Month: July 2020

Much for the hypocrisy about the exploitation of garment workers

Featured ~ Saleh Mamon ~ Leave a comment

When Sunday Times on 5 of July published its investigation on the horror of exploitation of garment workers in Leicester, the sensational press like Daily Mail joined in the chorus of condemnation. This news made into Reuters, the billionaire magazine Forbes and many other mainstream outlets. Workers at a Leicester-based producer of clothes destined for sale on Boohoo were being paid as little as £3.50 an hour an amount significantly less than the £8.20 national minimum wage.

In June, Mind the Label, an organisation which has been campaigning for fair deal for garment workers across the world published a damning report which found an alarming situation in Leicester not only for low wages but their theft, denial of benefits, modern slavery conditions and poor health and safety conditions under the COVID-19. The garment sweatshop remained open during the lockdown and the social distancing rules and face masks were ignored contributing to a higher infection in Leicester. Small-batch orders with a quick turnaround — common requests from fast-fashion brands such as Boohoo — encourage unauthorized subcontracting as suppliers race to meet deadlines. Urgent actions beginning with suspension of all Boohoo sales and production pending an investigation.

Priti Patel expressed anger saying that she will not “tolerate sick criminals forcing innocent people into slave labour and a life of exploitation”. These sick criminals are probably the millionaires donors of her party. The Tories in power since 2010 have done little on the exploitation and enforce the minimum wage for all workers, as the records show.

As far back as 2014, a report by the University of Leicester found systemic abuse, with wages as low as £3 an hour, an almost complete absence of employment contracts, excessive and underreported hours, sometimes gross health and safety violations and limited enforcement of labour regulations and standards.

In 2017, Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights chaired by Harriet Harman made a special point to visit Leicester where they got briefings from researchers and had heard many witnesses. Whilst the government has produced an Action Plan in response to the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and introduced some legislations including the Modern Slavery Act 2015, the committee expressed disappointment on the ground over its modest scope and lack of new commitments.

It called on the government demonstrating the same level of human rights commitment within its own procurement supply chains that it expects from companies, with expectations on all government suppliers to recognise trade union membership. Furthermore it asked for legislation that imposes a duty on all companies to prevent human rights abuses, and making it a criminal offence if they fail to do so, including in lower levels of the supply chain. It wanted stronger role for UK enforcement agencies in tackling poor practices, particularly in UK garment manufacturing.

To tackle the supply chain accountability issues, Baroness Young of Hornsey tabled the Modern Slavery (Transparency in Supply Chains) Bill, which would rectify some of these problems. However the bill tabled did not make beyond first reading after the 2017-2019 Parliament proroguing the bill. The matter was not subsequently taken up by the Tory government.

Dispatches, a Channel 4 programme, sent a worker undercover into various factories in 2017 and reported that workers were paid well below the minimum wage. In May 2018 Sarah O’Connor of the Financial Times wrote an in depth investigation into the “dark factories” of Leicester. In some factories workers were paid as little as £3.50 an hour and no one was being held responsible. After the decline of the garment industry in Leicester from 2001 because of capital outsourcing to poorer countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka etc, new market forces had fuelled the revival of industry after the financial crash of 2008 with unbridled competition and super exploitation.

Many organisations including community groups, trade unions and Ethical Trading Initiative member brands have worked hard to address these issues over the years. However no significant progress has been made in resolving reports of illegal activities because of lack of support from central government or regulatory bodies.

The super exploitation in garment factories has been an open secret for years. This is government of millionaires who does not care a jot for the working classes and bent on deregulating under the banner of cutting down the red tape and is at ease with rabid exploitation and low health and safety standards. It is more interested in chasing illegal workers in the garment factories than enforcing decent labour standards. The number of labour inspectors in Britain is much lower than in comparable economies and the risk of effective inspection is clearly too low for businesses that are willing to undercut standards.

For capitalists in this sector, there is a reservoir of labour especially women to be exploited across the world. Just visit clothes chain stores and examine the labels where these apparels have been produced- Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam etc. So the garment workers in sweatshops and homes are in the heart of our cities with the same production model and lack of accountability seen in the global south. If Leicester, then why not Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford, London and elsewhere. This is a national problem.

