EPORT final 19/1/04 10:19 am Page 6clearly one reason, but so too is the pressure inherent in being employed at the end of amajor company’s global supply chain, whether it is sourcing overseas or domestically.One cause of such precarious conditions is the new business model that has emerged<strong>und</strong>er globalisation, described in chapter 2. Retail and brand companies have positionedthemselves as powerful gatekeepers between the world’s consumers and producers.Their global supply chains stretch from the supermarket shelves and clothes rails in theworld’s major shopping centres to the fruit and vegetable farms of Latin America andAfrica and the garment factories of South Asia and China. Wal-Mart, the world’s biggestretailer, has driven this model, buying products from 65,000 suppliers worldwide andselling to over 138 million consumers every week through its 1,300 stores in 10 countries.Globalisation has hugely strengthened the negotiating hand of retailers and brandcompanies. New technologies, trade liberalisation, and capital mobility have dramaticallyopened up the number of countries and producers from which they can source theirproducts, creating a growing number of producers vying for a place in their supplychains. At the same time, international mergers and acquisitions and aggressive pricingstrategies have concentrated market power in the hands of a few major retailers, nowbuilding international empires. These companies have tremendous power in theirnegotiations with producers and they use that power to push the costs and risks ofbusiness down the supply chain. Their business model, focused on maximising returnsfor shareholders, demands increasing flexibility through ‘just-in-time’ delivery, buttighter control over inputs and standards, and ever-lower prices.Under such pressures, factory and farm managers typically pass on the costs and risksto the weakest links in the chain: the workers they employ. For many producers, theirlabour strategy is simple: make it flexible and make it cheap. Faced with fluctuatingorders and falling prices, they hire workers on short-term contracts, set excessivetargets, and sub-contract to sub-standard, unseen producers. Pressured to meet tightturnaro<strong>und</strong> times, they demand that workers put in long hours to meet shippingdeadlines. And to minimise res<strong>ist</strong>ance, they hire workers who are less likely to jointrade unions (young women, often migrants and immigrants) and they intimidate orsack those who do stand up for their rights.Governments should be strengthening protection for workers in the face of theseintense commercial pressures. Instead many have traded away workers’ rights, in lawor in practice. Under pressure from local and foreign investors and from IMF andWorld Bank loan conditions, they have too often allowed labour standards to be definedby the demands of supply chain flexibility: easier hiring and firing, more short-termcontracts, fewer benefits, and longer periods of overtime. It brings a short-termadvantage for trade, but at the risk of a long-term cost to society.Companies increasingly hold up their ‘codes of conduct’ to assure the public that theycare about labour standards down the chain. But their farm and factory audits still focuson documenting the labour problems that ex<strong>ist</strong>, without asking why those problemspers<strong>ist</strong>. Many factors can contribute – from poor management to weak nationallegislation. But one root cause, long overlooked, is the pressures of retailers’ and brandcompanies’ own supply-chain purchasing practices, <strong>und</strong>ermining the very labourstandards that they claim to support.Anyone appalled by ‘sweat shop’ conditions in garment factories should be asking:who turned up the heat? The pressure on workers starts far from the factory floor –coming down the supply chain through retailers’ and brands’ strategies, as described inchapter 3. Their demands for ‘just-in-time’ delivery have typically cut production timesby 30 per cent in five years – coupled with smaller, less predictable orders and highairfreight costs for missed deadlines. Moroccan factories producing for Spain’s majordepartment store, El Corte Inglés, must turn orders ro<strong>und</strong> in less than seven days.‘The shops always need to be full of new designs,’ said one production planning manager,‘We pull out all the stops to meet the deadline ... Our image is on the line.’ But the imagethey hide is of young women working up to 16 hours a day to meet those deadlines,<strong>und</strong>erpaid by 40 per cent for their long overtime working. ‘There’s a girl who’s sevenmonths pregnant working ten hours a day,’ said one garment worker, ‘and as she has tomake a lot of pieces per hour the employer doesn’t let her go to the toilet. It’s sheer torture forher, but she can’t afford to lose her job.’Across countries, falling prices (for many garment producers, by 30 per cent over threeyears) increase the pressure to cut costs; sub-contracting to workshops with far worseconditions is a popular but hidden solution. And when buyers make no promise offuture orders, their calls to improve labour standards ring hollow. No wonder that manymanagers falsify records and intimidate workers to answer questions ‘correctly’.The fresh produce industry – fruit, vegetables, and flowers – is inherently risky,but supermarkets’ tough negotiations can increase that gamble. As chapter 4 shows,farmers across the world are made to carry the costs and risks when supermarkets setprices long after the produce has been shipped, when they demand exclusive relationshipsbut then drop the order, and when they run cut-price promotions to achieve their ownsales targets. ‘The only ham left in the sandwich is our labour costs,’ said one South Africanapple farmer exporting to the UK’s biggest supermarket, Tesco. ‘If they squeeze us,it’s the only place where we can squeeze’. Little wonder that farmers like him areincreasingly hiring women on temporary contracts to work 11 hours a day in the fieldsfor poverty wages, with no sick leave, no maternity leave, and no income security.67
Spielanleitung:Auf einer Linie positionieren sich die TN mit ihren Karten zwischen 100% /Ja <strong>und</strong> 0% /Neinnacheinander zu folgenden Aussagen:Ich verbinde mit Kultur• andere Länder• Oper, Theater, Malerei, Kunst• unterschiedliche Denk- <strong>und</strong> Verhaltensweisen• Missverständnisse• meine eigene Herkunft• Vorurteile• andere Schrift• etwas, dass sich verändert <strong>und</strong> neu bildet• Sitten, Gebräuche, Regeln• die Jugendfeuerwehr• etwas, dass ich durch Familien, Schule, Gesellschaft lerne• Toleranz• eine bestimmte Gemeinschaft von Menschen• ... (eigene Vorschläge) -> können die Jugendlichen gefragt werden100% 50% 0%Ja! Jain! Nein!Nach jeder Aussage wird ein Stimmungsbild festgehalten, z. B an der Wand <strong>und</strong> anschließend mit derGruppe diskutiert. Abschließend sehen die TN die Definition von Kultur <strong>und</strong> Interkulturellem Lernen<strong>und</strong> können vergleichen ob <strong>und</strong> inwiefern ihre Diskussion dem entspricht.Definitionen zu Kultur <strong>und</strong> interkulturellem Lernen:Kultur <strong>ist</strong> für uns ein Orientierungssystem, an dem wir unser Handeln ausrichten <strong>und</strong> durch das wir inunserem Wahrnehmen, Denken <strong>und</strong> Fühlen beeinflusst werden.Interkulturelles Lernen findet statt, wenn Menschen unterschiedlicher Kulturen sich im Umgangmiteinander bemühen, das kulturelle Orientierungssystem des anderen zu verstehen.13
Change language