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 MANY SHOPS bring in around 25% of their weekly take on a Saturday. So with the recent Boxing Day sales falling on a Saturday, many retailers were looking forward to a really profitable day.
However, it’s important to take a look at the root of some of these profits – slave labour.
And we’re not just talking about the minimum wages and terrible working conditions endured by many workers in some of Britain’s High Street giants. Much of the produce sold has been manufactured by child slave labour.
With this in mind the Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and Anti-Slavery International (ASI) have accused H&M and Zara of using cotton suppliers in Bangladesh which obtain many of their raw materials from Uzbekistan, where children as young as 10 are forced to work in the fields.
They are calling on retailers to ban Uzbek cotton and implement "track and trace" systems to make sure the source of the material can be vouched for.
Uzbekistan – one of the former SovietRepublics - is at the forefront of global cotton production. However, the EJF claim that “forced child labour, human rights violations, excessive pesticide use, the draining of an ocean and severe poverty are all rife in cotton production in Uzbekistan.”
ASI have noted that every year, “the Uzbekistan government closes down the schools for up to three months and forces up to 200,000 children, some as young as ten years old, to pick the cotton harvest.
Children in Uzbekistan are rarely paid for their work and the ‘lucky’ ones receive only 3-4 US cents per kilo for a product that is worth US $1.15 on the global market. The children can pick up to 50 kg of cotton a day and the work is dangerous, with five reported deaths in 2008, due to a lack of safety precautions.”
Solidarity Trade Union calls upon all its members and supporters to boycott items produced by child slave labour from H&M and Zara.
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Last Updated on Saturday, 02 January 2010 08:27 |
Comments
STU is a free and autonomous nationalist Union. The protection of British workers' economic and social interests are at the core of its agenda.
The main role of any trade union is to negotiate with employers over wages, work rules, hours, health and safety issues and so on.
Only internationalis t unions seek to mess in the sovereign affairs of others. Indeed, at the beginning of last month, the Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) sought to do this in respect of the Israel/Palestine conflict.
As nationalists, however, we must support the concept of national freedom and social justice for all workers – no matter where they are in the world. Thus, we should look forward to the day when Uzbek workers build a true alternative to the Federation of Trade Unions of Uzbekistan (FTUU), which is still viewed as a state organization.
The fight to build any free Trade Union in Uzbekistan will be long and hard. However, it is the only way that we can ever end this form of child slave labour. It is also realistically the only way in which Uzbeks can ensure that they receive a living wage and humane working conditions.