Labour has been a supporter of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) from the outset.

Our representatives have worked hard over the years: in the GRI Governance Bodies – the Board, the Technical Advisory Committee and the Stakeholder Council – as well as in the G4 Working Groups.

Notwithstanding the legitimacy of the GRI and the improvements made in the new “G4”  to deliver more strategic sustainability reports that are focused on those impacts that matter most to people and the planet, the reality is that the short-term quest to maximise profit pits corporations against rights and sustainability.

Despite the risk of climate catastrophe, the corporate opposition to a price on carbon or industry policy-based subsidies for start-ups in new energy – let alone the major fossil fuel giants fight against a comprehensive climate agreement – is without moral or sustainability virtue.

Yet many of the same major companies file their sustainability reports without conscience. And their approach to the workers whose labour fuels their profits is criminal.

Ask any CEO if they would like their sons or daughters to work in the textile factories in Pakistan, the mines in the Congo, manufacturing plants in Central America, or as beer women in Cambodia, and they shudder.

But at the same time they allow the willful perpetuation of these horrors in the supply chains of their corporations.

The model is neither humane nor sustainable.

Yet many corporations promote their practice as responsible.  Just check the sustainability reports of the retailers that sourced from Rana Plaza in Bangladesh.

There can be no more excuses, no more deaths from fire, occupational injuries or disease, no more work-related poverty and no more denial of human and labour rights.

It is time to move beyond volunteerism to compliance. If corporations don’t integrate labour rights and environmental standards into their core business model, then the rule of law must be effective enough to ensure compliance.

Globalisation in the manufacturing and service industries began to accelerate sharply in the 1980s as advances in communications and transport technology enabled companies to begin exploiting the vast global workforce on a scale which was previously impossible.

Firms adopted business models based on locating production in countries where labour laws are weak, virtually non-existent or poorly enforced, and thus workers are effectively blocked from organising unions and engaging in collective bargaining with employers.

The global supply chain has become the means by which international brands maximise their revenues by continuously seeking an edge on their competitors by driving production costs ever lower.

While the globalised business model continues to provide vast profits for companies, it comes at a tremendous cost to working people and to the economies of many of the poorest nations.

The backwash of low-wage competitiveness can now be seen in the attacks on rights and collective bargaining in Europe, and along with the anti-union orthodoxy in the US, is not just morally wrong but counterproductive to sustainability.

Multinational companies, forced to find new ways to protect their business model, turned to nascent corporate social responsibility initiatives to absorb and deflect public concern, without making any fundamental change to their way of organising production.

The failure of governments to protect workers’ rights in the global economy has left a yawning gap of regulation and has helped spawn an $80 billion dollar industry in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social auditing.

The vast evidence from this industry shows that CSR has protected business and failed workers and sustainable economies.

The most effective protection for workers is freedom of association, the right to join a union and to bargain collectively for fair wages and safe and reasonable conditions.

Where those rights are enshrined in law with strong grievance procedures, workers can fend for themselves.

Yet the experience of the last two decades of the “privatised regulation of ‘CSR’ ” has eerie parallels with the financial self-regulation that brought our economies close to the brink of collapse in 2007, plunging the world into recession.

The reality is all too stark for the families of the workers who have lost their lives in factory fires and building collapses in Pakistan, Bangladesh and Cambodia.

In 2012, a fire at the Ali Enterprise garment Factory in Karachi killed 300 workers.

This factory was certified as safe only three weeks earlier, by a private inspection agency using SAI standards.

In Bangladesh, the recent disaster has seen the death toll rise to more than 1200 to date.

It’s tragic that it took the loss of these workers’ lives to motivate companies to negotiate and sign a Fire Safety Agreement with the Global Unions IndustriALL and UNI. Even then, companies like GAP – which promotes itself as responsible – lobbied European companies not to sign up. As for Walmart – enough said!!

These tragedies, or similar, exist in too many countries at the hands of too many companies.

There are, however, some shifts, but the jury is out on the corporate will  to heed such or of timid governments to ensure compliance.

-The endorsement by the United Nations Human Rights Council in 2011 of the “UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights” establishing that all companies have a responsibility to respect human rights and to conduct human rights due diligence, including in the global supply chain. This responsibility is not voluntary. Nor is it limited by legal ownership or the company’s “sphere of influence”. Rather, a company’s responsibility is determined by its impacts throughout its activities and relationships.

- The 2011 Update of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises similarly extended the scope of responsibility to companies’ impacts in their global supply chains and business relationships, bringing millions of workers without direct employment contracts, under the protection of the Guidelines.

On business transparency :

- In the US:

- The Dodd-Frank Act requires companies registered with the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) to report publicly on how much they pay governments for access to oil, gas and minerals – a valuable tool for citizens as well as investors.

-The US Sustainability Accounting Standards Board is developing new reporting standards for the US market.

- The European Commission has published proposals to strengthen business transparency of companies with over 500 employees on social and environmental issues, including boardroom diversity. While this is positive, the thresh-hold is far too high and the reporting requirements too general – - another concession to corporate lobbying.    Five hundred employees is double the size of the standard EC definition of a large company. But there is still time to change this!

-The European Commission, the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have also agreed to toughen disclosure requirements for EU-listed and large unlisted companies in extractives, following the example of Dodd-Frank.

- And the trade review panel convened by Pascal Lamy recognises inequality and thus distribution deficits  as a real risks with reference to application of labour rights in supply chains. We can only hope.

