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Geelong Deanery |
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'Local Jobs Lost to Sweatshops'Thus ran a headline in a recent Geelong Advertiser (4 July 1998). It highlighted a trend in industrial organisation that most had hoped, and thought, had gone forever. Unfortunately a spin-off of the globalised market process is unfair competition, which only becomes fair when the workers, in this case in clothing, textile and footwear, are paid the same ‘pin-money’ wages by Australian manufacturers as Asian makers pay their workers. The human casualties are ‘sweated’ outworkers in Asian shops, and the Australian workers whose factories can’t compete. So such Australians lose their jobs, a recent local example being 35 workers made redundant at Candy Footwear, North Geelong, in July. Unfortunately, government economists and many economic commentators now espouse this practice as good economics. The outworker practice also operates in Geelong, according to Annie Delaney of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union. These people work under time pressures and pay conditions that are very poor by Australian standards. Ms Delaney reports that it is difficult to take legal action, as outworkers in Victoria are not deemed to be employees in the award sense. A ray of hope in the lives of outworkers is the recent successes of the action group Fair Wear. Fair Wear developed a Code of Practice that it encouraged retailers and manufacturers to accept and sign. The Code is a voluntary industry agreement that guarantees that the garments that bear the labels of these organisations are not made in ‘sweatshop’ conditions. As of this June, 75 retailers/manufacturers had signed the Code, including well-known names such as Coles, Woolworths, K-Mart, Country Road, Just Jeans and Candy Footwear. Gordon Snowdon |
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