Luis Vuitton, PRADA=Union Busting

PRADA, originally uploaded by [ B6Y ].

This just in from Union Gal:

In April 2008, hundreds of workers at Turkish leather manufacturer, DESA, which produces for Prada, Mulberry, Louis Vuitton, Samsonite, Aspinal of London, Nicole Farhi and Luella, decided to join Deri Is, the Turkish leather workers union. Since then 44 workers have been dismissed and a further 50 have been forced to resign from the union.

Workers have been fighting this denial of their right to organise through daily demonstrations outside the DESA factory in the Dzce Industrial Zone, facing constant repression and arrest from the local gendarmes. Emine Arslan, a union leader from another DESA factory in Istanbul(Sefaky), was offered a bribe to drop her case against DESA and to end the demonstrations outside the factory. When she refused, her family was threatened. Hours later her 11 year old daughter narrowly escaped an attempted kidnap by men on a motorbike.

Conditions at the three Turkish factories are appalling: Workers earn poverty wages, work long hours, and suffer from a variety of health complaints linked to poor health and safety conditions. They complain that there are not enough toilets for all the workers and those that exist are filthy. The only drinking water is from a hose on the toilet floor.

Despite the huge price tags on the products made by DESA workers, Prada, Mulberry and the others have refused to take action to support the right of DESA workers to organise and improve conditions. Contact them today to tell them: a union is a right, not a luxury. [Labour Start]

News of the dismal conditions in authorized manufacturing facilities is ironic as well as outrageous.

Industry groups representing the luxury goods industry have been aggressively guilt-tripping consumers about counterfeits on the grounds that these knock-offs are produced by exploited workers.

Comments

[Left_Wing_Fox]

Perhaps the biggest irony of the manufacturing industry is that low prices and low wages for employees are not necessarily linked.

I buy a brand of jeans made in Canada and distributed through a national chain. The Jeans cost $30, and I know the workers are protected by Canadian about laws. Oddly enough, the "premium" brands they sell are all made in india, bangladesh, china, etc, and cost substantially more. If there is a quality difference, I certainly haven't seen it. Mall-brand jeans like Gap and Eddie Bauer are notorious for the use of sweatshop labour out of places like Honduras, while charging $70 or more per pair.

We really do need a rational trade policy that applies standardized tariffs based on wages and environmental compliance, rather than forcing people making an American living wage to compete with desperate workers in developing nations making sub-poverty wages. The entire reason the american consumer market exists is because of the structures supportung an affluent middle class. Undermining those to push the profit margins is not a sustainable business practice.

[Alon Levy]

We really do need a rational trade policy that applies standardized tariffs based on wages and environmental compliance

That's a contradiction in terms. A developed country's trade policy can either be rational or have tariffs. Tariffs and export subsidies make sense, for poor countries. South Korea had 400%+ tariffs on foreign industrial goods back when it was less developed. It also banned strikes, cracked down on union activism, and kept work hours long and wages low; it still has the longest working hours in the world by far.

The US allowed South Korea free access to its market, for Cold War geopolitical reasons. If it hadn't, South Korea would have probably not gone from a per capita income of $80 in 1960 to $20,000 today. More tellingly, South Korea abolished its fascist anti-union laws when its own workers decided that enough was enough, and they wanted to share the growth. It didn't change its economic policy based on the whims of American leftists, but based on the desires of its own populace.

If the Turks think that they need these unions to grow, they'll vote for leftist parties. Until then, lay off the neo-con garbage about how every country in the world has to act exactly like the US.

[Bruce]

So the Devil IS Prada....

[bendygirl]

Left Wing Fox, you seem to be under some illusion that Labourstart is AMERICAN. Actually, it's an international clearinghouse of information on labour issues. It's been reporting on workers issues not just from Turkey, but the UK, Australia, US, Russia etc...

It's not the policies of Turkey that I'm at issue with now (or at least in the post I made, their jailing of union activists on trumped up charges and killing them or calling them terrorists, that's a different story and they've done it, recently), it's the bands of Prada, Mulberry, etc... Support the workers in Turkey, don't buy these products where ever you live. And yeah, that goes for living in Turkey as well as living in the US or UK or...

[Alon Levy]

Bendygirl, would you support not buying products from South Korea in the 1970s?