BRITAIN'S politicians on both sides of the house look for inspiration to the economic miracle of South-East Asia. US businessmen hope that Mexico's free-trade zones opened up by North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) will bring salvation in the midst of economic crisis.
Alongside efforts to forge protectionist trade alliances that can weather the intensity of international competition, the slogan of the rich and powerful is free-trade and more free trade.
Export Processing Zones (EPZs) across South-East Asia offer foreign investors the opportunity to super-exploit an almost exclusively female workforce. Investors don't have to pay tax in the EPZs, nor do they worry about red-tape or human rights legislation.
Women's labour comes cheap, with the added advantage that women possess "natural subservience" and high tolerance for boredom" according to Philippines Department of Trade advertising.
Preferring to employ single, childless women, factory owners in the Philippines EPZs make potential recruits have a virginity test.
Those factories that employ married women insist that they take contraceptives and take part in "population education".
who work in the maquiladora plants in Mexico's freetrade zones tell similar stories. "Most plants require a woman to present a doctor's certificate testigtying that she is not pregnant.
A good number of maquiladoras offer the women, or even demand that they use, oral contraceptives or contraceptives by injection.
Yellow unions sign agreements about working conditions behind the workers' backs, establishing clauses like the worker's obligation to inform the company of her pregnancy".
Chu Yue, a Taiwanese worker in the , Kaohsiung EPZ has been sewing labels into garments at a rate of 300 per day for the last seven years.
She explains "It gets really frantic when a large order comes in. Supervisors walk around the machines, quickening their pace when they want us to work faster. Others set the pace by clapping their hands"
Mandatory overtime is a fact of life, as are penalties for failing to meet quoDemonstrators led by Bolivian Workers Refedration (COB) tas.
The safety of the workers is the lowest priority for free-taders world-wide. In the Mexican maquila industry women handle chemicals and solvents without safety equipment.
They are subjected to high noise and heat levels, fast production lines and toxic waste from the plants being dumped in the shanty towns where they live.
Nine hundred women in a Sri Lankan EPZ were recently poisoned by leaking chemicals. The Japanese-Sri Lankan company claimed that the posioning was caused by • collective sabotage' refused to pay hospital bills and sacked half of the affected women. Blair's comment that Japanese investors are not worried about the social chapter because "They already treat their workers decently" is despicable In Mexico there is growing discontent, spurring organisation of maquila workers, community members in the polluted shanty-towns around the plants and, since the adoption of NAFTA, joint resistance by US and Mexican trades unionists.
Despite no union, no strikes policies operating in most EPZs, the Manilabased Women Workers' Movement is finding that "Increasing numbers of women are joining the labour movement to fight for a better deal".
The risks are high. Marsinah, the organiser of a strike at an IndonesianSwiss watch factory was found murdered on the day after the strike. Western investors claim that local factory conditions are a local matter, while raking in the profits.
Nike Inc paid Michael Jackson $20 million for his endorsement of the brand, about the same as the company paid Indonesian labour to make 19 million pairs of shoes.
The free trade agenda attacks the conditions of women across the world, and especially in the so-called Third World. Against the brutalities of the international capitalists we need international solidarity
Socialist Outlook 98 • March 2, 1996. and an activist role.
Unfortunately, the Family Planning Movement recently withdrew from CADAC, alDATELE