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#1
12-07-2008, 08:34 PM
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Fashion Victims.
 (Thursday 04 December 2008)  ROSIE STEWART reveals new evidence of the clothing trade's abuses. Leading British retailers Primark, Asda and Tesco are continuing to abuse garment workers in Bangladesh by failing to ensure decent pay and conditions, a new report from the charity War on Want reveals on Friday. In a sequel to its acclaimed 2006 report, Fashion Victims II demonstrates that, despite signing up to the Ethical Trading Initiative, pledges to improve working conditions amount to nothing more than empty promises. Employees in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka earn as little as 7p an hour for up to 80-hour weeks. This is more pay than two years ago, but far below a rocketing inflation rate that leaves staff worse off. Demand for cheap clothes remains high. Amid the thirst for fast fashion among British consumers, retailers churn out disposable clothing every six weeks to keep up with the public desire for transient catwalk trends at low prices. Primark's profits rose by 17 per cent to £233 million during the 12 months ending in September. Suppliers are put under huge pressure to feed this demand, but it is the workers who suffer the consequences. They are forced to produce more clothes in less time. Rapid inflation and rising living costs mean that wages are worth even less, with the lowest-paid employees on a minimum wage of just 1,663 taka (£13.97) a month and all of them earning far less than a living wage. While the British government offers tax cuts to get the British public spending again, vast numbers of garment workers in Bangladesh live in small, cramped shacks which lack proper plumbing and washing facilities. To make matters worse, prices on the global food market have soared, with the cost of staples such as rice increasing by 70 per cent. In the present situation, many workers are unable to feed their families properly, with large numbers malnourished. Ifat, who toils in a factory supplying all three retailers, says: "I can't feed my children three meals a day." Runa, who makes Asda and Tesco clothes, is one of many young women forced by poverty to leave her rural home to earn money to send back to her family. "My pay is so meagre that I cannot afford to keep my child with me," she says. "I have sent my five-month old baby to the village to be cared for by my mother." Workers continue to toil in appalling conditions and are often subjected to intimidation and harassment by their employers. Women employees are especially vulnerable to abuse. Many of those interviewed said that verbal abuse and corporal punishment were the norm and that they are subjected to obscene and sexually suggestive language. Some have been the victims of sexual abuse. Given the social stigma in Bangladeshi society, the numbers of sexually abused women may well be higher than reported. Suppliers are imposing increasingly unrealistic deadlines and cite the growing demand for fast fashion to justify their actions against workers. Though forced overtime is illegal in Bangladesh, many employees are made to toil extra hours with little or no pay. Staff are denied the rights that many of us take for granted in Britain - paid sick leave, maternity pay or redundancy packages. Farzana, who works for a factory supplying both Asda and Tesco, says: "I had two children before I was widowed when my husband died in a fire at the factory where we both worked. "I got no maternity leave during my pregnancy and no compensation for the death of my husband, except for the money from our mandatory group insurance. "I did not even get medical leave when I was suffering from jaundice and had to take unpaid days off." Any efforts to form unions are subdued. Since the Bangladeshi caretaker government took power last year, political and trade union activities have been banned nationwide and protests meet severe repression. As a result, garment workers remain trapped, lacking knowledge about their rights and awareness on labour organisation. It is a situation that would not be tolerated in Britain. Primark, Tesco and Asda are all unionised in Britain, but the same rights are not afforded to overseas employees. Instead, these retailers cite their voluntary commitment to "corporate social responsibility," claiming that they are making efforts to improve pay and conditions. But the reality is nothing more than a public relations smokescreen amid the ongoing exploitation of garment workers in Bangladesh. War on Want is calling on the British government to end this abuse by introducing legislation to regulate these companies and allow exploited workers to seek justice in Britain. The charity will stage a protest outside Primark's flagship store in London's Oxford Street on Friday morning with its researcher Khorshed Alam, who has flown to Britain from Bangladesh. Campaigners from the charity and Alam will then go into the annual meeting of Primark's parent company, Associated British Foods, to speak out against its sweatshops. Rosie Stewart is a spokeswoman for War on Want. Fashion Victims II can be downloaded at http://www.waronwant.org/FashionVictimsII Contact Us Copyright Morning Star, all rights reserved published by the Peoples Press Printing Society
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To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Even the most beautiful society is worthless if it can't defend itself from reaction. Last edited by Thinking Man's Idiot; 12-07-2008 at 10:28 PM. 
