Thread: India Cheap Labor Garment Export Industry

India Cheap Labor Garment Export Industry
Fashionable and famous -- at the garment worker's cost!


by Suhasini Singh
Global Research, May 7, 2009
InfoChange News & Features


India’s success in the global garments market has been at the cost of the basic rights of this industry’s predominantly female and migrant labour force. These women work in sweatshops that demand impossible targets of 100-120 garments an hour, with virtually no breaks allowed. Eighty per cent of TB patients registered with the ESIC, accordingly to one official, are garment workers exposed to cotton fluff

India has made a name for itself as a garment manufacturing centre of global renown. The textiles and garments industry contributes 16.63% of India’s export earnings; around 45% of this comes from garment exports alone. The garments industry provides employment to around 3.5 million people across the country. Delhi, Mumbai, Tirupur, Bangalore and Chennai are the five major garment production hubs, producing exclusively for the exports market. Karnataka has a sizeable presence in the garments and textiles sector; many well-known multinational brands have chosen this state to set up their global sourcing centres.

Leading garment manufacturers like Tommy Hilfiger, Marks & Spencer, Gap, H&M, Matalan, Mothercare, George, etc, employ Karnataka’s largest unorganised workforce. In Bangalore alone there are 500,000 workers in the garments industry, in 1,200 factories spread across the city.

But India’s niche in the global garments market has been carved out at the cost of lakhs of workers in this industry’s predominantly female and migrant labour force.

“My salary gets cut if I take even a day’s holiday. All of us feel that there is no job security; we are under constant threat of being fired by our supervisors,â€

Yet, people wont look at the labels and BUY AMERICAN

History repeats itself.....Mega corporations, once again, profit from cheap, slave labor just like they did during the Industrial Revolution before the unions stepped in!

And now the Unions are owned by La Raza, Acorn and other anti-American groups.

And now the Unions are owned by La Raza, Acorn and other anti-American groups.

Nothing like going backwards again.