Factory or Prison

Textile workers from Bangladesh are kept behind locked gates and exploited in Bacau in Romania

In January 2007 the BBC reported on a strike involving 400 Chinese female textile workers of the Wear Company in Bacau in Eastern Romania. During the strike, Sorin Nicolescu, director of the firm, was physically attacked by about 100 angry women. “Instead of working, they threw themselves at me with forks and spoons. I called the police and security. It’s just not acceptable to be attacked in my own country, in my factory, by female workers, to whom I have made every concession!” said Nicolescu in a statement to the press at the time. After the strike, through which the workers aimed to impose higher wages and better working conditions, significant numbers of women handed in their notice and returned to China. (1)

Beset by the shortage of labour-power in Romania, Wear Company has again hired labour-power from Asia, this time 500 contract-workers from Bangladesh.

The following report is based on personal conversations with some workers.

Locked in for two months

The first workers from Bangladesh that we meet in the town-centre of Bacau belong to the 74 construction-workers who have been employed for three months by the firm Rombet S.A. They are working with local construction-workers on the large construction-site for a new shopping mall. They can’t complain about the food and accommodation. “But the wages are much too low! We have a contract for 500 US Dollars on 8 hours a day. But we work 10 hours each day, including Saturday, and we only get 375 US Dollars!”

They know some of their compatriots at Wear-Company. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, they were all signed up to the Al Abas International agency which arranged their employment in Romania. The fees that the agency charges, which the workers must raise themselves, are enormous: about US$3,500 per person. In order to raise this large sum, many have taken out a bank-loan or a mortgage on the family-house. The instalments plus the interest have to be paid off out of their wages.

It is Sunday, the only free day in the week, on which the textile-workers from Bangladesh usually take the bus into the town-centre and go for walks in groups in the park. In the last weeks none of them was allowed to leave the factory-premises. The gate was locked and security didn’t allow anyone out. “The workers of Wear Company have been locked in for two months. They can’t leave the factory. That’s like prison!” one of the construction-workers from Rombet tells us. But we are lucky: on this Sunday the textile-workers are allowed out again and we are able to talk with them about their situation.

They say that the company-management had told them that there were problems with Immigration Police, and for that reason they couldn’t leave the factory. The workers suspect that the company took these measures because 20 of their colleagues had disappeared. These had possibly crossed the border into other European countries in order to find better work there.

The overtime trick

The workers from Bangladesh (2) are seamsters and have a contract for 8-hour days, 40-hour weeks, for which they are supposed to receive US$400. In fact they regularly work 60-hour weeks and are paid 640 RON (US$253). “That is much too little! Our families rely on our money. On top of that come the instalments and the interest on the loans that we have taken out.” In addition a part of the money that they transfer to Bangladesh is retained as processing fees by the money-transfer companies such as Western Union; on small sums these amount to approximately 10% of the total sum!

The employer deducts US$147 each month from the contractually agreed US$400. This is for accommodation in a dormitory on the factory premises, where at any one time 9 men have to sleep in three-storey bunk-beds. On top of that comes the food which the company provides, but which isn’t enough. The workers are often still hungry after meals.

According to Romanian employment legislation workers can rack up 38 hours of overtime, which must be balanced out in the time-sheets of the following months. Each additional hour of overtime has to be paid at double the rate. To complete the sums: on 20 hours’ overtime a week, Wear Company steals from each single worker US$400 a month that he should be entitled to.

This trick with the overtime is well-known. In Sibiu, a couple of hundred kilometres to the West of Bacau in Romania, female textile workers from the Philippines started a overtime-boycott against the Mondostar company at the beginning of August, after they received no wages at all for overtime. (3)

It has to be worth it for the Asian workers to take on the high agency fees. They see the contractually determined basic wage and count on the corresponding increased rates for overtime. When the workers are then in Romania the companies attempt to undercut the contract by paying lower wages and squeezing more work out of them.

“If it doesn’t suit you, go back to Bangladesh”

The residence permit for workers from Bangladesh is tied to their year-long work contract. Their passports and all their important documents are retained by the company, which only hands out copies of these. The company-management can easily fire undesirable workers and then get them deported. 30 workers just got fired. “As soon as we complain, they say: ‘if it doesn’t suit you, then we’ll send you back to Bangladesh.’” In view of the large debts that await in Bangladesh, this is a threatening proposition.

Unlike the Filipina women at Mondostar, only a few of the workers from Bangladesh already have been able to acquire experience abroad. Many have left their country for the first time. For the workers of Wear Company the step from Bangladesh to Europe is bound up with the hope for better living conditions. (4)

Relying on the workers

The Wear Company in Bacau relies on foreign labour-power. According to a study by the temporary work agency Manpower, Romania is currently the country with the biggest shortage in labour-power in the world. 73% of companies questioned indicated that they couldn’t find enough labour-power. (5) The textile and construction industries and the service sector are particularly heavily affected.

According to estimates 10% of the Romanian population are working permanently or temporarily abroad, mainly in Spain and Italy, where they receive five to seven times the wages that they would get in Romania. The daily propaganda in the Romanian media about the worsening working conditions for Romanians abroad, the catastrophic social effects of ongoing emigration for family-members left behind – children who grow up without care, old people that no-one takes care of – and the threatened “flooding” of the national labour-market by Asian workers doesn’t alter the situation in the slightest.

Bacau is in the Romanian province of Moldova, a region in which the rate of emigration of the local workforce is well above the average. The city of 185,000 inhabitants offers six direct flights each week and ten bus departures each day to Italy.

Publicise the case

In our conversations with the workers from Bangladesh a pressing concern is soon expressed: “We want our situation here to be reported on. Something has to change.”

In early September a worker tells us by telephone that they are being locked in again. “Last Sunday 16 of our colleagues didn’t come back. Now the company is forbidding us to leave the factory premises. We don’t know yet if we will be let out next Sunday.

Report by Ana Cosel, 9 th September 2008

Contact: ana.cosel [at]web.de

Endnotes:

(1) BBC report on the strike: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6286617.stm

(2) Unlike the Philippines, which “exports” female labour-power, in Bangladesh it is primarily men who go abroad to work.

(3) See the report on the 27 th August 2008 by Ana Cosel:

http://www.labournet.de/internationales/rumae/sibiu.html (german)

http://www.labournet.de/internationales/rumae/sibiu_engl.html

(4) Repeated strikes and violent protests are occurring in the new centres of production of the textile industry in Bangladesh against low wages and the constant price-rises for foodstuffs. The basic wage of a textile worker in Bangladesh – the large majority of the 2 million workers employed in the clothing industry are women – is around US$45 a month. The state is trying to repress these protests violently; police and paramilitaries are playing a decisive role in this.

(5) Manpower study published on the 22 nd April 2008: http://www.euractiv.com/en/socialeurope/romania-skilled-labour-shortage-highest-worldwide/article-171920

(6) In Romanian: http://www.desteptarea.ro/articol_15067.shtml