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#2
12-07-2008, 11:53 PM
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Essential thinkers..
For more than a century after his death, it was almost impossible to make any rational judgement about Karl Marx. Slogans had practically taken the place of argument, with the result that most people had made their mind up what to think before they had read a word he had written. Those who resented the antics of the ruling class and felt solidarity with the workers automatically joined the ranks of the converts; those of a more fastidious temperament who disliked the idea of social upheaval just as automatically treated all Marxist theorising with derision. This indeed was an unenviable fate for any thinker- to arouse such feelings that supporters and opponents could only trade insults with each other.
For a few years, as communist systems around the world tottered and then collapsed, it seemed as though the final verdict had been delivered on Marx. The old ranter had always said that capitalism would self-destruct, but instead it could be seen striding over the entire globe. Meanwhile, once-proud Marxist states presented themselves meekly before the rulers of the world, asking for lessons in the art of making money. Surely the time had come to conclude that capitalism was, quite simply, the best possible system for promoting universal prosperity. Karl Marx was wrong, and his ideas should be ceremonially consigned to the scrapheap. But this ideal of universal prosperity has something of a cracked ring to it when we look beyond our own small frame of reference. Those of us living in the rich and imperialist west may congratulate ourselves on the 'achievements' of liberal democracy, but there are signs that this is nothing but a fools paradise with a non-renewable lease. The truth that presses ever more insistently on us is that in order to cut costs and keep their commodities competitive the large corporations of western countries increasingly rely on low-wage production in the Third world, or on temporary, often illegal, labour imported from outside our borders. High profits still depend on precisely the same elements of the system that Marx so starkly outlined in the nineteenth century: long hours of work, with wages kept at rock bottom by creating a large pool of labour with no alternative employment. In the west, Marx's proletariat has been dispersed or assimilated to the point where it has become little more than a folk memory. Most of us now, it could be argued, are part of the world's bourgeoisie. But conflicts of interest within capitalism are as sharp as ever, and Marx's brilliant but painstaking analysis remains so disturbingly relevant.
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To view links or images in signatures your post count must be 10 or greater. You currently have 0 posts. Even the most beautiful society is worthless if it can't defend itself from reaction. Last edited by Thinking Man's Idiot; 12-08-2008 at 01:28 AM.
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#3
12-08-2008, 01:34 AM
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http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclop...or-aristocracy "Labor aristocracy" (or "aristocracy of labor") has two meanings: as a term with Marxist theoretical underpinnings, and as a specific type of trade unionism. Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... Contents Use within Marxism In Marxist theory, those workers (proletarians) in developed countries who benefit from the superprofits extracted from the impoverished workers of underdeveloped countries form an "aristocracy of labor." The phrase was popularised by Karl Kautsky in 1901 and theorised by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin's theory contends that companies in the developed world exploit workers in the developing world (where wages are much lower), resulting in increased profits. Because of these increased profits, the companies are able to pay higher wages to their employees "at home" (that is, in the developed world), thus creating a working class satisfied with their standard of living and not inclined to proletarian revolution. Lenin thus contended that imperialism had prevented increasing class polarization in the developed world, and argued that a workers' revolution could only begin in one of the underdeveloped or semideveloped countries, such as Russia. This theory of the labour aristocracy is controversial in the Marxist movement. Marxism is the political practice and social theory based on the works of Karl Marx, a 19th century philosopher, economist, journalist, and revolutionary, along with Friedrich Engels. ... The proletariat (from Latin proles, offspring) is a term used to identify a lower social class; a member of such a class is proletarian. ... The terms First World, Second World, and Third World were used to divide the nations of Earth into three broad categories. ... Superprofit (or surplus profit or extra surplus-value; in German: extra-Mehrwert), is a concept in Karl Marxs critique of political economy, subsequently elaborated by Lenin and other Marxist thinkers. ... For the Jamaican reggae band, see Third World (band). ... Karl Kautsky Karl Kautsky (October 18, 1854 - October 17, 1938) was a leading theoretician of social democracy. ... (Russian: Владимир Ильич Ленин, IPA:, born Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov; April 22 [O.S. April 10] 1870 – January 21, 1924), was a Communist revolutionary of Russia, the leader of the Bolshevik party, the first Premier of the Soviet Union, and the main theorist of what has come to be called Leninism, which is described... The term exploitation may carry two distinct meanings: The act of utilizing something for any purpose. ... The term working class is used to denote a social class. ... A communist revolution is a social revolution inspired by the ideas of Marxism that aims to replace capitalism with communism, normally with socialism (public ownership over the means of production) as an intermediate stage. ... See also colonialism Imperialism is a policy of extending control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through direct territorial conquest or settlement, or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries. ... While this theory is formally shared by most currents that identify positively with Lenin, including the Communist International, few organisations place the theory at the centre of their work. The term is most widely used in the United States, where it was popularised in the decade prior to the First World War by Eugene Debs' Socialist Party, and the Industrial Workers of the World. In Britain those who hold to this theory include the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and the Revolutionary Communist Group. Many Trotskyists, including Leon Trotsky himself, and the early congresses of the Fourth International, have accepted the theory of the labour aristocracy: others, including Ernest Mandel and Tony Cliff, considered the theory to have mistaken arguments or "Third Worldist" implications. The first edition of Communist International, journal of the Comintern published in Moscow and Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) in May 1919. ... May refer to the politcal leader Eugene_V._Debs May also be in reference to a a debutante ball, a formal party undertaken by the leaving members of second-level schools in Ireland, most often in the month of August or September. ... The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW or the Wobblies) is a famous international union currently headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. It contends that all workers should be united within a single union as a class and the wage system abolished. ... The Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) was set up in July 2004 by a group of committed communists who had either been expelled or had resigned from the Arthur Scargills Socialist Labour Party. ... The Revolutionary Communist Group is a communist group in the United Kingdom. ... (Russian: Лев Давидович ТроÑ*кий; also transliterated Leo, Lev, Trotskii, Trotski, Trotskij, Trockij and Trotzky) (November 7 [O.S. October 26] 1879 – August 21, 1940), born Lev Davidovich Bronstein (Лев Давидович Бронштейн), was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Marxist theorist. ... Emblem of the Fourth International The Fourth International has been the international organisation of Trotskyist communists. ... Ernest Mandel Ernest Ezra Mandel, also known by various pseudonyms such as Ernest Germain, Pierre Gousset, Henri Vallin, Walter etc. ... Tony Cliff Tony Cliff (May 20, 1917 – May 9, 2000) was a Trotskyist revolutionary activist. ... Criticism of unions The term was originally coined by Mikhail Bakunin in 1872 as a criticism of the notion that organised workers are the most radical. Bakunin wrote: "To me the flower of the proletariat is not, as it is to the Marxists, the upper layer, the aristocracy of labor, those who are the most cultured, who earn more and live more comfortably than all the other workers." Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (Trolo) (Russian — Михаил Ð�лекÑ�андровРч Бакунин, Michel Bakunin — on the grave in Bern), (May 30, 1814–June 13, 1876) was a well known Russian anarchist. ... In the U.S. and Britain, the term "aristocracy of labor" is used as an implicit criticism of labor unions that have organized high-salary workers and have no interest in unionizing middle-income and lower-income employees--even in cases where organizing the unorganized would strengthen the unions involved. These unions, it is argued, are content to remain a "labor aristocracy." Examples might include the unions of professional athletes, which have raised the wages of a certain class of already highly paid workers--professional athletes--but refuse to organize other workers, including other employees of the teams they work for. It commonly charged that the Air Line Pilots Association, the Screen Actors Guild, and a handful of other AFL-CIO unions conform to the labor aristocracy model of trade unionism. In defense of these unions, the AFL-CIO's jurisdictional rules may forbid such unions from organizing workers in certain occupational classes. A union (labor union in American English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in British English; either labour union or trade union in Canadian English) is a legal entity consisting of employees or workers having a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers... The Air Line Pilots Association, International, is the elected bargaining representative for over 64,000 pilots of 41 U.S. and Canadian airlines. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The AFL-CIO is the largest labor union federation in the United States. ... External links
Further reading
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