But  finally on Integrated Reporting:

The International Integrated Reporting Council has published its Draft International IR Framework.

Unlike at the GRI, trade unions have not been at the table and we have some concerns:

We fear that a focus on investors is likely to result in reports that identify risks to the company – not the risks of the company’s activities to people and the planet – even over the long-term; and we are concerned  how an approach based on “human capital” might allow avoidance of the fundamental requirement for an approach based on “human rights”.

For companies in some countries, such as South Africa, integrated reporting is, of course, already mandatory.

The new G4 reflects many of these shifts – companies are required to report on those impacts that matter the most, including in the global supply chain, and are required to disclose more on governance and how companies are managing their sustainability challenges, and to shine more light on wage inequality – a major contributor to our increasingly divided societies.

We would hope that reporting under the G4 will drive the change in business behaviour so that companies integrate labour rights, union collective agreements and environmental standards into their core business model – that sustainability reporting will actually make a difference to the working conditions of workers, including in global supply chains.

But we’re no longer optimistic about voluntary efforts.

A necessary step forward would be for all governments to make non-financial reporting mandatory, including on labour rights and standards.

The central challenge remains a global floor of human and labour rights with fair wages and safe work, a social protection floor and a serious transition to a low carbon economy.

Monkeys. Rats. Niggers.

By racist standards, the language was conventional. The problem was the people using them. Stockholm law enforcement officers, to be precise.

Switzerland, posters for the SVP campaign used the example of Ivan S., a convicted rapist, of possibly Balkan origin

Repeatedly cited, in reports about police brutality in quelling a riot in an immigrant neighborhood on Monday, residents were in a state of shock.

“They don’t have to call people names,” Rouzbeh Djalai,” a local newspaper editor, told Russia Today.

Predictably, the cops had practice. “I can understand the police officers were stressed, but this language is unacceptable, and unfortunately nothing new,” said Rami al-Khamisi, a local youth organization activist.

It’s in keeping, he told the Swedish edition of The Local, with “growing marginalization and segregation in Sweden over the past ten, 20 years.”

Indeed, on March 7th, the Sweden’s top legal official, Justice Minister Beatrice Ask, found herself defending the need to conduct racial profiling of Stockholm subway riders.

“There are some who have been previously convicted and feel that they are always questioned, even though you can’t tell by looking at a person that they have committed a crime,” Ask was quoted as stating, in the New York Times.

Of course Stockholm’s cops were stressed by rioters. But, immediate context isn’t everything.

From the sound of it, the stigmatization of Sweden’s immigrant community starts somewhere at the top.

The sense of persecution the minister imbues her minority subjects with is particularly telling, as is, obviously, the prior guilt assigned to them (“previously convicted”).

It’s not a long jump to employing the sorts of racial epithets employed by the Stockholm police force.

Most significantly, the discourse points to something far more sinister than the provinciality of the state employees in question. The freedom which they feel to dispense with such stereotypes betrays a growing tendency to criminalize immigrants and minorities.

Not just in Sweden, but throughout Europe.

In 2010, the Swiss People’s Party (SVP,) for example, ran a campaign advocating the expulsion of migrants for rape crimes, as though to insinuate that rape is only committed by foreigners.

For a country in which twenty-two percent of the population is estimated to be of foreign origin, such connections target an awful lot of potential felons.

Still, the stigmatization is effective, insofar as it displaces a domestic social problem onto the shoulders of so-called outsiders.

In this case, posters for the SVP campaign used the example of Ivan S., a convicted rapist, of possibly Balkan origin, who was alleged to be in line to receive Swiss citizenship.

Images of the would-be Ivan served as the background, featuring a swarthy Slav, sporting a chain, in a tank top.

The Kabobos cultural construction

If only it stopped there.

In Italy, Beppe Grillo, co-leader of the country’s largest opposition party, M5S, produced the figure of Kabobo, a fictional Ghanian/Senegalese migrant, and violent felon, living legally, in Milan, as the authorities process his asylum request.

Writing in his blog Grillo took every conceivable liberty to criminalize him.

Kabobo’s transgressions include instances of violent assault (including smashing a brick in an old man’s face) attempted cannibalism (biting the ear off of a random pedestrian) and homicide (killing three persons with a pick axe.)

Like Ivan S, in Switzerland, Kabobo is also a rapist, responsible for the death of a nineteen-year-old Italian woman, whom he beats to death in the process of violating her.

Every conceivable racist stereotype about “foreigners,” albeit Africans, is embedded in Grillo’s narrative.

From the very name (with its allusion to doner kebab, a much stigmatized food on the Italian right) to Kabobo’s proclivity for violence, the African is uncivilized by nature, and therefore undeserving of the right to live in Italy.

Yet, Beppe Grillo, in his typically sardonic manner, argues that the Italian political system is to blame for Kabobo, because it fears being tarred as racist.

Kabobo, of course, is free to continue committing his crimes, providing more credibility to Grillo’s anti-immigration politics, and his reputation amongst right-wing voters. Give his party a majority in parliament, and M5S will put an end to the Kabobos.

As tempting as it would be to call everyone guilty of such racism a neo-Nazi, it behooves us to probe a little more deeply.

There’s no doubt that Europe is in deep crisis, and that the most vulnerable are being ritually scapegoated by the so-called natives, as is typical of such periods in history.

When Europeans can’t take responsibility, they blame it on someone else. But what about the details of allegations like those of Grillo, and Beatrice Ask? They’re informative, too.

