This report presents the first systematic public analysis of the code of conduct monitoring methods employed by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to inspect factory labour practices around the world. The author accompanied PwC auditors on factory inspections in China and Korea, and evaluated PwC's findings for a factory in Indonesia.
The livelihoods and conditions of factory workers in Indonesia are constantly undermined. There is never any improvement in working conditions despite repeated attempts by the workers in accordance with existing laws embodied in International Labour Organisation (ILO) Conventions which are designed to protect workers.
Owners have created codes of conduct (CoCo) - a new type of regulation for workers in the garment and shoe sectors. However CoCos have not resulted in any real changes in working conditions of the workers.
The government's labour policy is determined by an economic system that places capitalist growth above all. This enables the capitalist system to continually reproduce itself because capitalist growth requires state protection, which the state provides through legal and political systems. The state thus presents itself as the guarantor of economic growth as well as the guardian and key player in the economy.
Every year, according to the International Labour Organisation’s [ILO] estimates. over 220,000 workers die in workplace accidents. This trend is being exacerbated by the globalisation of the world’s economy. The ILO recently concluded that the “acceleration of globalisation and liberalisation in Asia had positive repercussions on the volume of jobs but not the quality.”
1997 came in with a roar...One of the celebrated “tigers” of Asia witnessed the biggest general strike in the past forty-five years. South Korea’s workers and other citizens’ fight against the new and restrictive labour law, has had a significant impact on the labour situation in South Korea, which has reverberated throughout the region.
EPZs are viewed as union-free zones where workers are exploited and their rights to organise are brutally trampled. But the situation for EPZ workers cannot be truly understood if analysed in isolation of family, society, and the global marketplace. Conditions in the EPZs are a reflection and magnification of universal class and gender problems. Even though women are undervalued in the labour force, their families, governments, and employers benefit from and depend on their low cost (and often free) labour inside and outside the home.
Almost a decade ago, thousands of people died painful deaths when the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal leaked poisonous gas. The death toll in the world’s worst industrial disaster has reached 16,000 people while half a million more were stricken with incurable illnesses.
Since the “green revolution," structural adjustment schemes have been prioritised by institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund as suitable measures to provide advantageous solutions to Third World economic and growth management obstacles. The effects of structural adjustment are by no means uniformly beneficial.
After a decade of promoting foreign investment, Thailand now proclaims itself as Asia’s fifth economic ‘dragon’. Since 1991, the country’s annual GDP growth has been above 7%. For many third-world countries, Thailand’s success story reaffirms the paradigm of the ‘‘NIC’’ model of capitalist development in Asia.
As the world recovers from a major war and many international forces and international alliances are being reassessed, implications for labour are far-reaching.
The fact that migrant workers are the main source of foreign exchange for some Asian countries further highlights the complexity and seriousness of a war whose real effects and implications are just beginning to be felt.