RSN: How Much It Sucks to Be a Sri Lankan Worker Making Beyoncé's New Clothing Line

The article below deserves to stand alone to highlight the abuse within the international garment industry and the failures to monitor.

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Reader Supported News | 19 May 16

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Beyonce modeling her clothing line. (photo: Ivy Park)

How Much It Sucks to Be a Sri Lankan Worker Making Beyoncé's New Clothing Line

By Sirin Kale, Broadly

18 May 16

According to a newspaper investigation, the sweatshop workers making the Ivy Park collection for Topshop are only making 64 cents an hour. We ask an expert on the Sri Lankan clothes industry just how bad the situation really is.

eyonce's much-hyped surprise collaboration with British clothing giant Topshop made headlines around the world when it launched in April this year. Topshop's website crashed as people rushed to purchase premium athleisure (prices start at $14 for sweatbands, and go up to $265 for a full length color block body.) An exclusive cover story with Elle emphasized how the clothing line was "a way to push a feel-good, woman-power ethos, to de-emphasize perfectionism, to value strength over beauty, and to inspire."

The backlash was inevitable. British tabloid newspaper the Sun on Sunday ran an expose describing the Sri Lankan garment workers making the range as "sweatshop 'slaves' earning just 44p (64 cents) an hour making 'empowering' Beyoncé clobber." Reporters visited "poverty-stricken seamstresses" at the MAS Holdings factory in Sri Lanka, which produces the clothes.

One sewing machine operator said that she was unable to survive on her basic wage of 18,500 rupees a month ($126). The newspaper claimed on average seamstresses earn £4.30 a day ($6.23), although acknowledging that workers at the factory were still being paid above the legal minimum wage of 13,500 rupees a month.

"What is being described by the Sun it looks like a severe case of exploitation, bordering on slavery," said anti-exploitation campaigner Jakub Sobik from Anti-Slavery International. He highlighted particular concerns, including low pay and limits on the women's movement at night by locking them into their accommodation (the workers reside on-site and are subject to curfews.)

Sobik called for Topshop to introduce independent inspections of all their suppliers, and asked them to "look more proactively into their supply chains to limit the risks of exploitation and modern slavery tainting their products."

To find out more about the conditions of the workers making Beyonce's clothes, we spoke to Dr Kanchana Ruwanpura of the University of Edinburgh. Dr Ruwanpura is an expert on the Sri Lankan garment industry, and has visited MAS factories in Sri Lanka, though her visit took place several years ago.

"MAS are essentially top of the range in terms of labour conditions in Sri Lanka," she says. "They're brilliant factories in terms of the build space and the attention they usually pay to the codes they work with. However, I would say that when it comes to wages and freedom of association, MAS don't do a very good job."

Disturbingly, MAS workers are not allowed to unionize, despite the obvious benefits unions bring. "Factories across Sri Lanka, including MAS, are almost all guilty of not upholding the right of workers to unionize. That's one thing they completely fail on." Dr Ruwanpura highlights low wages as another concern. "MAS is not paying its workers a living wage."

Alongside tourism, the clothing industry in Sri Lanka is a huge economic driver. It directly employs an estimated 300,000 people, with an additional 600,000 indirectly employed. While Sri Lanka is generally considered to have better working conditions than other clothing-producing countries such as Bangladesh or Pakistan, campaigners say a living wage in the country should be 48,608 rupees ($332), over three times the legal minimum.

I ask Dr Ruwanpura about the life of an average Sri Lankan garment worker. "As none of the factories pay a living wage, salaries (with overtime included) are generally around the 17,000 to 20,000 rupee mark ($116 to $136/month.) The factories work on a shift system, apart from in busy periods when workers may be asked to work overtime to help make big orders."

But for all that Ivy Park's promotional materials talk of empowerment, how autonomous are the women sewing your mid-rise mesh-panelled leggings? "The garment industry has made Sri Lankan women financially independent, but I wouldn't say it's made them autonomous. When you're not being paid a living wage—well, it's economically challenging. I've been to some of these worker's houses. It's hard for them."

A spokesperson for Ivy Park told Broadly: "Ivy Park has a rigorous ethical trading programme. We are proud of our sustained efforts in terms of factory inspections and audits, and our teams worldwide work very closely with our suppliers and their factories to ensure compliance. We expect our suppliers to meet our code of conduct and we support them in achieving these requirements."

