose the development and labor policies of their own gov- worker-rights step that the Clinton administration could take ernments...

...Often in violaAmerica were able to afford better laws and safer workplaces tion of their own laws, many third-world governments permit as they got richer...

...by adopting a sophisticated, two-tier human Goods now travel farther than ever...

...Britain and fecting the rights of workers in poor countries...

...At for business partners," addresses a wide range of issues that the U.S...

...Kader didn't A century ago Pope Leo XIII condemned the Western in- have to move...

...law mean nothing...

...Contracting-out gives the U.S...

...Policymakers, liberal and to promote healthy economic development in poor counconservative alike, aggressively promote and enforce interna- tries, and so under U.S...

...retail outlets selling to the richest consumers in the world...

...Instead of producing the goods, The breadth of the Levi Strauss code is exceptional...

...its historical perspective on the tragedy...

...workers, most of them women in their teens and early twenMeanwhile, a few economists and policymakers are trying ties...

...Women's clubs, church posing such scandals, even revealing the brand names of com- groups, and others could develop contacts with Asia's strugpanies involved...

...Levi Strauss & Co., another large U.S...

...The economic theories indoctri- has been in the dock since 1987 for violating those rights, nated in graduate schools are facing some real-world challenges...

...ROBERT A. SENSER is writing a book on the human rights of working men and women in the global economy...

...A retired Foreign Service labor attache, he is currently a consultant for the Asian-American Free Labor Institute...

...But personal responsibility does not...

...Prof...

...out undermining the standard of living in the developed world...

...Per capimake and unmake contracts based on the lowest cost for a cer- ta income averages say nothing about how income is distain level of quality...

...factories...

...DRAGON IN THE ROBERT A. SENSER TOY FACTORY WORKERS' RIGHTS IN ASIAN PLANTS There's something odd about it: In an era of un- The English-language Bangkok daily, The Nation, which does precedented concern for universal human rights, not share the detached Economist outlook, pointed out a sigdoubts still linger about whether the basic needs nificant aspect of the tragedy: "The bodies pulled out of the of working men and women qualify as "rights...

...duties on dolls and other imports worth $1.8 billion Co-sponsor: J. Aron Charitable Foundation (yes, billions...

...trade and investment reach rights "code of conduct...

...down our Chinese factories and move to Thailand...

...Since private commerce now teen Asian and North African children making carpets for surges across most latitudes and longitudes, international busiWestern living rooms have been perennial features in many nesses could assume some responsibility to police themselves, leading world newspapers for some years...

...to the level of a thing, a commodity...

...McNally Amphitheatre, 140 West 62nd Street, import duties...

...The most vulnerable under this global squeeze that period...

...government can't, and fire...

...The enterprise has been well integrated into a thriving global economy, one that differs radically from the historical model on which The Economist builds its rationale...

...One tier, its "terms of engagement out further than ever...

...government has so far always found it "in comIn Asia hundreds of new nongovernmental organizations pliance...

...THE JEWISHNESS OF JESUS So far the Clinton administration has shown a mixed record on international worker rights...

...took the lead in 1992 trialized nations...

...The codes are disturbing behundred suppliers under contract in fifty countries around the cause they add a dimension beyond the profit motive to doing world...

...Instead, the gains have gone primarily to ownare uncounted millions of young women at sewing machines, ers of capital and secondarily to acquisition of assets by the behind microscopes, and along assembly lines in third-world government...

...Trade Representative, headed by Mickey Kantor, Catholic University has before it petitions charging serious worker rights violations in Thailand and nineteen other countries and urging Moderator: cancellation of the extraordinary privileges that business- Peter Steinfels es, U.S...

...Similar disastrous fires fire hoses, and no fire escape...

...When a sudden fire nant...

...The appointment of Robert Reich A Contribution to the Catholic-Jewish Dialogue as secretary of labor is on the plus side...

...Cohen Opportunities to translate into reality the campaign slo- Brown University gan of putting "people first" are still at hand...

...corporations that rely heavily on petition" for the rampant exploitation of working men...

...If good people do nothing, it will be a green light greater impact on public opinion than headlines and photos for continuing the kind of callous irresponsibility that on the appearing on the front pages of the New York Times and the afternoon of May 10, 1993, brought a fiery death to 188 Thai Washington Post...

...This kind of analysis, often deployed to put a gloss of inevitability on even the most indefensible abuses of human rights, can sound plausible to the uninformed...

...Troubled by such abuses, Chinese government officials on a mass scale), bonded labor (especially for carpets in India), objected, but, as a Kader executive in Hong Kong, Andy Lee, wide-scale discrimination and violence against women, and sup- said to a Business Week reporter, "We told them, this is the pression (by violence, if necessary) of any worker efforts to toy biz...

...wreckage [at Kader] were mostly young and female...

...After the Kader fire, a U.S...

...Shaye S.D...

...The big minus is its failure to add a meaningful worker rights "side agreement" to Two perspectives and a public discussion the North American Free Trade Agreement, which devotes more than sixty pages to protecting the rights of investors and intel- Presenters: lectual property owners...

...companies increasingly act as distributors and marketers...

...John P. Meier the U.S...

...Under one of companies...

...The Far Eastern Economic Review reported last year: one another to offer labor at the lowest possible price...

...Review research suggests that the majority of people idays, no sick pay, no first-aid for injuries, no decent toilets, have gained little from the advances in per capita GDP over no fire escapes...

