No Chains Fashion Show By Dignity Returns
An Open Letter for A World without Chains
On 12th March 2009 a representative from La Alameda met with members of the Dignity Returns cooperative in Bangkok. After discussing the factories’ respective goals and difficulties, members decided to jointly produce and advertise sweat-free goods both to act as a model for viable worker-operated garment production and to raise awareness about non-exploitative labor. Expanding their existing media networks and activist alliances, both cooperatives would participate in a coordinated campaign about safe and ethical consumption, while addressing abuses specific to the garment industry’s global supply chain, which depends upon the exploitation of gendered, migrant, and subcontract labor in Argentina, Thailand, and throughout the global South.
Aims
The No Chains project model will hold quarterly t-shirt design contests that invite the direct collaboration of artists, designers, and art collectives with the workers of La Alameda and Dignity Returns, of which February 2010’s selection will be the first installment. The momentum generated by a joint brand consistently renewed by artists’ participation, coupled with each cooperative’s longstanding commitment to labor activism, will enable No Chains to serve as a platform that highlights various labor struggles throughout the globe, connecting artists, consumers, and supporters at these important global flashpoints. While maintaining this momentum through the projects’ stability, both La Alameda and Dignity Returns will remain open to the prospect of collaborating with other worker-owned factories that wish to join in producing under the No Chains brand.
Photos below: Dignity Returns Factory in Bangkok, Thailand.
Dignity Returns
A Solidarity Group Factory
The Solidarity Factory was created as a workers’ cooperative by ex-employees of Bed and Bath. In 2003 these workers were made redundant without being paid any of the compensation that is required by Thai law. Bed and Bath produced brand name clothing for export, subcontracting for multinationals such as Nike, Adidas, Gap, Reebok and UMBRO – all brands that are supposed to be covered by a Code of Conduct in employment. Yet, the company never complied with any labour laws, instead treating its staff like slaves. Working hours were often as long as 60 hours of continuous work. Employees were given addictive drugs to keep them awake. Deductions were made from earnings without due cause. Employees found eating lemons were fined 2000 baht (60USD). Those caught yawning were fined 500 baht (15USD). Workers were physically abused and strictly forbidden from forming a union. In the end, the factory was closed without paying workers their owed wages or compensation.
The Bed and Bath workforce finally rose in protest to demand their rights according to the law, but the Thai government refused to force the company to obey even basic labor codes. After 3 months, the workers stopped fighting. Many did not want to go and work for another boss in another factory ever again. So the Solidarity Factory was born in 2003 with 40 members working under the slogan “A Factory by Workers, for Workers.” Such a cooperative is absolutely unique to a manufacturing-dominated country such as Thailand, where unionization is minimal and worker control absolutely unheard-of.
Renaming itself Dignity Returns in 2009 to indicate a broader commitment workers’ struggles, the factory is characterized by not having bosses or managers, and all decisions are made in periodic meetings of the workers themselves. The current 14 cooperative members, most of whom are female, equally share responsibilities of fulfilling orders, managing international contracts, training themselves in languages (mainly English), and marketing factory products. The cooperative’s real value, beyond just the symbolism of its functioning as a worker-led cooperative free of exploitation, can be recognized with from its autonomous commitment to labor activism outside of the familiar contexts of union-based struggles and NGO pressure politics.
A Poster inside Dignity Returns Factory
Photos above: La Alameda Factory in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
La Alameda
Un Mundo Sin Cadenas
La Alameda Factory, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The garment brand free of slave labour “Mundo Alameda” is part of a movement known as the Popular Assembly “20th of December” – The Alameda – currently a symbol of the fight for decent work and against slave labour. This assembly rose from the heat of the crisis of 19 and 20th of December 2001, a consequence of decades of neoliberal policies whose implementation resulted in the increase of poverty and social exclusion. In an old abandoned bar recovered by neighbours, the assembly has developed various activities through a long effort and difficult struggles. Initially, a community diner was organized which was mostly attended by Bolivian workers. The workers denounced having to work in conditions of slavery in clandestine sweatshops that were supplying goods to the big garment brands. Brought to the country either by force or by deception, earning miserable salaries and exposed to frequent abuse and maltreatment, these garment workers were forced to work and live squeezed in garment workshops in conditions of deplorable hygiene and layout, where they worked for as long as 12 to 18 hours a day.