On the European right, there is a recurring obsession with violating the law, as though minorities, because of their foreignness, are somehow free to do what Europeans can’t.

It’s a compensatory fantasy, surely, which obscures why immigrants have a difficult time integrating.

More significantly, I think, it betrays a desire to abandon civilization, as what Europeans know to be stabilizing has turned out to be so unreliable.

The criminality attributed to the Kabobos is really about the failings of the system – the one that has failed Europe, inspiring revenge fantasies of violation and bloodshed.

European Commission Vice President Viviane Reding has called on EU Member States to do more to integrate its Roma populations.

Last week she spoke at the Roma Roundtable, attended by a number of key players from Roma civil society.

(AP Photo/dpa/Soeren Stache)

Along with the Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion László Andor, they discussed the progress made so far and the next steps to be taken to ensure the proper integration of Europe’s 10-12 million strong Roma population.

“The laws that we need to prevent discrimination of Roma are there,” Reding told Equal Times. “What is not functioning is integration.”

Reding commended some states for making “real and serious efforts” towards improving the lives of Roma citizens but said that high levels of poverty amongst Roma populations speak of severe social exclusion.

“I’m very disappointed at some Member States, as they are not putting in practice what is stated in their national strategies,” she said.

When asked which Member States should be singled out for praise and disapproval, Reading replied, “It is not a beauty contest. It depends on the problems that each country is facing. If a country hosts one or two thousand Roma people, it’s different than if it has to deal with hundreds of thousands. That’s why at this stage naming and shaming makes little sense.”

But she did encourage some member states to look at examples of good practice to learn from them: “Ministers, unlike students, are allowed to copy when they stumble upon a success story.”

At the round table, NGOs and the European Commission could share their views on the outcomes of a three-year joint effort towards Roma integration and assess what is still to be done.

In April 2010, under the Spanish presidency, the first EU Roma summit was held in Cordoba (Spain).

In 2011, the Commission adopted its EU framework for Roma Integration Strategies. The first report on the implementation of Roma national strategies was published in 2012.

By the end of 2013, the Commission will publish a second progress report on the compliance of national strategies on Roma integration by Member States.

Several NGOs who took part in the round suggested setting up a specific Roma fund to finance integration projects, but Commissioner Andor said the emphasis would be on targeting specific actions rather than particular groups of people.

He also advocated a greater role played by the Committee of the Regions.

Still segregated

Nicolas Berger, Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions bureau, said the Commission is not doing enough to hold Member States accountable on their Roma integration targets.

“Every year, thousands of Roma people are forced to leave their homes.  In many countries, Roma school children are forced to attend segregated classes which provide inferior teaching. They’re denied work and can’t get proper health care. They’re victims of violent hatred and often go unprotected by the police. All this is because they’re Roma. This is happening because EU countries are failing to enforce the EU’s own anti-discrimination laws. Enough is enough.”

“The European Commission is responsible and has the means to ensure EU countries comply with EU law and combat anti-Roma discrimination and violence,” he added.

“But the Commission has yet to exercise these powers. The Commission is quite simply failing to use its own legal tools like the infringement procedure to hold Member States accountable”.

Heather Grabbe, Director of the Open Society Institute for European Policies, said countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Czech Republic and Slovakia don’t have monitoring mechanisms to check whether their strategies are effectively implemented.

“The Commission should exercise all its possible pressure to make compliance really happens.”

The next steps

When asked why politicians and policy makers were failing to implement these strategies, Gabriela Hrabanova, Policy Co-ordinator at the European Roma Grassroots Organisations (ERGO), put the blame on anti-Roma racism.

“This attitude must change, and Roma have to be considered as full citizens and active participants to society, and not only as those who live on benefits, cause problems and experience extreme forms of poverty,” Hrabanova commented.

Ivan Ivanov, director of the European Roma Information Office (ERIO), highlighted the importance not to limit the efforts towards integrating Roma people to combatting poverty and improving their material conditions:  “This is just part of the problem, as there are Roma who are not living in poverty but are nevertheless experiencing multiple forms of discrimination.

“It’s very unfortunate that the national strategies were drafted in a general anti-Roma political atmosphere, where politicians found it convenient not to really commit themselves to solving the issues of integration and discrimination,” he added.

More information available on the Commission website on Roma.

Legend has it that when the English weren’t hacking lumps out of each other in the internecine War of the Roses in the 15^th century, opposing warriors would test their manhood and combat skills by kicking around an inflated pig’s bladder.

They called the no-holds-barred contest “footie” and thus, it is claimed, the world’s most popular sport was born.

A supporter holds up an anti-racism banner during a match between Manchester City and Liverpool on 3 January, 2012 (AP Photo/Jon Super)

Given England’s pivotal role in first establishing football, codifying it in 1863 with the formation of a Football Association (FA) and then exporting it around the world, it seems apt that England’s Premiership sits atop the action as the biggest league on the planet.

But “this sport for gentlemen, played by workers,” as the game was once described, has never been far from controversy.

And today it seems that on any given Saturday – when league matches are traditionally played in England – scandal, incident and outrage steal the headlines over any sporting excellence displayed on the fields of play: biting an opponent, cynical professional fouls, homophobia, lack of equal opportunity and, perhaps most insidious of all, naked racism both on the pitch and in the stands.

It’s a catalogue of shame that the English Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), the world’s oldest and largest sporting union, which represents the 4,500 current players and 35,000 former players of the country’s 92 clubs, is determined to stamp out.

