Zara, Nike or H&M: the slave practices of the large western textile companies and how they hide labor exploitation

Nothing has been spared from the greed of the West. Depending on the time and the different existing interests, Westerners have seized everything they have wanted for centuries. And it has not been little: gold, silver, oil, natural resources, archaeological treasures or human beings have been uprooted from their roots for the profit and benefit of the Western world. A looting that still continues today in the form of labor exploitation.

One of the many examples of this practice that condemns millions of people to live in subhuman conditions is found in the labor exploitation imposed by the large textile multinationals, the ones that dress us. A form of slavery that finds no remedy or will to amend.

The latest infamy, in India

In recent days, the Washington D.C.-based Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) has revealed that large Western multinationals hire suppliers in Karnataka, southwestern state of India, which do not respect the minimum working conditions that workers should have in order to live with a certain decency - several of these companies are Nike, Zara, H&M, Puma, Tesco, C&A, Gap or Marks & Spencer–.

In total, more than 400,000 garment workers have reportedly been paid below the legal minimum wage set by the Indian state since at least April 2020. It was around this time that garment factories refused to raise the wage. workers' wages at 417 rupees per month, about 4.92 euros, so that the wages of almost half a million people fell below the established minimum wage.

According to the information, these workers are each owed almost 8,500 rupees –something like 100 euros–, which would mean a total of 48 million euros. This situation would have led many families, already in very poor conditions, to lower their food standards even further, going so far as to do without vegetables and basing their intake solely on rice with sauce. A hell –endless days of work for a plate of rice– that has lasted for almost two years and that has diabolical parallels, saving the distance, with what happened in the darkest part of the 20th century.

The lack of will of the large multinationals

This case also shows again the lack of will of the large Western companies to improve the working conditions of the workers in the factories in which they work. They make the clothes we wear every day. However, it is not an episode that has reached the media after a journalistic investigation, rather the case has even reached the Indian courts, where companies hired by large multinationals have been ordered to pay the amounts owed by the Karnataka High Court.

However, companies, always reluctant to improve working conditions, continue to file lawsuits to delay payment of back wages as long as possible without that this supposes any problem with the big western multinationals, which are only interested in the price, the quality and the delivery date. Otherwise, after twenty months of litigation between workers and companies, they would have intervened forcing the payment of the amounts owed to the workers.

Suffice it to point out that the minimum wage in the aforementioned Indian state, Karnataka, according to published information, does not reach 50 euros per month – the minimum wage established for the entire country in August 2019 stands at 2.6 euros per month. day, but in some states it is less. Conditions that in themselves should already be considered unacceptable by large Western companies, because, even if they received the minimum wage, which does not reach 50 euros, this is ten times below the average Indian salary, which exceeds 400 euros. monthly, and between 30 and 50 times below the average salaries in the US or Europe.

Zara, H&M or Nike evade their responsibilities

In view of the information published, the representatives of the big brands affirm that they have made it clear to their suppliers that they must pay the minimum wage required by law. For example, the Spanish brand Inditex, owner of Zara, stated that "it has a strict code of conduct, which requires that all the factories in our supply chain pay legal minimum wages", for which "we are hiring suppliers in the region those of us who are urging them to pay the minimum wage". In addition, "wages must always be sufficient to meet at least the basic needs of workers and their families."

Companies run by unscrupulous people

But the reality is that the only thing that really matters to big companies is making big profits, since the exploitation of workers only becomes relevant when it causes effect on the accounting balances, that is, when it has a negative impact on sales.

It is no coincidence that, in most cases, the leaders of these large multinationals are characters without any scruples. An example of this is the Spanish Amancio Ortega, one of the richest men in the world according to the Forbes list, and who has recently been linked to two major scandals. The first appeared in June when it was learned that he had two accounts in Luxembourg valued at 1,300 million euros; and, the second, most recent, when it was revealed that he would have acquired a yacht through companies created in Malta in 2008 to save 25 million euros. Scandals that, unfortunately, are covered up by the majority of the media, which participate in major media campaigns that promote a philanthropic image of both Amancio Ortega and the majority of the world's richest people. They inform the citizens of the disbursement in philanthropic actions of a very small part of what they should pay in taxes.