The Alameda has also been a driving force behind the Union of Garment Workers, whose main objective consists of recovery of the garment union (strongly criticized for its subordination to the interests of management) and its reconstitution as a tool in an integrated fight for the defense of labour rights of the association of garment workers, bringing home the problems of slave labour and trafficking to formal garment workers. Through the Union of Garment Workers, the judicial mega-lawsuit was created which denounces the form of outright exploitation which over 100 renowned garment brands have benefited from. Similarly, the Alameda has achieved promotion of a national plan of documentation to reverse the abusive situation of thousands of migrants living in the country, offering them the possibility of attaining formal work.
The Alameda has also been a driving force behind the Union of Garment Workers, whose main objective consists of recovery of the garment union (strongly criticized for its subordination to the interests of management) and its reconstitution as a tool in an integrated fight for the defense of labour rights of the association of garment workers, bringing home the problems of slave labour and trafficking to formal garment workers. Through the Union of Garment Workers, the judicial mega-lawsuit was created which denounces the form of outright exploitation which over 100 renowned garment brands have benefited from. Similarly, the Alameda has achieved promotion of a national plan of documentation to reverse the abusive situation of thousands of migrants living in the country, offering them the possibility of attaining formal work.
Since 2008 the Alameda has extended its fight to multiple forms of slavery and across the whole country. In this way it denounced the sex trafficking and exploitation of women and girls, as well as child labour and servitude in agricultural production.
Always maintaining the principles of direct democracy, the Alameda has organized opportunities for diverse cultural activities and productive enterprises with decent work, among them the textile workshop of the cooperative “20th of December “. This workshop has gone through a long trajectory as a self-managed enterprise and, in constant expansion, it has given way to creation of a garment brand of its own: Mundo Alameda. Expressing the way to produce and consume responsibly, this brand reflects the possibility of tailoring clothes of excellent quality without exploitation and without charging expensive prices.
Now, together with Dignity Returns and through the global brand No Chains, Mundo Alameda extends its message and its fight to all corners of this globe, in the name of creating a world society without slaves or any excluded people.
For more information, visit our websites: www.laalameda.wordpress.com.
The Alameda synthesis in five lines:
Through the principles of direct democracy, the workers themselves organized a self-managed enterprise of garment production sustained with decent work. The brand “Mundo Alameda” expresses the way to produce and consume responsibly and reflects the possibility of sewing clothes of excellent quality without exploitation and without charging excessive prices. The brand was born from the worker cooperative “December 20th”, in turn sustained by the popular assembly La Alameda.
No Chains
The clothes produced in typical garment factories, trap workers in chains – in chains of debt, chains of control by bosses who care for money and not workers – and chains of global production, where many parties grab profits that come from the blood of workers. In two extremes of this world, two cooperatives have emerged against these forms of production. In Thailand the cooperative Dignity Returns was formed by workers in the struggle against the demolishment of the factory where they worked, while in Argentina the cooperative 20 of December (La Alameda) was forged in the fight against the exploitation and the slave labour in clandestine workshops that serve the big garment brands. In both histories it is clear that we share similar values and missions. We have created democratic ventures and we have demonstrated that production is possible without bosses and without exploitation. Both cooperatives have launched their own brands free of slave labour, like “Mundo Alameda” and “Dignity Returns”, symbols of the fight for decent work.
The agreement made in March 2009 in Bangkok, to launch a global brand free of slave labour, was the natural consequence of the common values and histories of the two cooperatives, united now by one objective: to break the chains that bind us.
This project was born of an idea, a meeting between workers. No Chains is an initiative, a challenge to change the conditions of slave labour which millions of men, women and child workers of all the countries in this world are working in. It is not just another brand, nor simply a self-managing enterprise based in decent work. It is above all, a call to the garment workers and responsible and ethical consumers in all parts of the world, to achieve garment production that respects the dignity of the workers, without exploitation or enslavement. We dream of incorporate a growing number of cooperatives and responsible consumer groups in the whole world, around the global brand free of slave labour, we dream of a network instead of a chain. We aspire to create an enterprise managed by its own workers, for the workers.
Two cooperatives in two extremes of this world, united now to work and fight, to promote forms of decent work, free of the chains of slave labour that now dominate the garment industry. Together the cooperatives of No Chains establish before the world: No more chains in the garment industry!
We invite you to know more about us and promote our products, to participate and collaborate from whatever part of the world you are in, to break together, all the chains that enslave us.