Inside the Garment Industry in Swaziland

In May 2001 the Center for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), based in the Netherlands and a part of the Dutch CCC, and the Trade Union Research Project (TURP), located in South Africa, carried out research on Swaziland's garment industry for the Clean Clothes Campaign and the ITGLWF-African region. Researchers visited 10 factories and interviewed management, trade union, government, and NGO representatives, as well as garment workers. This is what they found out.

Swaziland is a small country wedged between the east of South Africa and the south of Mozambique in Southern Africa. Historically, its economy is dominated by agricultural and agro-processing industries and government services. During the 1980s Swaziland's rate of industrial growth rapidly increased, prompted both by company relocations as a part of disinvestment from apartheid South Africa and government attempts to take advantage of the country's relative stability in the region to attract investment. Agricultural growth continued to decline into the 1990s and, according to the government, became nearly stagnant by 1998.

Between 1 million and 1.2 million people live in Swaziland. Sixty percent of the population is below the age of 21. Each year 10,000 college graduates enter the labor market. Formal employment is estimated at around 100,000, according to the Swaziland Investment Promotion Agency (SIPA), while unemployment is estimated at between 21% and over 30% by different sources (the government favors the latter calculation). There is also growing informal employment, according to SIPA.

Approximately 80% of goods produced in Swaziland are exported. Products dominating exports are sugar-based concentrates and blends, paper products, garments, textiles, and sweets. Swaziland's incorporation into the countries eligible for preferential access to U.S. markets through the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) will further bolster trade from Swaziland through export-orientated garment production. The AGOA, set up in 2001, gives Swaziland duty free and quota free apparel access to the U.S. market. SIPA told researchers that they expect economic growth to increase to 6% from the current 2.5% and create 10,000 jobs in 2001 as a result of the AGOA. After an initial delay Swaziland was approved as eligible for the AGOA in July 2001. The delay in the final approval caused some agitation amongst manufacturers in Swaziland.

Swaziland garment companies produce mainly for the U.S. market, for large retailers such as Wal-Mart and K-Mart. A small quantity of goods is shipped to the European market. The interviews revealed that overseas buyers control not only quality standards but in some cases also social and environmental standards. They visit the factories that produce their goods only occasionally, usually staying for about two hours during which they allegedly interview the management and the workers and inspect the factory. This is an inadequate time for thorough inspections. What is striking is that none of the workers interviewed by SOMO and TURP were aware of interviews done by foreign buyers nor had they ever seen any of the buyer's codes of conduct.

Bad working conditions
Workers in garment and textile companies in Swaziland experience poor working conditions. The Department of Labor complained to researchers that government has urged them to "enforce the law, but don't chase the investors away." This has forced them to be "very diplomatic" as "employers from the East have the support of government." As a result they don't "rush to court" but rather try to "persuade" the employers to co-operate with the law. In reality this amounts to very little control on the part of the Department of Labor on the implementation of the law. The Department of Labor admits that it is tougher on transgressions by indigenous companies than on foreign-owned companies.

There is an acknowledgement by the government that Taiwanese-owned companies (a lot of new investment in the garment industry is done by Taiwanese companies) in particular, have an "unfortunate reputation" of being bad employers. In spite of this and in spite of evidence and complaints of sub-standard working conditions, minimum standards are not enforced.

Researchers found evidence of:

• low wages,
• unhealthy and unsafe workplaces,
• substantial and often compulsory overtime,
• lack of adequate monitoring by buyers,
• trade union repression by employers and government,
• extra hardships experienced by pregnant workers, and
• a lack of government protection for workers.

Low wages
Minimum wages for a "casual laborer" are 110.88 rand per week (currently 1 US$ is 11.46 rand, while 1 euro is 9.91 rand), about R500 per month, while a first level sewing machinist receives a minimum wage of R163.93 per week (R730 per month). Instead of using minimum wages as a floor, companies tend to use them as a ceiling for wages. In some companies, the minimum wage is not paid.

One company, producing for brands such as Adidas, Fila, Bugle Boy, Armani, Guess, GAP, and I&C paid their workers on the 5th and 20th of each month for two weeks work, despite the actual number of work days in between. The result was that the workers were effectively not paid for one month of the year. Overtime is sometimes not paid at all or does not meet legal standards. Although none of the companies interviewed saw the minimum wage as low or an advantage for them, the government keeps the minimum wage low to attract foreign investment. The workers indicated that the wages paid are not enough to live on. Many workers have been forced to go to "shylocks" (micro-lending finance houses) to get high cost loans to supplement their income. Some workers were paying half their monthly wage to shylocks. One worker, from a factory producing for clients such as Goodies, Wal-Mart, and K-Mart, said "we are all going to shylocks, where we have to pay 20% interest. We have extra jobs to make ends meet." The workers from another factory producing for GUS (UK), KarstadtQuelle (Germany) and Mr. Price, Edgars, Ackerman, Pep Stores, and Makro (South Africa) reported that in their factory "a lot of the women don't have a (working) husband and many among them can't even send their children to school."

Unhealthy and unsafe workplaces
Almost all knitting was done manually, an operation that is extremely physically demanding and a reflection of companies taking advantage of cheap labor. Very few of the companies visited provided their workers with protective clothing or safety gear. Some workers brought their own facemasks from home. Workers were also often not protected against workplace noise.