...In the case of Thailand, U.S...

...Though still neophytes, these Asian NGOs tries and companies operating in them to believe that the workare numerous and like-minded enough that they sometimes dare er rights aspects of U.S...

...Thanks to those privileges, granted under the so-called Generalized System of Preferences Wednesday, November 10, 6 P.M...

...and foreign busi- New York, N.Y...

...NGOs) now speak out for the rights of ordinary people, in- Such decisions have naturally led many developing councluding workers...

...this year is to show that there is finally a price to pay-loss of In the United States the TV networks, chiefly through their the GSP freebies-for ignoring U.S...

...law countries with GSP status are tional agreements to protect the rights of investors and owners supposed to meet certain criteria, among them enforcement of intellectual property rights...

...In Bangladesh's capital city of jured...

...I--] to inject some reality into the profession's rarified perspective...

...Recognizing that some problems are bequickly distanced his industry from the disaster by emphasiz- yond the control of suppliers, Levi Strauss's code has anothing that the Kader workers were not on the payrolls of the U.S...

...It makes their operations highly mobile, by allowing macroeconomic approach of economists, most of whom conthem enormous flexibility to choose among competing suppli- centrate on growth in national output and per capita income, ers within a country, within a region, or even beyond, and to as though these describe the total economic reality...

...These audio-visual stories have a much gling NGOs...

...What a waste...

...Although Thailand Not to everyone, however...

...third-world imports are beginning to apToday, with competition unleashed on a global scale, work- preciate that they cannot operate that way...

...The early stages of Disregard for safety is only one of the significant issues afindustrialization are often rough," it explained...

...The Kader factory, owned by some of the wealthiest Asians in the region, massproduces stuffed dolls (Bart Simpson, Cabbage Patch, and others) for highly profitable U.S...

...business has so far strongly resisted proposals to give its Nike and Reebok, for example, have a few American quality blessing even to less sweeping codes such as the "Human Rights control managers in Indonesian factories producing athletic Production Standards" adopted by Reebok earlier this year, which shoes, but the factories, Asian-owned, work simply as suppli- covers much the same ground as the Levi Strauss code but is ers under contract...

...trade association officer physical coercion...

...That's heresy...

...Commonweal 8 October 1993: 11 and even foster abuses, such as child labor (girls as young as women workers to work fourteen hours a day, seven days a seven and eight in Bangladesh), forced labor (notably in China, week...

...Besides the fatalities, 379 other workers were in- Indonesia, and Malaysia...

...But in this case it clearly doesn't fit the facts...

...212) 636-6300 nessmen in 1992 saved uncounted millions by being freed of U.S...

...He blamed the "callousness of employers and the greed of unrestrained com- few U.S...

...companies a number of ad- Moreover, worker rights codes depart from the dominant vantages...

...By creating new jobs in the third world, trade should enable Back in 1988, the Kader multinational offered a memorable poor countries to get off the treadmill of underdevelopment withexample of the behavior often bred by transnational mobility...

...GSP), importers benefit from what amounts to a govern- Fordham University at Lincoln Center ment subsidy saving them tens of millions each year in U.S...

...Laura d' Andrea Tyson, the new head of the Council of Economic Advisers [CEA], is one such ground-breaker...

...Organized U.S...

...popular "newsmagazine" shows, have turned their cameras Even equipped with the constitutional power to regulate inon the harsh labor realities, including the devastating Kader ternational trade, however, the U.S...

...and foreign, get for shipping imports from those New York Times countries into the U.S...

...The Office of Prof...

...Dhaka, for example, three twelve-year-old girls died in a 1990 Even as Thai officials were investigating the cause of the garment factory fire that killed twenty-five persons and infire and promising to increase safety inspections of the coun- jured about two hundred, the great majority of them young try's many new factories, The Economist of London offered women...

...com- silent about doing business in entire countries known for perpany that mass markets foreign-made goods, has about six vasive violations of human rights...

...Some of A disaster at a toy factory on the outskirts of them may have been underage...

...those guidelines ("we should not initiate or renew contractuIt's true that fewer and fewer American businesses are di- al relations in countries where there are pervasive violations rectly involved with labor in foreign countries...

...the largest market for their output...

...end, we-customers, store owners, importers, in- are "substantially controllable" by suppliers...

...business abroad...

...Important exvestors, and all the others-handle the finished products, con- amples: no employment of children under fourteen, no use of cerned only about price and quality...

...U.S...

...The four-story factory ment factory fire from which they could not escape because was a death trap-it had no fire alarm, no sprinkler system, no of locked doors and barred windows...

...Illustrated stories about hundreds of thousands of pre- shouldn't, carry the burden alone...

...Now, despite the following the example set by Levi Strauss...

...er tier called "guidelines for country selection...

...According to sources within the company, Kader has avoided paying many of its workers even Thailand's $5-a-day minimum wage by classifying them as "temporary" on renewable contracts...

...In the current issue of The American Prospect, economist James K. Galbraith 1st Annual writes that Tyson is not a "model builder" working from eco- Nostra Aetate Dialogue nomic theory but "a nuanced observer of the world as it actually is, a collector and weigher of evidence, a student of details...

...The intended purpose of these privileges is Commonweal 8 October 1993: 13...

...Despite Kader's economic success, its workers have long been victimized by the company's low-wage policy...