She Tried to See Where My T-Shirt Was Made, and the Factory Sent Thugs After Her

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/india-garment-factories-sumangali

By Dana Liebelson
| Fri Nov. 29, 2013

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As a child, Aruna dreamed of going to college. But by the time she was 15, when her government-subsidized schooling ended, she understood that she was too poor. Then, a stranger promised to change her life. He offered her a job at a textile factory that has supplied companies including, until recently, UK-based maternity wear maker Mothercare. Her pay would be about $105 a month—enough for food for her family, her further education, and most importantly, the chance to build a dowry.

When Aruna arrived at the factory, about 40 miles from her home, she found a vast facility where close to 1,000 girls, many in their teens, lived 10 or 15 to a room. From 8 a.m. till 10 p.m. every day, including weekends, she fed and monitored rusty machines that spun raw cotton into yarn. Her bosses often woke her in the middle of the night because, she recalls, there was "always some sort of work, 24 hours a day." Aruna made just a quarter of the $105 a month she was promised, about $0.84 a day.

Aruna shows me a scar on her hand, more than an inch long, where a machine cut her. She often saw girls faint from standing for too long. One had her hair ripped out when it got caught in a machine. Others were molested by their supervisors. "They said we would get less work if we slept with them," Aruna says. Sometimes girls would disappear, and everyone would speculate whether they'd died or escaped. Still, she needed the money, so she worked there for two years. After she left, a garment workers advocacy organization called Care-T helped her get her current job at the hospital, where she is slowly saving up for a dowry. When I ask if she still has her sights set on college, Aruna shakes her head and tears fill her eyes. But almost instantly, she wipes them away. There's no point thinking about that, since she already has a steady income. "I like my job at the hospital now," she says. Most of her friends are still working at the factory. (The names of Aruna and other former factory workers have been changed to protect them from retaliation.)

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A 2011 report by the Dutch watchdog groups Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations and India Committee of the Netherlands found that sumangali factories employed an estimated 120,000 workers, some as young as 13, and supplied dozens of international companies, including Gap (which denied the allegation), H&M, American Eagle Outfitters, and Tommy Hilfiger.

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In the garment industry the world over, it is common for workers to be locked into exploitative conditions until they fulfill contracts. But in India, the dowry tradition—which persists even though it's officially illegal—makes teenage girls especially vulnerable to these schemes. In part because of this, India has comparatively strong child labor regulations: It's illegal for children younger than 14 to work in factories there, and all workers must be paid double for overtime. Enforcing those laws, however, is another matter. Factories go to great lengths to cover up illegal practices. (Aruna recalls that when inspectors would come—she didn't know whether they were government or company auditors—factory supervisors would shove the younger girls into a special wing. If they were found, they were told to say that they were 18.)

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Heather White, a fellow at Harvard's center for ethics who has researched global clothing supply chains. In her interviews with factory workers, she says she heard about "numerous cases of sexual harassment, which normally in the factory worker context means rape."

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Most of the tea workers are from the lower castes and make about $3 per day; it costs a month's salary just to outfit a child with books and a uniform for school. "We can't give all our children food and schooling, so we sacrifice one child's future for the others," one mother tells me. "In these jobs, girls are preferred, so girls go."

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The spokesman tells my translator over the phone that I can't visit the grounds unless I know someone who works there, so I decide to ask in person. As we dodge cows and scooters on a dusty road in the outskirts of Coimbatore, my Tamil translator begins to look worried. "This isn't a good idea," she says, smoothing the scarf of her shalwar kameez for the tenth or hundredth time. After an hour of U-turns and badgering bewildered locals for directions, we finally find the plant. And I begin to see why my translator is nervous: The building, a vast compound with tall, guarded gates, could be mistaken for a military base.

We pull up across the street and my photographer snaps some pictures. Within seconds, a man with a thick mustache arrives, knocking on our window. "What are you doing here?" he yells. "Delete that photo!" I apologize and offer to leave immediately—but then I realize that we can't: At least two dozen men have run from the gates and are surrounding our car, putting their hands on the bumper. The man with the mustache, who appears to be the boss, is apoplectic. He says that he won't let us leave if we don't delete the pictures and demands a copy of our IDs. Members of the mob are yelling in Tamil, and my driver throws his hands off the steering wheel, warning us that if he touches the gas, they are likely to break the windows. "We sell to American and European companies!" the boss warns. "What gives you the right to think you can take photos here? Foreigners can't take photos in Coimbatore!"

He lets us go after we apologize profusely and our driver gives him the address of the hotel we checked out of earlier that morning. The company, we later learn, sends representatives straight to the hotel; they end up calling us from the police station, threatening to have us jailed. An officer recommends that our photographer leave her hotel in Coimbatore because he's concerned about her safety. That night, even though we are hundreds of miles away at a hotel in Chennai, I double-bolt the door and don't sleep.

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YOU WON'T FIND a Western clothing manufacturer that openly approves of sumangali labor, but cracking down on it is a different matter. That's because textile supply chains are vast and mind-numbingly complex.

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Care-T's Prithiviraj has similar concerns; he doesn't want contractors to drop Indian factories because, he says, then mills simply would work harder to hide sumangali workers and fire girls who desperately need the income.

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The Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association, for example, suggested replacing ceiling fans with wall fans, since ceiling fans "give access for person to commit suicide by hanging."

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