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/36942-how-much-it-sucks-to-be-a-sri-lankan-worker-making-beyonces-new-clothing-line

RSN: The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash: Corbyn/Sanders Edition, Modern-Day Slavery and Environmental Devastation Go Hand in Hand,

Reader Supported News | 21 January 16

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Glenn Greenwald | The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash: Corbyn/Sanders Edition

Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
Greenwald writes: "Evidence of a growing Sanders movement is unmistakable. Because of the broader trends driving it, this is clearly unsettling to establishment Democrats - as it should be."
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he British political and media establishment incrementally lost its collective mind over the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the country’s Labour Party, and its unraveling and implosion show no signs of receding yet. Bernie Sanders is nowhere near as radical as Corbyn; they are not even in the same universe. But, especially on economic issues, Sanders is a more fundamental, systemic critic than the oligarchical power centers are willing to tolerate, and his rejection of corporate dominance over politics, and corporate support for his campaigns, is particularly menacing. He is thus regarded as America’s version of a far-left extremist, threatening establishment power.

For those who observed the unfolding of the British reaction to Corbyn’s victory, it’s been fascinating to watch the D.C./Democratic establishment’s reaction to Sanders’ emergence replicate that, reading from the same script. I personally think Clinton’s nomination is extremely likely, but evidence of a growing Sanders movement is unmistakable. Because of the broader trends driving it, this is clearly unsettling to establishment Democrats — as it should be.

A poll last week found that Sanders has a large lead with millennial voters, including young women; as Rolling Stone put it: “Young female voters support Bernie Sanders by an expansive margin.” The New York Times yesterday trumpeted that, in New Hampshire, Sanders “has jumped out to a 27 percentage point lead,” which is “stunning by New Hampshire standards.” The Wall Street Journal yesterday, in an editorial titled “Taking Sanders Seriously,” declared it is “no longer impossible to imagine the 74-year-old socialist as the Democratic nominee.”

Just as was true for Corbyn, there is a direct correlation between the strength of Sanders and the intensity of the bitter and ugly attacks unleashed at him by the D.C. and Democratic political and media establishment. There were, roughly speaking, seven stages to this establishment revolt in the U.K. against Corbyn, and the U.S. reaction to Sanders is closely following the same script:

STAGE 1: Polite condescension toward what is perceived to be harmless (we think it’s really wonderful that your views are being aired).

STAGE 2: Light, casual mockery as the self-belief among supporters grows (no, dears, a left-wing extremist will not win, but it’s nice to see you excited).

STAGE 3: Self-pity and angry etiquette lectures directed at supporters upon realization that they are not performing their duty of meek surrender, flavored with heavy doses of concern trolling (nobody but nobody is as rude and gauche online to journalists as these crusaders, and it’sunfortunately hurting their candidate’s cause!).

CLICK IN LINK TO VIEW

STAGE 4: Smear the candidate and his supporters with innuendos of sexism and racism by falsely claiming only white men support them (you like this candidate because he’s white and male like you, not because of ideology or policy or contempt for the party establishment’s corporatist, pro-war approach).

STAGE 5: Brazen invocation of right-wing attacks to marginalize and demonize, as polls prove the candidate is a credible threat (he’s weak on terrorism, will surrender to ISIS, has crazy associations, and is a clone of Mao and Stalin).

STAGE 6: Issuance of grave and hysterical warnings about the pending apocalypse if theestablishment candidate is rejected, as the possibility of losing becomes imminent (you aredestined for decades, perhaps even generations, of powerlessness if you disobey our decrees about who to select).

STAGE 7: Full-scale and unrestrained meltdown, panic, lashing-out, threats, recriminations, self-important foot-stomping, overt union with the Right, complete fury (I can no longer in good conscience support this party of misfits, terrorist-lovers, communists, and heathens).

Britain is well into Stage 7, and may even invent a whole new level (anonymous British military officials expressly threatened a “mutiny” if Corbyn were democratically elected as prime minister). The Democratic media and political establishment has been in the heart of Stage 5 for weeks and is now entering Stage 6. The arrival of Stage 7 is guaranteed if Sanders wins Iowa.

Headline covering Jeremy Corbyn. (photo: The Intercept)

Headline from The Daily Beast. (photo: The Intercept)

It’s both expected and legitimate in elections for the campaigns to harshly criticize one another. There’s nothing wrong with that; we should all want contrasts drawn, and it’s hardly surprising that this will be done with aggression and acrimony. People go to extremes to acquire power: That’s just human nature.