“Football is a microcosm of society. Whatever happens off the field will inevitably be reflected on it,” Simone Pound, the PFA’s Head of Equalities, told Equal Times in an interview at the union’s London office.

“But it’s also important to see how far we’ve come. I don’t want to be jingoistic about it but I really believe that the PFA and the English game are leading the fight against racism in world football. We’ve come a really long way from where we used to be.

“In the 1970s we used to have banana skins thrown on pitches. Between 1979 and 1984 the (far right) National Front were using football grounds to recruit members. My dad (a West Ham United supporter) wouldn’t take me to matches because of the racist chanting,” said Pound, who is also a Trustee of the anti-racist Kick It Out campaign that was launched by the PFA and the Commission for Racial Equality in 1994.

Pound was speaking in the wake of several recent high-profile racist incidents in football.

In September 2012, Chelsea captain John Terry was found guilty by the FA, the ruling body of English football, of racially abusing Queens Park Rangers defender Anton Ferdinand. And Liverpool and Uruguay striker Luis Suarez made international headlines when, in October 2011, he launched repeated racial insults at Manchester United defender and French international Patrice Evra.

Terry, 32, an ex-England captain, who seems mired in permanent controversy, was banned for four matches and fined 220,000 pounds (approximately 258,500 euros).

Suarez, 25, who once again has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons, this time for biting an opposing defender earlier this month, was banned for eight matches and fined 40,000 pounds (approximately 47,000 euros) by the FA, English football’s ruling body.

“Totally unacceptable”

Piara Powar, Executive Director of Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE), hailed the Suarez sanction as “a landmark decision.”

“This is the first time we have seen an insight into what is said between players on the pitch, and what may have been commonplace between players in the past. This is a big moment and I would say the FA have dealt with this in the right way,” said Powar.

“These incidents were awful for everyone involved in football,” conceded Pound.

“And we, as an industry, have to learn from them. We have to reinforce the simple message that racism both on and off the pitch is totally unacceptable.

“As the union within the industry, we can’t have anything just dismissed as ‘sporting banter’ or ‘industrial’ language. Any racism between players has to be considered as gross misconduct.”

The PFA is now planning to expand its Equalities Department and this season it has launched a pilot diversity-awareness programme at Tranmere Rovers, a League One (third tier) football club in Birkenhead, north-west England.

The programme, conducted by former professional footballers and focusing on the impact of language, the laws of the land, laws of the game, diversity training, cultural awareness and bullying, will be rolled out across all professional leagues at the start of the new 2013-2014 football season.

There have, of course, been massive changes in general and sporting society since the formation of the PFA on 2 December, 1907 in Manchester, home of legendary Manchester United and “noisy neighbours” Manchester City.

Racism in English football can be traced back even further.

Long history

In 1885 Arthur Wharton became the first black footballer to play for a recognised club, joining first Darlington FC and later Preston North End.

But even though Wharton was the All-England national sprint champion, he was placed in goal because he was deemed “to lack sufficient character and consistency” to play outside the box.

The first black footballer to play for England was Viv Anderson, then 22, who debuted in a 1-0 victory over former Czechoslovakia at Wembley Stadium in November 1978. Defender Anderson had a distinguished career with Nottingham Forest, Arsenal and Manchester United.

Fifteen years later, another Manchester United footballer, midfield enforcer Paul Ince, who also played for Liverpool and Italy’s Internazionale, became the first black player to captain England.

Today it would be a very poor England team indeed that did not feature a major contingent of black and mixed race players – notwithstanding the country’s singular lack of success in all major football competitions since its solitary World Cup win in 1966.

Nevertheless, despite these advances racism remains prevalent, in the English game, as the high profile cases of Terry and Suarez attest.

And, although England has a sizeable South Asian ethnic minority, not a single footballer of Indian or Pakistani origin is playing in the Premiership.

With around a third of all players in the top flight being either black or mixed race, racism is a problem that – in the opinion of this reporter – the venerable Football Association is just not doing enough to tackle.

In an age of multi-millionaire footballers how effective is a 40,000 pound fine for on field racism?

For Suarez, who has just been banned for 10 games for his biting outrage, it represents around two-days wages.

Homophobia and sexism remain major issues too.

So when will things change?

“Discussions have taken place,” Funke Awoderu, the FA’s Equality Manager, told Equal Times in response to questions about the ruling body imposing tougher sanctions for racism.

“I can’t pre-determine those discussions. But I can tell you that discussions are ongoing and front-facing.”

Tiki-taka euphemism and evasion aside, everybody agrees that football has to be “safe” for players and supporters alike.

But if the “beautiful game” is to prosper it must also be remembered that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.

The world of work has been a crucial arena for spearheading legal change, ending stereotypes and promoting understanding of the need for dignity of all human beings.

Through advancing workplace rights for women, persons with disabilities and people living with HIV, the ILO has been, and continues to be, at the forefront in advancing human rights for all workers.

The progress in recognizing the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people over the past decade is undeniable. However, major challenges remain.

On this important day for world recognition of equality for all, the ILO affirms its commitment to strive for workplaces free of discrimination on all grounds, including on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Using international labour standards to end discrimination and the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, member States have been vigilant in identifying and opposing unfair treatment in the workplace; yet until recently, discrimination against LGBT persons has not been a specific focus of action.

This has changed and we are now undertaking targeted research in a selected number of countries to start tracking workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, with a view to promoting workplaces that champion equality and diversity in all its forms.