Obscene riches after countless cases of labor exploitation and environmental degradation

Although it is an aspect to be noted, the main issue does not revolve around people, but rather an entire civilization, the Western one, which has internalized a supremacist vision of the planet and of the history by which the property of everything that exists in the world is arrogated, people included. For this reason, the large multinationals mentioned have been the protagonists of countless scandals.

One of the latest, in which Zara, H&M or Nike have once again been splashed, we find it in the deforestation of the Amazon, as denounced by Greenpeace. And it is that these companies are, together with many more – a hundred – involved in the destruction of the Amazon through the Brazilian multinational JBS, a cattle company.

But as I said, the list is endless. For example, in 2016, suppliers of Zara and other large companies illegally hired refugees from the Syrian war, some of them minors, in Turkey, subjecting them to endless work days for little more than one euro. The time. Then, Zara affirmed that "it is being remedied", in reference to the situation of exploitation of these workers, but the truth is that, five years later, we collided with the same problem.

A labor exploitation that has not stopped in the Maghreb –Zara exploited Moroccans for 65 hours a week for 178 euros in 2012–, Asia –Zara paid 1.3 euros an hour for 68 hours a week in India in 2016– or America Latin America, where the scandals have not been minor or few.

In 2013, the Zara subsidiary in Argentina was denounced by the NGO 'La Alameda' for labor exploitation in three workshops in Buenos Aires, in which minors and Bolivian immigrants even worked. The same pattern that a few years earlier was found in Brazil, where in 2011 the Inditex subsidiary paid a fine of 1.4 million euros for labor exploitation. And the same pattern as years later, in 2017, when the Argentine Prosecutor's Office accused a company related to Inditex for the slavery regime to which it subjected a worker –seventeen hours a day– for the reform of a Zara store in Buenos Aires.

The hypocrisy of the big Western brands

As always, the West writes with very good handwriting while whipping with a very good whip: it writes the Bangladesh Agreement or the French law of diligence for companies, but not cares about its fulfillment. It even promotes whitewashing campaigns in the media that allow them to restore their image while continuing to enslave millions of people across the planet. The great example of this type of initiative is ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation).

And it is that many of the companies mentioned are part of this initiative, apparently revolutionary, since it would have as its goal the real improvement of the living conditions of the workers of the large companies through the empowerment of unions. This proposal was presented to the G-20 labor ministers during the summer of 2017, more than four years ago, although, as we can see, it has served very little, except for many large world brands to proudly display their seal of good practices. on its web pages, as is the case of the Spanish Inditex, which boasts of belonging to this initiative.

This type of action is usually conveniently promoted by subordinate media. A sample of this can be found in the magazine 'XL Semanal' of the Spanish newspaper 'ABC', which in November 2018 stated in regards to the ACT initiative that "a generational change is taking place among the owners of fashion companies. Giants like C&A, H&M, Tchibo or Zara are, to a greater or lesser extent, family-owned companies. The children or grandchildren of the founders want to change things."

However, while the fundamental objective of the ACT initiative is based on empowering unions, the reality is very different. Thus, on the one hand, the aforementioned publication stated that "a new generation of textile managers is changing the course of the business. They call themselves 'the third generation'. Unlike their predecessors, they do not want to hide or minimize abuses, they aspire to to introduce profound changes. Instead of resorting to external controls, their intention is to strengthen the role of workers and unions in the factories themselves. After all, they are the first to know if seamstresses are forced to work on Sunday , if they don't get paid overtime or if they suffer sexual abuse".

But, in June 2020, in the midst of a pandemic, workers at the Zara factories in Myanmar wrote a letter to Amancio Ortega in which they denounced that they have been making Zara clothes for years without the health, safety and well-being of the workers were a concern. Not only that, but they denounced, and this is the most important thing, the repression that union representatives received, including dismissals, and the difficulties faced by workers who tried to denounce the working conditions in which they found themselves.

A letter that, once again, showed again that the true intention of the large multinationals, including Amancio Ortega's Inditex, as when slavery was prohibited on paper in centuries past without this having any effect on reality, is far from much of the health and well-being of the workers in its factories.