But that doesn’t mean one can’t find meaning in the specific attacks that are chosen, nor does it mean that the attacks invoked are immune from critique (the crass, cynical exploitation of gender issues by Clinton supporters to imply Sanders support is grounded in sexism was particularly slimy and dishonest given that the same left-wing factions that support Sanders spent months literally pleading with Elizabeth Warren to challenge Clinton, to say nothing of the large numbers of female Sanders supporters whose existence was nullified by those attacks).

People in both parties, and across the political spectrum, are disgusted by the bipartisan D.C. establishment. It’s hardly mysterious why large numbers of adults in the U.S. want to find an alternative to a candidate like Clinton who is drowning both politically and personally in Wall Street money, who seems unable to find a war she dislikes, and whose only political conviction seems to be that anything is justifiably said or done to secure her empowerment — just as it was hardly a mystery why adults in the U.K. were desperate to find an alternative to the craven, war-loving, left-hating Blairites who have enormous amounts of blood stained indelibly on their hands.

But the nature of “establishments” is that they cling desperately to power, and will attack anyone who defies or challenges that power with unrestrained fervor. That’s what we saw in the U.K. with the emergence of Corbyn, and what we’re seeing now with the threat posed by Sanders. It’s not surprising that the attacks in both cases are similar — the dynamic of establishment prerogative is the same — but it’s nonetheless striking how identical is the script used in both cases.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34744-the-seven-stages-of-establishment-backlash-corbynsanders-edition

The White House Asked Social Media Companies to Look for Terrorists. Here's Why They'd #Fail.
Jenna McLaughlin, The Intercept
McLaughlin writes: "The White House asked internet companies during a counterterrorism summit earlier this month to consider using their technology to help 'detect and measure radicalization.'"
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Wealth, Influence of Gates Foundation Distorting International Development
RT
Excerpt: "Enormous wealth and influence wielded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) is distorting the direction of international development in a global vacuum of accountability, a new report claims."
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US Congressional Committee Subpoenas Ex-Drug CEO Shkreli
Sarah N. Lynch and David Ingram, Reuters
Excerpt: "A U.S. congressional committee has demanded that former drug executive Martin Shkreli appear at a hearing on drug prices to testify about his former company's decision to raise the price of a lifesaving medicine by more than 5,000 percent, congressional aides said on Wednesday."
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Parent: Fiorina 'Ambushed' Children With Anti-Abortion Rally
Bradford Richardson, The Hill
Richardson writes: "Republican primary candidate Carly Fiorina has been accused of ambushing a group of Iowa pre-schoolers, who were on a field trip to a botanical garden, with an anti-abortion rally."
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Detroit's Teachers Are Holding a Massive 'Sickout' to Protest the Conditions in Their Schools
Casey Quinlan, ThinkProgress
Quinlan writes: "Detroit's public school teachers are staging mass 'sickouts' - which involves large groups of teachers across the city all calling in sick to work - to protest against what they call 'deplorable conditions,' such as mold, warped floors, and dead rats."
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Modern-Day Slavery and Environmental Devastation Go Hand in Hand
Katie Herzog, Grist
Herzog writes: "Slavery didn't end with the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite slavery being illegal in every country on the planet, there are more enslaved people alive today than at any point in history."
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Many of the workers who toil in slavery are in industries, which lead to large environmental 
destruction. (photo: Shutterstock)


lavery didn’t end with the Emancipation Proclamation. Despite slavery being illegal in every country on the planet, there are more enslaved people alive today than at any point in history. From fishing boats in Thailand to private homes in New York to diamond mines in Congo to rock quarries in India, there are an estimated 30 million people working in bondage right now. That’s right — 30 million.

Modern slavery is the subject of Blood and Earth, a new book by Kevin Bales, who cofounded Free the Slaves, an organization working to end slavery around the world. Bales spoke with Fresh Air’s Dave Davies, and he said that the devastation bondage causes isn’t limited to the lives of enslaved people themselves; it also has a devastating effect on both the planet and the climate. He said:

I was amazed to discover the role that slavery plays in CO2 emissions and in the simple and basic fact of how global warming takes place ….

When we calculated up, very conservatively, how much CO2 is coming from slavery, it worked out like this: That if slavery were a country it would have the population of Canada, but it would be the third-largest emitter of CO2 after China and the United States.