Promoting workplace rights for LGBT women and men reflects the attention being given to such rights in other UN fora. More than 60 member States have acknowledged sexual orientation as a prohibited ground of discrimination under the Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention, 1958 (No. 111); and the ILO’s Committee of Experts on the Application of Standards and Recommendations has welcomed this development.

While there is undoubtedly progress on LGBT rights, both in the workplace and beyond, LGBT workers still suffer discrimination and harassment.

Moreover, from 2011 to 2012, there was a slight increase – from 76 to 78 – in the number of countries with legislation criminalizing people on the basis of their sexual orientation. On the positive side, in the same period, several countries adopted legislation to prevent such discrimination in the workplace.

The ILO’s social justice mandate means promoting employment in conditions of freedom, equity, human security and dignity for all: we bring this agenda founded respect for rights, acceptance of diversity and tolerance to the realization of decent work for LGBT women and men.

15-year old garment Sim Srey Touch was crushed under tons of metal and concrete before she could escape.

Sim Srey Touch, one of three garment workers killed in an accident at the Wing Star Shoes fatory, was only 15-years-old (Shane Worrell/Phnom Penh Post)

She is one of the three garment workers killed in the Wing Star Shoes’ factory collapse, which occurred early on Thursday morning in the Kampong Speu province, a few miles from the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh.

Less a month after the Rana Plaza building collapse in Bangladesh, where 1127 garment workers lost their lives, this latest tragedy reveals the many contradictions of the global garment industry, where workers pay the ultimate price for cheap consumer items.

It particularly reveals the total disregard for safety and labour standards at Asian factories that produce clothes and shoes for Western consumers.

Sim only started working at Wing Star two weeks ago. Her mother, Noun Nget, told reporters that she had lied about her age to get the job.

“My daughter used a fake document that said she was 22 or 23 to get work,” she said.

“She began working there on 2 May and did not yet get a salary. I do not want compensation from the factory – I want to see my daughter survive,” she said.

According to the Phnom Penh Post, Sim’s three sisters also work at Wing Star. One of them, Yim Pay said she watched police carry out her sister’s body after the collapse.

“I was working in another building and heard a thunderous sound and ran to see what was happening,” she said.

The manager of the factory, Chea Sothavirith, did not comment about the girl’s age or about compensation for the families of the victims.

However, the governor of Kampong Speu province promised the families of the dead workers will be compensated with 5,000 US dollars each.

Worked to death

Reuters reports that Wing Star Shoes Co Ltd is a Taiwanese company employing about 7,000 people in the factory complex that opened about a year ago.

The collapse occurred in a part of the complex used as a storage warehouse and apparently in the work area there were only about 100 people.

Cambodian rescues work at the collapsed Taiwanese-owned Wing Star factory (AP Photo/Heng Sinith)

Work conditions and salaries have also been an issue at Wing Star. One of the workers rescued, Ngeth Phat, said there had already been two strikes in the last year over low wages, about 80 US dollars a month.

Like other South-East Asian countries, garment manufacturing is the leading industry in Cambodia (80 per cent of the export, says the IMF) and employs about 500,000 people in more than 500 garment and shoe factories.

According to the Associated Press news agency, the country shipped more than four billion US dollars worth of products to the United States and Europe in 2012.

Chea Muny, the factory’s trade union representative, said that Wing Star produces sneakers for Asics, the Japanese sportswear label, destined for the United States and European markets.

Indeed, Asics footwear emerged from the damaged warehouse, while bulldozers were clearing away the rubble.

An Asics spokesperson later confirmed that the factory was amongst their suppliers.

Asics’s sales amounted to 247,792 million Yen (2,428 million US dollars) in 2012; estimates suggest that the figure for 2013 will be higher.

In April, the ILO issued a report about safety in the Cambodian garment and footwear industry in which the UN agency found a worrying increase in safety violations and working conditions, which sometimes lead to fatalities.

“Our report findings demonstrate that improvements are not being made in many key areas of working conditions and this is likely to be in large part due to the rapid growth of the industry.

“However, growth should not result in an increase in non-compliance among factories in an area as intrinsic to worker safety as having clear access pathways,” said Jill Tucker, chief technical advisor of ILO-Better Factories Cambodia.

For historical reasons Germany has to be careful with giving advice to other countries.

Even more so at the moment considering Germany’s dominant position within the European Union (EU).

A sunflower stands in front of the Euro sculpture outside the headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt, Germany (AP Photo/Michael Probst)

A ‘know-it-all’ manner is particularly problematic when the advice given is bad – the German government’s insistence on austerity measures as a response to the European crisis is not only unsuccessful in economic terms but socially unfair to a level that endangers democracy and the European integration process as a whole.

This is a process for which Germany has a special historic responsibility.

Despite some anti-European tendencies that have also evolved here and the media portraying the German population as being tired of rescue packages, the vast majority of the German population is in fact supportive of the euro.

This is a development that is remarkable but cannot be taken for granted.

As German trade unionists we know from painful experience of the fascist destruction of the German trade union movement 80 years ago that an economic crisis that does not receive an adequate response has incalculable risks including political dislocations through to fascist dictatorship and war.

The Confederation of German Trade Unions (DGB) wants to propose an alternative strategy to our government’s current strategy for Europe. Our proposal is to look at what has been proven to be successful in times of crisis: investment to stabilise but also modernise the economy.

This strategy of economic stimulus packages has not only proved to be successful for Germany in the beginning of the crisis in 2008 but has also been the core element of a strategy once applied to several European countries called the ‘European Recovery Plan’ better known as the ‘Marshall Plan’.

