INVESTIGADORES
MONTERO JerÓnimo
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
The neoliberal fashion trend: Sweatshops in Europe and in Latin America
Autor/es:
MONTERO, JERÓNIMO
Lugar:
Durham
Reunión:
Simposio; 3rd Year PhDs symposium, Department of Geography, University of Durham; 2009
Institución organizadora:
Department of Geography, University of Durham
Resumen:
Over the
last thirty years the clothing industry has experienced major changes. In
several locations, a return to the widespread use of the sweating system can be
witnessed; in some others, the latter has indeed emerged. These changes in the
spatial organisation of the industry reveal changes in the power relationships
within it (Massey, 1985). Indeed, it can be noted that among the main results
of these dominant trends, working conditions have worsened nearly all around
the world.
This
research aims at analysing the changes that the fashion industry has undergone
during the last three decades and its consequences over working conditions.
Two case studies are addressed: one in Buenos Aires
and another one in Prato (Tuscany). In both cities, thousands of
migrant workers live and work for up to 18 hours a day in small inner-city
workshops for an extremely low pay. The reality on these locations suggests
that informal economy, human trafficking, child labour and new slavery are
counterparts of the glamorous clothing businesses.
Numerous
industrial and social changes since the late seventies converged to give rise
to the sweating system. Capital logics, but also gender and ethnic issues, lay
at the centre of the explanations (Morokvasic, 1987). On the one hand, given
the constantly changing nature of fashion, the production of womens
fashionwear (the most dynamic stripe of the market) requires a high level of
flexibility and proximity to the markets, which undermine the benefits of
factory production and outsourcing in developing countries. Companies have
instead relied on small inner-city workshops, largely run by migrants. On
these, gender inequalities and the vulnerable situation of migrant labour ease
the mechanisms of over-exploitation to which these workers are subjected. By
the same token, the availability of this sweating system (a virtual labour
army reserve) has empowered businesses, resulting in wages cuts for factory
workers.
These
thousands of unregistered workshops are constrained to accept low prices and
small and unstable orders to survive to competition among them, in an endless
run to the bottom. These petty entrepreneurs and their workers shoulder the
risks of the investments of large retailers and branded manufacturers. Besides,
the resulting redistribution of value within the chain determines that the unit
profit of the brands can reach a hundred times that of the worker.
The role
played by national states in both places has allowed these trends to
consolidate. In both Argentina
and Italy,
the facts suggest that the emergence of the sweating system responds more to an
active than to a passive role of the state in the regulation of the economy.
While in Buenos Aires the homework legislation
failed to be enforced (including the dissolution of the ad hoc agency),
in Italy
the changes in labour legislation (mostly in the regulation of subcontracting
practices) have been critical.
A number of
policy-making and other political suggestions arise from this research. On the
one hand, public administrators must take immediate action to improve the legal
framework in favour to the weaker actors in the industry, and to enforce it. On
the other hand, while consumers campaigns are surely welcomed, workers
organisation is even more central to put an end to sweatshops. Most
importantly, any thorough and long term changes must be based on the
consideration of garments as nothing less than a human need.