RE: Zara results15 Dec 2020 16:59
Hundreds of workers at two factories in Myanmar that produce clothing for Zara and Primark were fired days after forming a union in a move workers say targeted union supporters under the pretense that layoffs were related to the coronavirus. Zara is the main brand of Inditex, the largest clothing retailer in the world.
At the Huabo Times factory, days after filing a registration for their union, workers noted management terminated over 100 workers, primarily union members and supporters, and transferred 200 non-union workers from a different factory to replace them four days after the dismissals.
At the Rui-Ning factory, 298 union members were fired from the factory in early May 2020. The union registered at Rui-Ning in February 2020.
“I see the firing as clearly union-busting under the pretext of the pandemic. The factory fired most of the union members, including myself,” said Kyaw Thu Zaw, a worker at the Rui-Ning factory for about 10 months and president of the union. “They gave the excuse of difficulty in transporting products to Europe, but in reality there was no difficulty as the factory transported a bulk of products to destination countries on 12 May.”
He noted regular shifts consisted of 10-hour work days, six days a week, with workers expected to regularly work overtime in order to make enough money to survive. Workers at the factory make around $3 per day.
“Inditex must enforce decent and humane working conditions in the factories where they make their clothes. They make public statements about equality and sustainability, but here we are in the flesh suffering,” added Kyaw Thu Zaw.
The fired workers sent a letter to Zara founder Don Amancio Ortega, the sixth wealthiest person in the world with a net worth of over $66bn, according to Forbes.
“When the pandemic began, many workers like us continued to make your clothes even as factory management initially failed to grant us safety measures such as face masks and social distancing as a way to protect ourselves and our families from Covid-19. Now, the management has seized upon the global crisis as an opportunity to destroy our unions, dismissing union members en masse,” the workers at two clothing factories in Myanmar wrote to Ortega.
“Supervisors yell and use rude language, refer to us as animals, tell workers they are dogs, and use that language to get workers to hit high production targets,” said Thuzar Htwe, one of fired workers who led the union. “There’s never punishment of supervisors for harassment.”
She explained the sanitary conditions at the factory are poor, including the toilets, where instead of a septic tank, a foot-wide pipe from toilets dumps sewage into a canal right outside the factory. The foul smell permeates the designated lunch break area for workers, who are forced to eat and put up with it or risk being written up with a warning, which often leads to termination.
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