The ‘Marshall Plan’ was implemented in 1948 to economically and politically stabilise Western European countries after World War II.

The huge investment program not only had short term success but also led to modernisation and became a first step towards European integration.

65 years later European integration has undoubtedly moved on.

But with an average youth unemployment rate of 24 per cent in the EU as a whole and even more than 50 per cent in Spain and Greece, it has become clear that there is an urgent need to find a new direction.

Furthermore social inequality and rising unemployment are not the only challenges Europe is facing. Like the rest of the world it has to develop strategies to react to demographic challenges, the increasing reliance on knowledge and technology in business and the scarcity of natural resources.

Europe needs a long-term path towards growth and modernisation.

This is the background to our developing a draft for a new ‘Marshall Plan’ for Europe that, like its predecessor, is based on sustainable investment and cooperation instead of a race to the bottom on the back of the workers and at the cost of future generations.

Although the Plan is focused on Europe we do believe that our approach is of interest for other regions as well and can also be seen as a contribution to the debate on globalising solidarity.

Core elements of our Marshall Plan

Our ‘Marshall Plan for Europe’ is borne out of the understanding that we need a political strategy that takes both short and long term growth into account.

Therefore it is designed as an investment and development programme for a 10-year period (from 2013 to 2022).

For this period we propose a mix of institutional measures, direct public sector investment, investment grants for companies and incentives for consumer spending.

The latter serve to combat the crisis in the short term. By contrast, public sector investment and investment grants take time to make an impact, but serve to safeguard long term growth and employment prospects by strengthening and promoting modern industries and services.

Beyond that, the ‘Marshall Plan’ will improve cooperation between European countries: massive investments averaging 110 billion euros per year will be needed across Europe in order for the modernisation offensive to include the whole of the EU.

This results in total annual financial requirements of, on average, 260 billion euros.

This corresponds to just over two per cent of Europe’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Such an ambitious and long term investment programme cannot be shouldered by one country alone.

To be precise, those countries currently in financial crisis will not be able to implement a modernisation initiative like this on their own.

This is why we need joint efforts and new European institutions with stable and solid sources of finance.

Given the high investment required one could easily dismiss our plan as being unrealistic but it is important to keep in mind that the costs of stabilising the banking system have reached 2000 billion euros. So why shouldn’t it be realistic, and much more promising, to mobilise about the same sum to invest into education, innovation and decent work in Europe over a period of several years?

Future Fund

Funding the Marshall Plan the DGB proposes to set up a ‘European Future Fund’ to fund the ‘Marshall Plan’.

In Western Europe, there is 27000 billion euros in cash assets on the one hand and a shrinking number of secure and profitable investment opportunities on the other.

This situation poses a major opportunity to use Europe’s available capital for investments in its future.

To this end, the European Future Fund would issue interest-bearing bonds – like companies or governments. We refer to these bonds as ‘New Deal’ bonds.

The interest obligations, the cost of which the Future Fund itself would have to cover, could be funded from revenue from a Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) –  a tax that will apply in particular to highly speculative financial transactions, thus burdening the very financial market players that were chiefly responsible for the biggest financial and economic crisis of the past 80 years.

The Future Fund would have to have sufficient equity when it is first set up. Up to now, it has been solely the taxpayers and workers who have borne the chief burden of overcoming the crisis.

Now, therefore, it is time for the wealthy and rich to participate in once-off funding to provide capital for the Future Fund.

For Germany, we propose a once-off wealth levy of 3 per cent on all private assets in excess of €500,000 for single people and €1 million for married couples.

The form that this levy would take has yet to be specified. The other EU countries should introduce comparable measures for the wealthy and rich.

As a new European institution, the European Future Fund should be under the strict control of the European Parliament. Following on from the proposals of nine Ministers for Foreign Affairs on the future of Europe, the European Parliament must approve all cash outflows from the Future Fund. The prerequisite for this is that the European Parliament is closely involved in all decision-making processes.

Macroeconomic effects of the Marshall Plan The DGB’s Marshall Plan contains decisive impetus for qualitative growth as well as decent jobs with a future.

The proposed investments and investment subsidies of €260 billion annually comprise direct investment and investment grants of €160 billion and ten-year low-interest loans to private investors of €100 billion. This combination of long-term, low-interest loans and investment grants should kick-start additional private investment and thus promote wide-scale private modernization measures.

These in turn would lead to further private investment and annual additional growth impetus totalling 400 billion euros. This would correspond to additional growth impetus of more than three per cent of the EU’s GDP in 2011. This considerable growth dynamic would have positive spill-over effects for employment.

Additionally an investment offensive in a fundamental overhaul of European national economies in terms of energy policy could yield between nine and eleven million new full-time jobs in the long term. Our programme will benefit the EU countries significantly. The investments will not burden their budgets.

Instead, they will receive additional impetus for growth and employment and can use this to generate significantly higher direct and indirect tax revenue from income tax, VAT, company and corporate taxes as well as social security contributions and to cut the cost of unemployment.

Europe’s future hinges on investments made in the present. Europe has all the resources it needs for this: we have to work together to combine these strengths and use them to transform our societies and to create a social Europe that might become a role model for other regions.

We should also contribute to the debate on a global transformation in the style of the ‘Global Marshall Plan’ that has been discussed since 2003 in order to transform our societies for a better future with all social groups having a fair share of the wealth being produced.

