The BBC “World Service” took a look at factory conditions in Bangladesh to see “if things have changed” since the collapse of the Rana Plaza sweatshop a year ago, causing massive loss of life of the workers there. [1] First a three-minute piece light on facts. We're told at the end of that segment that the monthly minimum wage was raised from $40 to $68. UNMENTIONED: is it actually enforced.
Also not
so much as a hint about the violent government repression of labor organizers.
There aren't unions among the garment workers because labor organizers are
viciously and systematically repressed by the government, including being
subjected to torture and murder. For example, a prominent Bangladeshi labor
organizer, Aminul Islam, was brutally tortured and murdered by the Bangladeshi
“security forces” in 2012. And just to be clear which side “the West” is on,
New Zealand's version of the NSA (which is intimately connected to the NSA as
part of the “Five Eyes” inner clique of electronic surveillance secret police
agencies of the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) aids and abets
the Bangladeshi secret police, with whom it has a cooperative relationship
operating inside Bangladesh. This is supposedly an “anti-terrorism” op. Which
of course is what the Bangladeshi state murderers call their crimes too.
Obviously the Bangladeshis expect something in return for cooperating with the
New Zealand eavesdroppers, like, oh, “sharing intelligence” (passing along the
communications of targeted labor organizers, in other words). [2]
After the
three-minute “reporting” piece by host Ed Butler, which provided atmospherics
but scant hard information, BBC and Butler served up a business-centric
roundtable discussion. Workers' rights and the violent suppression of attempts
to organize them, which is KEY to improving conditions and wages, went
unmentioned. No garment workers or labor organizers were included in this
lengthy chitchat. It was an entirely top-down discussion. (A Bangladeshi
factory owner was included, who claimed he was not only paying way over minimum
wage, but paying medical costs for his workers, and for schooling for worker's
children- which sounds extremely dubious.) This went on for 14 minutes, then
aother piece of reportage by Butler, about a Cambodian garment worker, and
their decrepit living conditions, was put on. This segment was under two
minutes, and featured Butler allegedly in the home of a poor Cambodian garment
worker, where he comments that the house stinks (smells bad), then back to the
roundtable talking.
The focus
now was around the accord that Western fashion companies hammered out to avoid
more bad publicity building collapses and fires.
After two
minutes of that, the BBC put on a tape of their regular Irish comedian to
deliver a stand-up routine. The thrust of it was materialism and discarding
possessions. The upshot: what would happen to the global economy without
consumerism?
Then the
discussion resumed, with the comedian joining in. They all scratched their
heads over the conundrum of how the poor need the richer nations to consume for
the livelihood of the poor. (The idea of poor workers producing for
their own needs and consumption didn't arise.) Mass production for ultimate
discarding is presented as inescapable.
“Is it
going to take consumer movements or is it going to take government regulation?”
to change things, asks the reporter/roundtable leader Ed Butler at the end. The
answer he gets from one participant is “outside pressure.” Once again, the idea
of workers themselves being active agents in any of this, as opposed to
objects of sympathy, is unthinkable. Twenty-five minutes in total is taken up
with mostly empty blather and chin-stroking by business reps and a “consumer
advocate.” No labor voices at all, even though the show was ostensibly about
them.
Of
course, if you have to cover up the violent repression of mere attempts to
start a workers' movement, you can't start talking about unions or organized
labor, because then you'll have to ask why Bangladeshi labor IS so totally
unorganized, and you'll come smack up against the fact of the Bangladeshi
government's policy of repression, torture, and murder in order to force their
people to work cheap for Western corporations. (A policy that the U.S. and its
allies enforce in numerous countries, sometimes resorting to fascist military
coups to implement. Of course, without willing implementers in the target
countries, the U.S. couldn't do this.)
No
“consumer movement” in the West is going to meaningfully confront the murderous
Bangladeshi government. And a government that is in cahoots with sweatshop
owners, that allows massive construction of death-trap buildings, that tortures
and murders labor organizers, shows what a sick charade it is to posit
“government regulation” as a solution.
What the
Western corporations and their image-advisers want is no more collapsing
buildings or mass immolations by fire. The routinized hyper-exploitation of the
poor for their labor, enforced by secret police torturer-murderers, is
perfectly acceptable since THAT is something that can be kept out of (Western)
sight and thus out of mind.
1]
“In The Balance” with Ed Butler, BBC, April 18, 2015. In an almost half hour segment, no mention was made of how many people died in the building collapse of the sweatshop factory on April 24, 2013. It was 1,134, a slaughter. Hundreds of others were injured, some losing limbs and thus being maimed for life. (The Bangladeshi government treats poor cripples as human refuse, providing no benefits.)
2] See
“New Zealand Spy Data Shared With Bangladeshi Human Rights Abusers,” The
Intercept, April 15, 2015.