And from the party of Labour, the Labour Party, there is no significant intervention from Keir Starmer or any shadow minister. A vacuum has enveloped the party. They have chosen not to speak out against the terrible exploitation of the garment workers and hold the government to account.

The TUC estimates that several million UK workers cannot enforce their basic rights with the companies for which they are ultimately working. Often the TUC appeals to the government to enforce the law. But inevitably this falls on deaf ears.

It seems that by and large, trade unions have abandoned the lowest strata of workers. They have let the fragmentations of the working class to take its course under neo-liberalism. They have not brought together the employed, the unemployed and the lower strata of workers together to taken on the market forces that are unleashing the most intolerable conditions on the poorest workers. The latter are in no position to organise because any such move would would lead to them being fired by the employers.

The unions have not come up with new strategies to ensure that we do not move to a de-unionised workforce of the American way. This is unltimately the aim of the British capitalist class and the Tory party. The Trade Union movement should reach out to the communities of these workers, conduct research, establish an outreach and help them to become union members so that they can fight for better conditions.

Published by Labour Hub

Much hypocrisy over the exploitation of garment workers

COUNTERING DISINFORMATION

~ Saleh Mamon ~ Leave a comment

At this moment in time, I really miss the wisdom of Mike Marqusee whose wrote in his essay ‘SUCCESS, FAILURE AND OTHER POLITICAL MYTHS’ (Red Pepper, December 2013),

“There are worse things than failure, and while failure is nothing to glory in, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. You can learn more from a failure than from success- if you recognise it as such. But if the only lesson you draw from failure is never to risk failure again, you’ve learned nothing at all. 

“Needless risks should always be avoided. We don’t have resources to squander. But the elimination of risk is impossible if you’re contending with power. Without risks all that can be done is to reproduce existing social relations. There is no truth, no beauty without risk, because these things can only be secured in the teeth of resistance, against institutions and habits of thought. To succeed in any way that matters, you have to take your place in the republic of the uncertain, when you risk yourselves, not your stake in other people’s labour. It’s the action taken in the full knowledge of the possibility of failure, and its consequences, that acquire leverage.”

The winter election of 2019 was a great risk for Labour. The outcome was affected by many factors – Labour’s bipolarity on Brexit, the civil war within the party, Jeremy Corbyn’s distorted image, the tsunami of disinformation by the right wing mass media, the smears of antisemitism, the undermining of Labour by Tony Blair and his acolytes, amongst others. None of these factors are isolated from each other, but they intersected to undermine Labour’s campaign.  Jeremy’s public perception was determined by the mass media which began his vilification since he entered the leadership contest in 2015. 

There can be little doubt that the mass media plays a significant role. Newspapers and TV are more powerful than armies. We lost the battle for hearts and minds because we did not have the means to counter the vast campaign of disinformations and propaganda. Every means available was used against the Labour party and its leadership. 

In a prescient observation more than a 150 years ago, Marx observed that those who own the means of production also own the means of information enabling them to produce and regulate the production and distribution of ideas. The control of the means of information central to influencing public opinion was missing in the original Clause IV. From our experience, the most important lesson we need to learn is, that to win the battle for ideas for the public good and social ownership, we need to have adequate control over the means of public information and have a strategy followed by concrete actions to counter disinformation

To this day, Chomsky and Herman’s analysis on the role of the media in shaping public opinion in a democratic society remains unrivalled. The selective filtering of news by the media, the setting of the political agenda and the confinement of public discussion within narrow limits is all the more powerful with the TV channels playing a significant role in moulding public perception.

Empirical analysis of media bias as we approached the election day showed that press hostility to Labour in 2019 was more than double the levels identified in 2017. By the same measure, negative coverage of the Conservatives halved.  For Granville Williams, editor of Media North which monitored the press closely, “It was a disturbing experience, reading what can only be described as undiluted  propaganda day after day in the bloc of avid Tory-supporting newspapers which worked closely with the Tory HQ election campaign to maximise the assault on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party’s election policies.”

