Double fence around free trade zone, the inside fence is electrified, both fences used to be electrified, but too many people got hurt, so they changed to only having the interior fence electrified (Mukai)
After the Sea Stood Up
by Michael Slate
Revolution #018, October 16, 2005, posted at revcom.us
We were 30 kilometers north of Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, by Bandaranaike International Airport, when our driver took a sharp turn to the right. Five minutes later we began to see streams of people growing thicker as we went on.
Then I saw huge buildings surrounded by high cyclone fences were set back off the road. The fences were usually topped with barbed wire. Sometimes there were two fences with a dirt path between them. Armed guards stood at the gates. I was certain we were at a prison compound.
The only odd thing were the people walking through the gates and streaming along the roads--there were thousands of them by this point.
I suddenly noticed the strangest thing--the vast majority of the people on the street were young women. A few men were hanging out on corners or tending to the vendors stalls.
Our companion notice my confusion. Anton Marcus, the General Secretary of the Free Trade Zones and General Services Employees Union, laughed and announced that we had arrived at our destination--the Katunayake Free Trade Zone.
As I prepared for this trip, back in the States, I had gone shopping for clothes to wear in the hot and humid climate. Many of the clothing I saw were high-end "outdoors wear" carrying labels like Columbia--and they cost an arm and a leg--like $90 for a quick drying shirt with built-in mosquito repellant. The tiny labels inside often read "Made in Sri Lanka."
When I told this story to Anton, he explained that there are now 830 garment factories in Sri Lanka today employing 450,000 workers directly and another 100,000 indirectly. Maximum profit has been assured by the establishment of more than a dozen Free Trade Zones throughout Sri Lanka in 1978.
These zones were designed to create the most efficient and profitable conditions possible for capitalists to exploit the labor of the people: Special laws, special access to resources like electricity, special attention from police and authorities (including to prevent revolutionary and trade union organizing).
Young women from Sri Lanka are often desperate enough to sign up to go to Europe or the Middle East to do domestic work--where they are often treated as slaves or sexually abused. This is the main source of "foreign exchange income" for the country. The garment industry runs a close second--and it too is based on exploiting the lives and labor of the young women workers.
The massive factories resemble the maquiladoras sweatshops along the U.S.-Mexican border. Workers there assemble the pre-cut cloth that is shipped into the country.
The workers here make about $40 a month.
Anton described some of the other hellish conditions:
"The major issue is the target system. The workers have to perform this target within a limited time. And sometimes if they do not meet this target they will be fined. Sometimes they deduct form the workers’ wages and sometimes the workers have to keep working without pay until they meet the target…. After the workers achieve these targets then they are raised higher. Day by day they increase the target so the workers cannot achieve it. In one factory the supervisor came behind one woman worker--and pushed her head telling her to do more to meet the target. When he pushed her head, a machine rod went into her eye and she was blinded.
"The workers do not drink water at work because if they go to toilet they cannot meet the target. If they take time to eat then they cannot meet the target. So because of this terrible target system the workers cannot work more than two to three years. The maximum would be 5 years because after 5 years they can get a gratuity payment [a bonus]. But after 5 years they are exhausted and they have a lot of health problems."
Anton used my experience buying clothes as an example:
"The monthly salary is $40. One pair of trousers sells in the U.S. for $59, and one factory line will produce more than a hundred dozens of trousers in one day. So that means that in one day of production they can pay one month’s salary for all of their workers. All of the other production days are profit for the employer."
The workers themselves get almost nothing--and then at each step as the products move across the world, a succession of capitalists seize their cut--at the factory, at the ships lines, at the banks making business loans, at the retail end.
After driving around the factories in the zone, Anton took us into the surrounding neighborhood. It was really strange, a huge village of women had sprung up. Tens of thousands of young women lived here as part of their job. The workers in the zone are almost all women between the ages of 18 and 28; it was rare to see an older woman or a man. Another condition of their employment is that they are unmarried.
Deepa is one of the "elders" in the zone and her story is typical:
"My village is 120 kilometers from here, it’s just past Negombo. Most of the people in my village do agriculture, some people do pot-making and there are also garment factories and people go there to work. I have my mother, father, two sisters and a brother. My father farms and my mother works in another place. I left my village to come here 8 years ago. I am 26 years old. I left the village because of economic problems. I didn’t want to be a burden for my family and I wanted to earn for myself. We have to come to the Free Trade Zones to find work because there is no other place to go. I had to come here, otherwise I would have to go abroad. This is what a lot of the young women in my village do."
Many of the women who come to work in order to save up for their dowry –- an oppressive tradition that requires paying money to the husband’s family. But that’s not how it works out: Few are able to save any money. And they all get a "bad reputation" back home--because they have been living on their own, outside family supervision of their "virtue." And so few can return to the villages anyway, or expect to get married there.
I visited one of the private boarding houses surrounding the zone--the kind that all the women workers live in. Ten women sometimes lived in 10 foot by 12 foot rooms--separated by the other rooms by cardboard walls. Cooking is done on a row of wood burning stoves in a long and narrow hut with no ventilation. Two outside wells provided water for drinking and bathing. The men who "watched over" the house often watched the women bathe after work.
A young woman, Lalitha, told me about her living conditions:
"Whenever we go out we have to get permission from the boarding house owner because they suspect us when we go out. If we have a light on then the owner comes and wants to know why we have the light on for so long. So we cannot even read. When we go out they think we are going for some other things because of this environment. There are about 50 women living in my boarding house. And when we go to work and when we are coming back to work –- going to and from the factory--there are problems along the road. Some men touch us or come with the bike and try to hit us."
Deepa described her house to me:
"There are 70 people living in my boarding house. There are three people in my room and each of us has to pay 900 rupees per month and when we have to go out of the boarding house we have to sign a book and mention the time and where we are going. And when we come back we have to sign again. There is not enough water, and only one toilet for at least 9 women. Sometimes there are mixed boarding houses--men and women living there--and when they come after work the men come to them and sometimes rape the women. On salary day sometimes the men come and take away our salary."
Although few of the women will speak publicly about such attacks by gangs of men--sexual harassment and rape are common in the factories and surrounding areas.
Deepa explained how sick she felt after 8 years’ work and how she had only slim hope of doing another two years and coming out alive. And it was heartbreaking and enraging to hear her explain that, despite it all, she still felt she had to tell her sister about the "opportunity" in the zones: "Even though we don’t want to do this work here and we do not want to bring others to work here, but because of the economic problems we do it."
We finished our tea and Deepa went to finish cooking her meal. Anton suggested we head back to the city. As we walked to the car Anton reminded me of a story he told when we first met. He felt it concentrated the life of the garment workers in Sri Lanka today:
"Many of the garment workers were affected by the tsunami. One women worker couldn’t come to work for 12 days after the tsunami because she didn’t have anything to wear. She lost everything. When she reported to work after 12 days the employer asked her to take her own leave for the time she missed. They never considered her situation. These employers, even the tsunami they want to use to maximize their profit."