The Employment Act requires that certain employees are designated "first aiders" to provide basic medical assistance in the company. This was largely implemented in the companies visited. In some cases, when workers were injured, they had to take themselves for medical care, at their own cost and were not paid for the time they were away from work. Disregard for the health and safety of workers was commonplace. The government has added to these problems by stalling the enactment of an Occupational Health and Safety Bill. The bill was finally passed into law October 1st, 2001, after awaiting royal approval (the final stage before enactment) for three years.

Substantial and often compulsory overtime
Some of the companies visited did not require overtime during the week because of the danger that women workers faced when traveling home at night. However, other companies were less sympathetic to their workers. Weekend work is a common occurrence in the Swaziland garment industry. Some companies introduced full weekend work for three to four weekends in a row during periods of high numbers of orders. Overwork is mostly compulsory. One factory producing T-shirts for brands such as Adidas, Fila, Bugle Boy, Guess, I&C, GAP, and Armani often forces workers to work until late and in the weekends. In a factory producing zippers for more than 250 customers of which the GAP is one of the biggest, one of the workers says that although the overtime is optional they are forced to take on whatever they can get to be able to make enough money to live. He says he is "working a normal 40 hour week and than 21 hours overwork a week, sometimes more until five hours per day," which totals 25 hours overtime per week. Workers said they often felt exhausted and that management was unsympathetic to this.

Inadequate monitoring by buyers
Although researchers found that buyers were making regular or occasional visits to factories to assess the quality of products, they learned that very few were inspecting labor conditions. Those who did carry out inspections did not interact with workers, according to the interviews. In one factory producing for such brands as Adidas, Fila, Bugle Boy, Guess, I&C, GAP, and Armani, workers said that once when an inspector came they were told not to complain to him because then the factory would loose orders and as a consequence the workers would loose their jobs. In another factory one worker complained that companies made cosmetic changes to impress buyers while labor abuses were hidden.

"I don't care about nicely painted walls," said the worker, "when workers are dying of bisnossis."

The workers in all the factories visited had never heard of codes of conduct or other corporate systems to set basic labor standards.

Trade union repression
The companies visited severely restricted the right and ability of unions to organize and represent their members' grievances before employers. The existing labor legislation, mentioned above, also restricts the power of unions to influence working conditions. In one company, a worker that was organizing members for the union was fired and the rest threatened with termination of contract if the organizing continued. In several factories workers were warned not to join unions. Most of the managers interviewed spoke unsympathetically about the union organizing garment workers, SMAWU, or about their abilities and several mentioned not allowing unions in the factory. In other cases, the employers would use delay or avoidance tactics to prevent meetings from ever taking place. Some employers were verbally abusive to trade union officials.

In one factory producing for GUS (UK), KarstadtQuelle (Germany) and Mr. Price, Edgars, Ackerman, Pep Stores, and Makro (South Africa) the workers said that they were afraid to join the union (SMAWU) or even talk about the trade union in the factory. When the workers have any sort of a meeting, they said, the supervisors will be there as well.

"If the union waits outside the gate we will run past them," said one worker. "We are very much afraid to be seen talking to the union."

Pregnant workers under fire
The laws regarding maternity leave currently allow for three months leave. For one of those months workers should receive a full month's pay. However, pregnant workers are often only allowed one month's leave, while others can take their three months but are not paid for it. This is a great additional burden on pregnant women which causes them to work right up until they experience contractions and often makes them return to work after a month. In one of the factories that produces for GUS (UK), KarstadtQuelle (Germany) and Mr. Price, Edgars, Ackerman, Pep Stores, and Makro (South Africa), workers report that "some women get their baby on their way home from work." In this factory they are only paid for two weeks leave, and are allowed only one month off in total. Some women will come back after two weeks because they need the money so badly.

Lack of government protection
The lack of protection by the government for the workers was found to be a source of great frustration for unions and workers. The government failed to take care of clear cases if rights violations. Some employers boasted to workers that they would bribe any labor inspector who visited the factory. At the time this research was carried out, Swaziland's industrial court had a waiting period of between two and five years. In addition, the Department of Labour complained, the government's central prosecuting office did not take labor violations seriously and would often not release the necessary resources for such prosecutions. The government's stalling of the enactment of the Occupational Health and Safety Bill is further evidence of this. At the same time, the Department of Labour admits that in an attempt to make the investors happy it does not pursue labor law violations to its fullest ability. Companies also have the right to lay workers off for periods of two weeks if their employment is not desired. The Department of Labour has taken "many companies" to court but generally "doesn't rush to court."
This is because:

• The judicial system does not take labor law violations seriously. The result is that their cases are given low priority and it takes a long time for prosecutors to be assigned to such cases. The Department of Labor is pressing to have prosecution in government decentralized so that they can employ their own prosecutors.
• The Industrial Court has a huge backlog of cases. A representative of the department of labor said, "you would be lucky to have your first date of trial scheduled within one year."

As a part of government the Department of Labor has to make Swaziland "as attractive to investors as possible." As such, they say, they can't "push investors too hard" but instead are "very gentle and persuasive." They would prefer to write to the federation of employers requesting compliance rather than take a company to court.

Following the research project, the SMAWU took up the codes of conduct of some of the retailers buying in Swaziland and used them in conversations with factory management to ask for union recognition. This has been successful in that the management at some of the factories recognize the need to talk to the union. However, things are moving slowly.

For more information on activities to improve working conditions in Swaziland, please contact the CCC International Secretariat.