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U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement Descends Into Human Trafficking & Involuntary Servitude 540 West 48Th St., 3Rd Fl

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U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement Descends Into Human Trafficking & Involuntary Servitude 540 West 48Th St., 3Rd Fl U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement Descends into Human Trafficking & Involuntary Servitude 540 West 48th St., 3rd Fl. New York, NY 10036 P: 212.242.3002 F: 212.242.3821 www.nlcnet.org Acknowledgments U.S. Jordan Free Trade Agreement Descends Into Human Trafficking & Involuntary Servitude. Tens of Thousands of Guest Workers Held in Involuntary Servitude May 2006 By Charles Kernaghan, National Labor Committee With research and production assistance from: Amanda Agro, Barbara Briggs, Christine Clarke, Matt D’Amico, Daniel De Bonis, Aysha Juthi, Amanda Teckman Design by Tomas Donoso We especially want to thank the over one hundred very brave guest workers in Jordan who told us their stories as well as the workers who were forcibly returned to Bangladesh. At grave risk to themselves, they gathered clothing labels and carried out research with the hope that their work would help improve conditions for the tens of thousands of guest workers in Jordan. We also want to thank our partners in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Center for Workers’ Solidarity and the National Garment Workers Federation for their extraordinary leadership and assistance. Contents How the Work was Done 1 Al Shahaed Apparel & Textile: 3 Wal-Mart & K-Mart Western Factory: 11 Do Any of Us Really Want a “Bargain” Based on Trafficking of Young Women into Involuntary Servitude? Duty Free Access to the U.S. Market 19 Al Safa Garments: 20 Sewing Clothing for Gloria Vanderbilt, Mossimo & Kohl’s; Young Woman Raped - Hangs Herself Action Plan: 25 To Bring Supplier Plants in Compliance with Jordanian Law Recruitment Ad for Star Garments 26 Jordan’s Labor Law 27 Maintrend: 28 Human Trafficking & Involuntary Servitude. China is The Big Winner in the 41 U.S. - Jordan Free Trade Agreement USAID Trains Business Manager of Jordan’s Largest 47 Free Trade Zone Hi Tech Textiles: 49 Wal-Mart & Gloria Vanderbilt United Garments Manufacturing: 61 Wal-Mart Behind the “Everyday Low Prices-Always” Are Women Cheated, Every Day Pacific Garments: 68 U.S.-Jordan Free Trade Agreement leads to tens of thousands of guest workers being cheated of their wages i March 2006 Contents Honorway Apparel Ltd: 73 Wal-Mart, K-Mart, & J.C. Penney Needle Craft: 79 Women Beaten Sewing Clothing for Wal-Mart Dragon Factory: 82 Liz Claiborne: Even the Best Companies Sometimes Stumble Ivory Garment: 86 The Rat Pack: Faded Glory, Mossimo, & Gloria Vanderbilt Al Nahat Apparels: 93 Forced to Work 47 Hours of Unpaid Overtime Each Week! Topaz Garments: 100 Nightmare at the Topaz Factory in Jordan Paramount Garment Factory: 106 Labels Sometimes Flat-out Lie: ZeroXposure & Chestnut Hill Al Aham Garments: 113 New York Laundry caught in sweatshop scandal in Jordan Mina Garments: 119 Sewing Victoria’s Secret Garments in a Hidden Sweatshop Aseel Universal Garment: 121 UAE Sweatshops in Jordan Producing Perry Ellis Making the Case to compensate guest workers 123 for back wages legally due them. Southern Apparel: 125 Producing for Wal-Mart Centear Clothing: 128 Another Wal-Mart Bargain ii March 2006 Caliber Garments: 132 Producing for Wal-Mart & Gloria Vanderbilt Sari Factory: 136 Faded Glory and Gloria Vanderbilt Prestige Apparel: 139 Sewing Clothing for Gloria Vanderbilt & Bill Blass M.K. Garments: 142 Another Gloria Vanderbilt Sweatshop Petra Apparel: 145 Producing for Wal-Mart & Gloria Vanderbilt Fresh Taste Factory: 147 Sewing Clothing for Gloria Vanderbilt Atlanta Textiles: 148 Dubai Sweatshop in Jordan Systematic and Extreme Violations I-Texfil: 150 Producing Mossimo for Target Al Cap Factory: 152 More Sweatshop Production for Gloria Vanderbilt Al Tajamouat Industrial Park U.S.-Jordan Free 154 Trade Agreement Labor Rights Provisions of the U.S.–Jordan 157 Free Trade Agreement Violated Systematically With Complete Impunity Company Profiles 158 iii March 2006 How the Work was Done. Researching factory conditions in Jordan was very difficult. Workers are not provided pay stubs or time sheets. Foreign guest workers are prohibited from organizing, and by law, Jordan’s union cannot affiliate foreign members. As a result, not a single guest worker we spoke with had ever been approached, let alone helped, by a Jordanian union. There are also language problems, since the guest workers from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, China, India and other countries do not speak Arabic. As the U.S. State Department points out in 2004, not only do “union bylaws limit membership to citizens, effectively excluding the country’s more than 125,000 registered foreign workers,” but Jordan’s unions are also not fully independent of the government. “Unions are required by the government to be members of