We need to be cautious in adopting the term ‘fake news’ that has become a popular media reference, on grounds that it tends to frame the problem as isolated incidents of falsehood and confusion. Rather the public is subject to systematic disinformation which can be defined as intentional falsehoods spread as news stories or simulated documentary formats to advance political goals.

The choice for us is to accept this and succumb to this enormous pressure to win an election by tilting to the right, abandoning socialist politics and accepting neo-liberal norms just as Tony Blair did with his pact with Rupert Murdoch.  Or we work out imaginative ways in which to counter the disinformation.

Jim Ring in his article ‘BLAST FROM THE NORTH’ (Labour Briefing February 2020) put the challenge succinctly:

“We have one great disadvantage in this fightback campaign- we have no public voice of our own. It is time for the unions to delve into their vast pockets and sponsor a professional media service-combining television outlets, newspapers and social media facilities- to get our message across to everyone.”

The techniques used by the mainstream media spring from the ideas of the Public Relations pioneer Edward Bernays who considered stereotypes as influential in shaping public opinion. The media created a range of stereotypes of Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. The response to these was a public relations disaster for the party on all the issues such as antisemitism, extremism, electability, economic management, etc. What is urgently needed for the party is to have a Public Relations team with visible and identifiable voices who would rebut disinformation with boldness immediately.

The idea of community organising is getting traction now and should be taken forward urgently. CLPs should also prioritise community engagement and create Community Engagement Officer posts on their Executive Committees. Simultaneously, the provision of adequate financial resources to constituency parties is needed so that they can publish a quarterly newsletter through the year for every home in the constituency. Such a newsletter would be not replicate the party leaflets but could be a vehicle to tell local personal stories about the impact of universal credit, homelessness, housing crisis, transport, pollution, hospital trolley waits, mental health, cuts affecting services, etc. The production and distribution of such newsletters would be the responsibility of local activists in the campaign committees. This would complement the growing use of online platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram amongst others.

Monopoly control of the whole media is by a handful of billionaires and global corporations with just three companies controlling 83% of the newspaper market and just two individuals – Rupert Murdoch and Lord Rothermere -dominating the national press. Serious discussion on how wider control of and access to the media can be put in place for a democratic political order is urgently needed with a view to incorporating fundamental media reform into the next Labour manifesto.

Published in Labour Briefing https://labourbriefing.squarespace.com/blog/2020/2/12/countering-disinformation

Double Injustice: Media Racism

~ Saleh Mamon ~ Leave a comment

Good reminder in the times of ‘BLACK LIVES MATTER’ of the relevance of the film ‘Injustice’ about black deaths in police custody.

Trinketization

Back in 2003 Imogen Bunting, whose birthday it would have been today, wrote this on the film INJUSTICE by Tariq and Ken. To date the film still has not been shown on UK television, despite all the awards and media acclaim and THE RELEVANCE OF IT STILL TODAY.

Originally posted 2006

MEDIA RACISM

This piece was written by Imogen for a possible book on the film Injustice. We approached 19 publishers for the book, but while screenings do occur now, because the film was banned/threatened for so long by the court injunctions of the Police Federation, no publisher seemed able to risk a publication. As you can see from below, the failure of the publishers (some respected left wing houses) was not because of the quality of the writing – here as ever Imogen was on the case.

Media Racism:
Reporting black deaths in the British press: Injustice and…

View original post 3,354 more words

What value do we place on life and work?

~ Saleh Mamon ~ Leave a comment

The COVID-19 crisis is a mirror that vividly reveals what value our society places on the life of the elderly and the work of health and social care workers.

There has been so much spoken written about the COVID-19 crisis that it would be pointless to repeat the arguments from every side of the spectrum. Boris Johnson and his ministers have had free play in dominating the political agenda. Right from the start, Johnson used a 15 second soundbite crafted by his spin doctors to capture the evening TV newscasts and the next day’s front pages. The daily briefings have become an instrument of political propaganda where a numbers theatre was enacted and the politics of fear embedded.