DGB’s proposal for a ‘European Marshall Plan’ can be downloaded in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German: http://www.dgb.de/-/5Vx

A full version of this article was originally published by Global Labour Column

The Spanish fashion brand Zara is outsourcing its production in Argentina to clandestine sweatshops employing immigrants under slave-like conditions.

Zara is responsible for the same illegal and inhuman methods of exploitation in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where it was fined millions for the same offence it has been accused of in eleven other countries.

The sweatshops in Argentina are based on the outskirts of Buenos Aires or in tourist areas with large numbers of immigrants from Bolivia, lured by traffickers promising wages in dollars, housing, food and an eight-hour working day.

(La Alameda)

But, as denounced by the NGO “La Alameda” and the Human Rights Secretariat of the CGT, the country’s largest trade union confederation, the working hours are inhuman.

The criminal charges filed on 26 March and 11 April of this year, which were backed up shortly afterwards by Buenos Aires City Government inspectors, are based on hidden camera recordings showing that the workers sleep in bunk beds right next to the machines and are made to work for over 13 hours a day, from Monday to Friday from seven in the morning to ten or eleven o’clock at night, and until midday on Saturdays.

Electrical cables were also shown to be hanging precariously, creating the risk of fire, such as that seen in 2006, in which six Bolivians, five of them minors, died, trapped inside a clandestine sweatshop.

Such conditions are not exceptional in Argentina or in other textile industries around the world.

La Alameda has taken legal proceedings against 110 major clothing brands, including international firms such as Puma and Topper, and employers themselves have recognised that 78 per cent of the clothing industry operates illegally.

The same system of people trafficking and slavery has been denounced in Mexico, in the so-called maquilas, in Italy, in the Camorra sweatshops, and in the factory collapsed in Bangladesh.

The three clandestine sweatshops producing garments for Zara in Argentina were shut down by the government for not being registered and posing high health and safety risks.

The justice system has not yet confirmed the charges, despite their having been verified by the video footage and the government inspectors.

The public prosecutor investigating Zara has not yet summoned the producer to give a statement, the sweatshops have not been searched and the telephone lines thought to connect the brand with the illegal workshops have not been tapped.

It is worth pointing out that Inditex, which owns Zara, is the second largest textile company in the world, and its owner, Amancio Ortega, has the third biggest fortune on the planet and is the richest person in Spain.

The lawsuit against Zara is registered under case number 3161/2013 and is being handled by federal court no. 7, by the young magistrate Sebastián Casanello. The investigation, however, is sitting in the hands of the public prosecutor Guillermo Marijuan.

In Argentina, Zara stands accused of servitude, based on persons being forced to work in excess of 12 hours a day and the restrictions on freedom derived from housing persons in their workplace, as well as of violating the legislation on home working, which makes outsourcers criminally liable and responsible for labour conditions in work places producing their goods, and the law on migrants, which proscribes profiting economically from undocumented persons.

Zara is able to audit its supply chain through Argentina’s state-run National Institute of Industrial Technology, but has never done so. The programme is practically free, but not compulsory.

Zara, defending itself through various media channels, has stated that internal audits have been conducted but violations have never been detected.

What else is to be expected when a company audits itself?

The footage filmed by La Alameda, embedded in this article and to the lawsuit filed, provides evidence of what the justice system is idling to confirm.

Social networks, press and media around the world have nevertheless given wide coverage to the abuses denounced by La Alameda.

From China to India, from England to Mexico, the slogan popularised by La Alameda, “EsclaviZara”, linking Zara with slave labour, is travelling the world.

Human rights groups have accused Egyptian security forces of detaining scores of children without charge and in some cases torturing and abusing them.

On 3 February, 12-year-old sweet potato seller Omar Salah was ‘accidentally’ shot in the chest by an army conscript.

A military court handed out a three-year sentence to the soldier accused of killing Salah on 7 May, but the Egyptian Coalition on Children’s Rights (ECCR) criticised the verdict for being too lenient.

The Egyptian government has detained hundreds of children since the second anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution in January

Earlier this year, 14-year-old teenage cancer patient Mahmoud Adel made the news when he was arrested in the port city of Alexandria and detained for nine days, missing vital chemotherapy sessions.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Adel – who has bone cancer – said he wasn’t even protesting when he was arrested: “I was having a drink and jumping over puddles with my friends. I had nothing to do with the protests.”

The authorities refused to release him, however, even though they were shown papers proving Adel’s illness.

The prosecutor accused Adel and another child of “using excessive force to prevent law enforcement, offending state employees and endangering the safety of the city of Alexandria.”

Adel was only released after pressure from Egyptian human rights groups.

Unprecedented numbers

Egypt’s Interior Ministry has detained 383 children since the second anniversary of the Egyptian revolution took place on 25 January, according to the ECCR.

In an interview with Ahram Online, UNICEF Representative in Egypt, Philippe Duamelle, said that the UN agency has provided legal assistance to around 600 children who were accused of involvement in demonstrations in recent months.

During protests and clashes, Egyptian security forces try to arrest as many people as they can, targeting those less likely to attack them. And that often means minors, human rights activist Ghada Shahbender explains.

“It is definitely a way of frightening people, the number of children taken by security forces and the manner in which they are detained is unprecedented in my experience,” she said.

Many of those children arrested face serious violations of their human rights.

As well as being subjected to physical violence and having their personal belongings stolen, they often face sexual assault.

Minors are usually detained alongside adults, which is a direct violation of Egypt’s children’s law, which was amended in 2008.

