Solidarity Center Report: Swazi Workers Lack Basic Freedoms

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2006/09/21/solidarity-center-report-swazi-workers-lack-basic-freedoms/


Solidarity Center Report: Swazi Workers Lack Basic Freedoms

by James Parks, Sep 21, 2006

Workers in Swaziland, a small African country tucked away between South Africa and Mozambique, are trapped in the turmoil of the global economy.

Their national economy is on the brink of collapse, and they are unable to try to fix the situation because an absolute monarchy prevents them from exercising their fundamental rights.

Much of the turmoil is the result of the U.S. African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which provides liberal access to U.S. markets for more than 35 African countries. When it was passed in 2000, AGOA helped countries like Swaziland, one of the poorest in Africa, attract investment and provided a market for exports that led to some economic growth.

But Swazi workers producing garments and other products for the U.S. market often face harsh conditions at work—forced overtime without pay, unsafe working conditions, abuse on the factory floor and dismissal for union activities, according to a new report by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.

Justice for All: The Struggle for Worker Rights in Swaziland, is the sixth in a series of Solidarity Center reports on workers’ rights around the globe. Previous reports chronicled conditions in China, Colombia, Jordan, Mexico and Sri Lanka.



At a Sept. 13 conference in Washington, D.C., where the report was released, Clayola Brown, president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI), one of the AFL-CIO’s six constituency groups, said the AGOA has not protected the rights of Swaziland’s workers:

They are struggling against discrimination, forced labor, and child labor. Women workers, who have a low status in Swazi society, make up more than three-fourths of the workforce, especially in the textile and garment sector. Yet in terms of addressing discrimination against women, workplace sexual harassment and violence, rape, and political rights for women, Swaziland is far behind other countries in Southern Africa.

Forced labor and child labor continue to be sanctioned under some cultural traditions.

So although AGOA has provided needed incentives for investment in poor countries such as Swaziland, we can see after six years that it has done little to protect the workers producing the goods for U.S. markets.

Last year, after being in force for 40 years, international garment and textile quotas, which had helped Swaziland’s export industry flourish, were phased out. Now, nearly half the garment and textile companies operating there have closed their doors and moved to countries that pay even lower wages, such as China and India.

FULL story at link above.