How did our society value human life during this crisis? It is not up to an individual to measure the worth of lives. Neither is it a matter of a mere economic calculus. We can tell how lives are valued by the action we as a society take based on the policies that are put in place.

Right from the beginning, the slogan was ‘Save the NHS’.There was a political calculation, based on the anxiety of the government, that the NHS would be overwhelmed given its current capacity which had been reduced drastically over the last 10 years of austerity. The NHS had lost 17,000 beds and tens of acute hospital services had been closed through mergers. There was also a staffing crisis with 10,000 doctor and 40,000 nurse vacancies. For the party which had set upon dismantling the NHS with the landmark Health and Social Care Act of 2012, it was a bit of a cheek now to ‘Save the NHS’. Of course the slogan worked well because the public at large still believes in the NHS.

So right from start, care homes were excluded. They were not part of the NHS but the responsibility of local councils which are required to outsource them to provide providers. Nonetheless, if the national priority was to save lives, then the residents of care homes and their staff should have been given the highest protection since it was well known that fatalities were the highest in those over 80 years old.

Care homes were quarantined so that the vulnerable could not receive appropriate medical care, let alone GP visits. To free up NHS beds, the elderly were often returned to care homes without being tested for the COVID-19 infection. This led in some cases to infection of others. The staff were not supplied with appropriate PPE and were them selves vulnerable to the infection and if infected likely to spread it.

The deaths in care homes were not counted from January to nearly the end of April and not included in the numbers at the daily briefings which focused on hospital deaths. This was a scandal. Besides COVID-19 deaths, many elderly people have died because of lack of medical care for other critical conditions.

There are attempts to rewrite history by politicians who suggest that there was a protective ring around care homes. Nothing can be further from the truth. Everything points to the fact that the lives of the vulnerable in care homes were of little value.

When reports began to emerge about health workers, doctors and nurses dying because of COVID-19 infections, the government was not collating information on such deaths. It took some time before those who died were named by the press. Initially, ministers were reported questioning whether doctors who died got their infection in a work related situation.

When health workers reported that they did not have full PPE protection, the government launched a drive using military logistics to ensure that hospitals received the supply. Yet it was found out that the stockpile that was set up in 2009 for a possible pandemic had not been replenished and thousands of items were beyond their shelf life. Best before dates were relabelled with the government claiming that they were retested without making the results public. The government then launched an emergency operation to purchase the necessary PPE from countries such as Turkey. Items purchased were later found not to meet the standards.

Weeks went by when the frontline workers were not getting PPE at the required level. This was a failure that caused unnecessary deaths. A government which cared for the lives of frontline health workers would have never put their lives at risk. It was doctors and nurses who were at risk, not the managers in the offices running the hospitals.

Does our society value the work of junior doctors, nurses, support staff and care workers? Just look at the way junior doctors were treated over their contracts back in 2016 when new working arrangements were imposed on them ignoring many issues of safety and stress on the pretext of providing a 7-day service.

Nurses have been the victims of a decade of ‘efficiency savings’ in the NHS with their pay frozen pay for 10 years. The replacement of bursaries by loans has left many of them in debt. Hospital cleaners were outsourced to private companies 30 years ago. The companies often pay them barely a living wage.

Care workers have been described as ‘unskilled’ when they have to look after the varying and complex needs of the elderly. They are employed by private providers who pay them low wages and fail to give them appropriate training. Those care workers supporting the elderly in their own homes work under immense stress, with employers applying time and motion methods.

The last thirty years of the hegemony of neoliberalism has always emphasized ‘value for money’ and ‘added value’ with an utter determination to reduce everything to monetary value. How under these conditions can we expect individuals and society to think in terms of the value of human life?

Many of the questions raised here cannot be answered by words but only by action, by creating a more humane society in which health and care services will be fully funded and publicly owned and run.

Published in Labour Briefing 6 April 2020

https://labourbriefing.org/blog/2020/6/4/what-value-do-we-place-on-life-and-work