An investigation by Human Rights Watch recently uncovered strong evidence that police and military officers beat many of the children detained, and in some cases, subjected them to torture-like treatment.

President Morsi’s government has promised to put an end to these practices, but it is evident that nothing has changed, say activists.

Street children

Egypt’s street children often bear the brunt of government violence as they often get involved in the protests and street clashes that are now so widespread in Egypt.

They have no homes and live on the streets where they hawk goods to earn them enough money to buy food.

“It might be hard to say how many children are living on the street in Egypt, but one thing is clear: the numbers are very large and almost certainly growing,” states UNICEF.

Although it is difficult to quantify the phenomenon, NGOs estimate that there are tens of thousands street children in the country, mostly in the big cities of Cairo and Alexandria.

Given their miserable living conditions and the harassment they face from the police, it is understandable that street children participate in protests against the regime and the authorities.

Like other Egyptians, they too want a better life.

But since taking power in 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood has not improved the difficult living conditions endured by Egyptians, and until that changes, the protests will continue.

And as long as the protests continue, it is likely that children will always be victims, especially with the general deterioration of human rights in Egypt.

The clock is ticking for some of the world’s biggest retailers, such as Gap and Wal-Mart, to sign a landmark agreement to improve safety conditions in Bangladesh.

Bangladeshi garment workers manufacture clothing in a factory on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad)

The Accord on Fire and Building Safety was initiated by IndustriALL, UNI Global Union, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and a group of NGO partners following the deaths of over 1,127 workers in a building collapse last month.

The legally-binding five year agreement was signed on Monday by a group of seven European retailers including H&M, Inditex (parent company of Spanish clothing and furnishing brand Zara) and Primark.

But despite a looming deadline of 15 May, a bloc of mainly-American retailers are yet to sign.

In fact, the only American retailer to have signed the Accord so far is PVH, the parent company of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. Other big European retailers such as Benetton, Carrefour and Mango are also yet to sign.

The Accord will bind retailers to blacklist manufacturers whose factories fail to meet safety standards.

Retailers have also pledged to pay for repairs and renovations in the factories. And crucially, the Accord also grants workers the right to refuse dangerous work, in line with the 1981 ILO Convention 155 on occupational health and safety.

The Convention has been ratified only by 60 countries, excluding the US and most European countries.

Refusals

However, it appears that the non-signees of the new Accord are concerned about how much it will cost to enforce these new rules as well as how legal matters will be resolved in the wake of the agreement.

Gap, for example, has said it will not sign the Accord until changes are made to the rules on settling disputes.

But UNI Global’s Deputy Secretary General Christy Hoffman said the US clothing retailer had mischaracterised the agreement: “Gap would like to give the impression that the agreement would open them up to litigation when in fact it provides for binding arbitration, a common practice for US employers.”

Cases will only go to court when there is an appeal – which very unlikely when arbitration is involved – or when one party does not respect the arbitration award.

None of the other US retailers have said whether they will or will not sign the agreement before 15 May but according to the Reuters news agency, Wal-Mart did release a statement on Monday calling for the Bangaldeshi government to halt production at one of Wal-Mart’s Chittagong-based suppliers, Stitch Tone Apparels, where it found “structural concerns”.

It has since suspended all orders with Stitch Tone.

UNI Global Union General Secretary, Philip Jennings issued a statement imploring retailers not to miss this historic opportunity to improve Bangladesh’s garment industry: “Sign up before it’s too late, save lives and show you are a responsible employer. We are building a momentum for change and it won’t stop here.”

IndustriALL Global Union General Secretary, Jyrki Raina, also commended the “industry-leading clothing brands retailers committed to work with us, to stay in the country and get rid of their unsustainable business model of extreme exploitation. A bloody t-shirt is not much cheaper than a clean one.”

Improvements

The Rana Plaza collapse in the Dhaka suburb of Savar on 24 April was one of the worst industrial accidents in history.

The rescue operation only ended on Monday, almost three weeks after the nine-story building collapsed; now the spotlight is turning to those who survived the tragedy.

Mojibur Rahman Bhuiyan of ITUC-Bangladesh Council has called on international retailers to pay compensation to the thousands of workers injured, many of whom still require medical support.

The accident also brought Bangladesh’s garment industry, worth 20 billion US dollars, back to the world’s attention.

Despite being the second largest garment exporter in the world after China, the industry is beset with health and safety issues, poverty wages and labour violations.

In November 2012, at least 117 workers were killed in the Tazreen factory fire in Dhaka.

Since then, there have been four other deadly garment industry accidents in Bangladesh, including the 24 April factory collapse.

Following widespread worker protests across the country and the global outcry over the Rana Plaza tragedy, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government has announced a raft of measures to reform the industry.

In a move that has been welcomed by trade union officials, on Monday, the Bangladeshi government said that workers would be allowed to form unions without obtaining permission from factory owners.

“With collective-bargaining power, tragedies like Rana Plaza would not happen, since owners would not be able to force workers to work in unsafe conditions,” Amirul Haque Amin, president of Bangladesh’s National Garment Workers Federation, told the Wall Street Journal.

The government also announced plans to meet with trade unions and factory owners to set a new minimum wage for garment workers.  Currently set at around 3,000 takas (38 US dollars) a month, it is one of the lowest in the world.

But Bangladesh has come under fire for taking so long to commit to change and there is some skepticism over what tangible impact these proposed government reforms will have – especially when more than 20 members of parliament are also said to own garment factories.