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| Vol. 4, Issue 5 May 2012 |
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Reporting & Essays |
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Reportage |
Fashion Victims
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| How the denim industry’s downward price pressure exposes Bangladesh’s garment workers to lung disease |
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ALLISON JOYCE FOR THE CARAVAN |
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| At Dhaka’s Latest Washing and Blasting Industries, workers only have a cotton rag to protect them.
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| A |
bout 24 kilometres from the centre of Dhaka, in the gritty industrial suburb of Savar Upazila, down a narrow path, a small sign reads ‘Latest Washing and Blasting Industries.’ It’s not much more than a large corrugated metal shack with room for three young men, who work shoulder-to-shoulder. In the centre of the shed is a waist-high mound of white sand from |
the nearby Jamuna River. The young men are armed with pneumatic guns that shoot the sand onto the denim jeans, their hands protected by heavy gloves. A few spurts on each side are all that’s necessary to give the denim that worn, softer look that the fashionistas crave.
There’s no ventilation, save for bullet-sized holes in the metal roof where rays of sunshine look like tangible cylinders from the fine dust and sand in the air. As the men work, there is a cacophony of noise and dust and it’s nearly impossible to breathe—with or without a flimsy cotton face mask that is supposed to provide protection to visitors.
The men who blast this river sand onto the denim jeans have even less protection: their faces are shrouded in cotton cloths, nothing more. Nearby, a boy a few years shy of puberty carries buckets of sand to feed the machines as men in their 20s blast away at the garments, only their eyes visible between strips of colourful cloth wound tightly around their heads.
| ALLISON JOYCE FOR THE CARAVAN |
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Like most of Bangladesh’s sandblasting plants, Latest Washing and Blasting contracts for the export market. |
Going through 2,200 cubic feet of sand per month and employing about 30 workers, Latest Washing and Blasting is a medium-sized operation, says manager Mohammed Toiubur Rahman. On the days there aren’t power cuts, it runs 24 hours a day in three shifts. Rahman says there are about 100 factories of similar size in the country. They turn out 150,000 pieces per month.
Rahman says his workers are paid 6,000 to 7,000 taka (4,000 to 4,700 rupees) per month, a decent salary for what he admits are uncomfortable working conditions. “This is hard work, so I give them more money,” he says.
It’s hard to say where these jeans will land. In Rahman’s office, at the far end of the shack where the blasting can still be heard, he offers a business card that boasts: 100% Export Oriented Garments Sand Blasting Industries. There are stacks of denim jeans with labels of no-name brands, but Rahman claims he sandblasts jeans bound for Wal-Mart stores and branded for Gap, H&M, Liberty and Primark.
This is where it gets tricky. Most of these brands deny their jeans are handled by subcontractors (ie. small operations like Rahman’s) pointing out that this explicitly contravenes their codes of conduct. Rahman could be boasting of associations that don’t exist or brands may have less control over their supply chain than they’ll admit. It’s nearly impossible to verify.
But what is undeniable is that the sandblasting of jeans with silica-rich sand is toxic. And the practice that takes place in this metal shack on the outskirts of Dhaka is exposing young men and boys to highly dangerous conditions. The workers here seem unaware of the hazard. “We just have our mask and that’s enough for our protection,” says 20-year-old Mohammad Masud Rana, who’s worked here since he was 18 and lives nearby with his shift-workers in Savar. He seems reluctant to speak further.
Even Rahman, who seems sincere, earnest and perhaps even flattered to have foreign visitors to his workshop, says the process is safe. “There’s no chemicals, only sand,” he says. “They take two bandannas and that’s all they need. It’s not harmful.”
But this isn’t true. For years, the process of pre-fading jeans for the export market was outsourced to Turkey. But political agitation led by doctors, artists and trade unions eventually forced the hand of the Turkish government, which banned silica abrasives in sandblasting in March 2009. For good reason. The sand used in the machines— natural sand from the beach—contains silica. One of the most common minerals in the earth’s crust, when inhaled it does irreparable damage to the lungs. This causes a disease called silicosis. There have been 600 confirmed cases of garment-industry silicosis in Turkey, with as many as 44 deaths in the past decade.
| JACOB RESNECK FOR THE CARAVAN |
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Abdhulhalim Demir is at half his lung capacity from silicosis. |
For years, silicosis was unheard of among textile workers. It’s an occupational disease mostly found among labourers digging in the ground or crushing rocks. In India, silicosis is prevalent among workers who grind and polish gemstones. The Ancient Greeks were known to have identified silicosis among quarry workers, but it took a largescale industrial disaster involving Union Carbide to bring the disease to the fore.
In 1927, about 3,000 labourers in the US state of West Virginia were working on a tunnel to divert a river in a hydroelectric project. When the workers encountered a high deposit of silica, they were asked to mine it for Union Carbide. No masks were provided and the workers breathed the silica dust as they crushed the mineral. Subsequent hearings by the US government caused the first laws against silica-exposure to be put in place.