the General Federation of Jordanian Unions (GFJTU), the sole trade union federation. The government subsidizes and audits the GFJTU’s salaries and activities…. The government co-sponsors and approves the timing of these elections and monitors them to ensure compliance with the law. Union leaders complained about the requirement for government oversight of their elections.” “Some Qualifying This also made it very difficult to find safe locations to meet with the workers, since Industrial Zone (QIZ) there were no links between the guest workers and local labor, religious or human companies are reluctant rights organizations. to give out information regarding their financial Moreover, official government data regarding the number of free trade zone factories status in terms of and workers is difficult to come by and is also quite dated. There is a lot of secrecy in investment capital, Jordan, as is bluntly pointed out by Jordan’s Export and Finance Bank. exports, number of employees, along with Some estimates in 2004 put the number of free trade zone workers at 48,000, the nationality of the of which, at least 25,000 were foreign guest workers. Some official government owners. They believe estimates put the figures much lower. But even the 48,000 figure may be too low as such information is factory lists never include the myriad “smaller” subcontract factories, with hundreds like a gold mine that of workers in each one, that have grown up across Jordan. Also, the official number must be kept well or percentage of Jordanian workers employed in these free trade zone factories seems guarded rather than high. When we were able—with fast driving and luck—to get into the industrial transparent.” zones, what we always saw were hundreds of foreign guest workers, who vastly outnumbered any apparent Jordanian workers. The gated industrial parks are in a state of what can only be described as a constant lock-down. We found this out one Friday evening, supposedly the weekly holiday in Jordan, when we were able to drive past the guard post and into the zone. When we got out of our car and started casually filming with our small video camera, trying to 1 March 2006 How the Work was Done look like tourists, it did not take more than 45 seconds to a minute before a security guard approached us. Within another minute or two, more guards joined us. Before five minutes, a black Mercedes Benz pulled up and another four plain-clothes guards got out. They kept asking us who we were, how we got in, what we were doing, and why we were filming. We started talking about how beautiful the palm trees are in Miami, trying to convince them that we were truly just naïve tourists. They made us put the camera away and followed us to the gate as we left. A few days later, we tried to drive into another free trade zone, hoping at least to film out the windows of the car, but we had no such luck. We were stopped at the entrance and a security guard just opened the back door of our car and got in. We had to kick the camera under the seat. He wanted to take us to the security office. We declined and left. National Labor Committee staff members made two trips to Jordan, as well as traveling to Bangladesh to meet with workers who were exploited in Jordan and then forcibly deported when they asked for their legal rights, including their proper wages. With our partners in Bangladesh, the Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity (BCWS) and the National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), we were able to establish a program visiting different workers’ neighborhoods to locate former factory workers from Jordan and to interview them regarding their experiences. Some of these interviews were also filmed. Our goal both in Jordan and in Bangladesh was to conduct several meetings with different groups of workers from the same factory, and to do so over the course of several months. In many cases, we held as many as four separate interviews with different workers from the same plant. In Jordan, it was difficult to find safe places for the interviews, but the workers were quite ingenious in setting this up. We cannot say any more than that. In Bangladesh, with our partners, it was easy to meet safely at their union offices. All across Jordan, brave workers were able to smuggle labels out of their factories. To track U.S. companies sourcing production in Jordan, we also relied upon shipping records based on U.S. Customs Import documents. We also spent a lot of time in retail stores, checking labels and buying clothing made in Jordan. In the end, though disappointing to us, we were still able to get at least some video footage and pictures of the free trade zone factories out of Jordan. This research took one year, from May 2005 through April 2006. 2 March 2006 AL SHAHAED APPAREL & TEXTILE: WAL-MART & K-MART Al Shahaed Apparel and Textile • Workers paid 2 cents an hour! Al-Hassan Industrial Estate Irbid, Jordan • 28 workers crowded into a 12-by-12 foot room with water available only every third day.
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