This is, in part, due to deforestation. Bales continued:

I can point to … the gigantic mangrove forests at the bottom of Bangladesh, India, Thailand, and Burma that’s called the Sundarbans forest, and it’s the largest carbon sink in Asia. In other words, [it’s] a place where carbon is taken out of the air and sequestered by the trees, both into the sea and into the trees themselves. So this is a very important forest for removing atmospheric carbon. This is also a place where slaveholders are using slaves to clear cut these mangrove forests, to put in shrimp farms, to put in rice paddies, to burn the wood, to do a lot of different things with it. But it’s almost all slave-based deforestation.

So what’s the consumer to do? How can we be sure the shrimp on our plates and the phones in our pockets aren’t the product of slave labor? Unfortunately, Bales says, there’s a lack of information out there for even informed consumers:

At the moment, if we were only able to use just the minerals or just the foodstuffs or materials that we know are absolutely clean, we would all be sort of short on cellphones and clothes and food, because a lot of it is still rather murky. I spend some time in the book walking through the supply chain that leads to our cellphones and our laptops and trying to point to who are the criminals and who are the accomplices and who are the people who are deeply and certainly responsible, and at what level that responsibility lies.

Of course, the ultimate responsibility on the ultimate end of the supply chain rests with us. And we’re responsible for what we buy and what we use, but we’re not as responsible as the people who sell it to us, and we’re certainly not as responsible as the people who make the phones, because this is their business, they should be clean about what they do.

Big business, however, isn’t exactly known for its transparency — or its responsibility. Besides, it’s not like there’s a label for “slavery-free,” like there is for free-range or organic. Even retailers like Whole Foods that advertise their commitment to social and environmental justice have been accused of selling food processed by enslaved people. But there are some things you can do, Bales says, like talking to the managers of the stores you frequent, looking at where your investments are, and getting involved with anti-slavery organizations. These may seem like small steps, but there are 30 million people — and one giant planet — that need you.

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/34738-modern-day-slavery-and-environmental-devastation-go-hand-in-hand

RSN: Brazen Lies Are Now "the Driving Force Behind GOP Politics" , One-Third of World's Orangutans at Risk From Fires,

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Paul Krugman: Brazen Lies Are Now "the Driving Force Behind GOP Politics" 
 
Scott Eric Kaufman, Salon 
Kaufman writes: "New York Times columnist Paul Krugman lit into the hopefuls in the GOP's latest debate for embracing what he considers a 'grifter ethos.'" 
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Airline Exec Says External Impact Caused Egypt Plane Crash 
Dmitry Lovetsky and Nataliya Vasilyva, Associated Press 
Excerpt: "Only an external impact could have caused a Russian plane to dive into the Egyptian desert, killing all 224 people on board, Metrojet airline officials said Monday, adding to a series of confusing statements from investigators that left unclear why the plane broke up in mid-flight." 
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Obama to Announce Plans to Help the Formerly Incarcerated 
Jonathan Ernst, Reuters 
Ernst writes: "President Barack Obama, who has made criminal justice reform a top priority of his last years in office, will announce actions on Monday to help formerly incarcerated people reintegrate into society." 
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Anonymous Begins Publishing Ku Klux Klan Member Details Online 
David Gilbert, International Business Times 
Gilbert writes: "Hacktivist group Anonymous has begun publishing the personal details of members of the Ku Klux Klan as its campaign of cyberwar against the white supremacist group escalates." 
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Modern Slavery: Labor Trafficking Is Everywhere and Nowhere 
Stephanie Hanes, The Christian Science Monitor 
Hanes writes: "Last year, a groundbreaking report from the Urban Institute and Northeastern University suggested what many academics and on-the-ground advocates have long argued: labor trafficking in the US is far more pervasive than sex trafficking." 
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Turkey Election: Ruling AKP Regains Majority 
BBC News 
Excerpt: "Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party has won a critical parliamentary election, regaining the majority it lost in June." 
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One-Third of World's Orangutans at Risk From Fires 
Marie Gale, EcoWatch 
Gale writes: "Despite some rainfall in the last few days, thousands of fires continue to burn on the main islands of Sumatra and Borneo. The fires, fueled by a particularly dry season due to El Nino, have swept into national parks and primary forests, the last refuges for so many iconic endangered species, such as orangutans, rhinoceros and tigers." 
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