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N THE EARLY 1990s Turkey was emerging as a booming centre for textile exports. This success lured thousands of young men from impoverished areas—ethnic Kurds in the southeast as well as migrants from former Soviet republics like Georgia and Azerbaijan. |
“I was a kid when I started in this sector,” recalls Abdulhalim Demir, a 29-year-old ethnic Kurd who at the age of 15 was one of thousands from his predominately Kurdish Bingöl province in eastern Turkey to work in the garment industry. He found work in a shop sandblasting denims to give the pants the worn, slightly distressed look coveted by trendy consumers. “It was easy—they let me sandblast for an hour and then take a 20-minute break.”
Demir did not realise the dangers to which he was exposed. “There is no specific treatment; there is no cure,” says Doctor Zeki Kilicaslan, a professor of pulmonary medicine at Istanbul University and leading activist for afflicted textile workers.
Demir says he worked almost five years as a sandblaster and foreman in shops finishing jeans destined for the international market. He’s since lost half his lung capacity. His condition has stabilised but his doctors say a new infection could be fatal for the father of three.
Now activists in Turkey charge that international brands have taken their business east, where health and safety laws are even weaker. “It’s typical behaviour of a multinational— just jump, jump, jump,” says Engin Sedat Kaya, a trade union leader in Istanbul. “This technique has been strongly banned in market countries. Maybe this is legal but it’s not ethical.”
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NE OF THE FEW ECONOMIC SUCCESS STORIES to come out of Bangladesh, one of the world’s most densely populated countries, is a garment industry that has grown phenomenally over the past 25 years. Last year garments made up about 80 percent of the country’s 15.5 billion dollars in exports. |
Major international brands such as Levi Strauss, H&M, Gap and Wal-Mart have shifted more production to a nation where labour is cheap yet has been able to produce quality products. With legions of unemployed men and women desperate for jobs, garment workers have not seen a rise in the minimum wage since 2006, when, after eight years, it was raised from 930 taka (611 rupees) to 1,662 taka (1,092 rupees) per month. Most now agree that this isn’t enough to survive on—and many opt to work excruciatingly long shifts in order to earn overtime. Outbreaks of violence over pay are not uncommon, which have led the government to agree to form a commission to consider a rise in minimum wage.
Most international brands deny using suppliers that sandblast with silica. Heightened awareness—at least in Turkey and Europe—successfully led to agitation that put brands on the spot. The Gap says it has prohibited the use of silica sand since 2006.
| ALLISON JOYCE FOR THE CARAVAN |
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At Mark Sandblasting in a Dhaka suburb, workers lack proper safety gear. |
“We’ve not placed any denim orders requiring (silica) sandblasting since 2006,” says Daniel Rubin, a Gap spokesman, via phone from the company headquarters in San Francisco. Other brands take a similar line. “Sandblasting material must contain less than one percent crystalline silica due to health reasons,” H&M spokeswoman Andreas Roos wrote in an email from the company’s headquarters in Sweden.
Rather than use silica-rich natural sand, many brands require aluminium oxide grit be used as an alternative. According to H&M’s own reports, in 2007 three quarters of its suppliers in South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan) were found to be using silica-rich sand. Its follow up report claims that this figure dropped to 18 percent in 2008. Even when aluminium oxide grit is used, some workers are offered no protection at all. But even the more dangerous silica-rich sandblasting continues in Bangladesh and verifying the claims of suppliers and international brands is extremely difficult. “I think it’s a real challenge, monitoring the supply chain,” admits Rubin, the Gap spokesman.
“We require and check that manufacturers take the appropriate steps to avoid silicosis. We apply the same requirements regardless of country of manufacture,” insists Roos, the H&M spokeswoman.
Primark, a budget brand popular in the UK and Ireland, released a statement through a public relations firm in London. It doesn’t deny that its suppliers may use abrasives with silica but rather used the rationale that it follows industry norms. “In general, more than 95 percent of factories that supply Primark also supply other high street/international retail brands,” the statement reads.
In the statement Primark further claims to have invested in a number of measures, including warning signs in factories so that workers are aware of the dangers of exposure to crystalline silica dust. But there is a caveat in the statement: “while third-party suppliers may be aware of the dangers, and have put in place mechanisms to protect workers, these are not sufficient in every case.”
We go to one of the washing plants where the denim jeans are finished before they are ready to ship. Latest Washing and Blasting contracts with about a half-dozen of these washing plants. One of them is S-Bright, just down the road.
Kamal Hossain is the washing plant’s owner and he says “100 percent” of his garments are for export.
Business may be booming but price pressures from brands and larger suppliers further up the chain are causing him grief. “We struggle with price,” he admits. “Buyers, they force it down.” He rattles off figures. Sandblasting, once about 5 dollars per dozen, is now about half that. Washing was once 1.5 dollars per dozen but has dropped to less than a third of that. He complains that only the big players, who control the politically connected Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, are benefiting from Bangladesh’s garment industry miracle. “The BGMEA are getting big money from the brands, but it’s not coming down to me.” | | | |
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Readers' Comments |
Total Comments
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Paulo
17 July 2010
06:52 AM
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I agree with Mary.
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Mary
2 July 2010
01:14 AM
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This should run in Vogue.
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