This chapter gives an overview of multinational corporations and their impact on women as workers, consumers and transmitters of culture. It also looks at the ways women are organizing against the negative effects of multinationals. The resources for research and organizing provide information about materials, groups and organizations actively working on these issues.
This chapter was written by Marilee Karl. Special thanks go to Anita Anand and Saralee Hamilton of the Women and Global Corporations Network for their help both in writing the overview and in compiling the resources.
integrating women into multinational development?
Marilee Karl
Multinational corporations have an enormous impact on economies and on the lives of people in both industrialized and developing countries. They affect women as workers, consumers and transmitters of culture in particular ways. Over the past decade, the rapid growth of export-oriented multinational enterprises in developing countries has had a decisive influence on the type of development taking place. Yet most work on development issues continues to concentrate on agriculture and rural areas. Policy-makers and planners concerned with women and development have responded to the challenge of global corporations with little more than a call to increase women's integration in the waged labor force.
Today it is more urgent than ever to examine the impact of multinational corporations on development. Because of their increasing size and wealth, multinationals are capable of imposing a model of development based on economic growth and profit maximization rather than on a more just and equitable distribution of goods and services. They are thus an issue for all who want to promote the kind of development which benefits all people and enables them to develop their potential and take power over their lives. Those working in particular for the improvement of women's lives cannot ignore the implications of multinationals for women.
Multinationals demonstrate the interrelatedness of development in industrialized and developing areas of the world through their global scale and impact. It is possible to deal effectively with them, and the situations and problems they create, only in a global way.
Feminists, for the most part, have not been in the forefront of research and action around multinationals. Yet they have a particular contribution to make: feminism brings a holistic approach to the issues, seeking the economic, political, social and sexist (i.e., discrimination against women because they are women) causes of the oppression of all. A feminist perspective on multinationals as a development issue can thus bring some new insights to the complex phenomenon.
the global nature and power of multinationals
A multinational or transnational is a business firm with activities in several different countries. The great majority of multinationals are incorporated in and have their decision making bodies and top management in North America, Japan and Europe. They also repatriate most of their profits to their country of origin. Their size and wealth enables them to locate where it is most profitable, where their investments will yield the highest returns. They also have the ability to organize and manage global markets.
No effective international rules or regulations govern multinationals. Many of them have greater power and wealth than some of the countries where they operate. The decisions of a multinational may effect the economy, the foreign policy and the political and social life of a country as well as the daily lives of workers and consumers. Their power makes it possible for them to avoid labor unrest or improvement in wages and working conditions. A multinational can close down a plant and move its operations to a country where workers can be paid less and where governments will ensure a more docile labor force. Because multinationals have factories in many different countries, they can allocate production processes in such a way that a strike or the closing of one factory will not harm their operations.
export-oriented development
Since the 1960s, multinational investment in developing countries has been increasingly promoted as a model of rapid economic development. This export-oriented industrialization is replacing an earlier model of import substitution manufacturing; that is, rather than encouraging local industries to produce for domestic consumption, such industrialization promotes production of goods and crops for export. Governments of industrialized countries and international financial institutions support export-oriented development not only because it brings more profits to the countries of origin of the multinational corporations and the banks, but also because this type of development binds the third world countries more tightly into the international capitalist system.
development and growth for whom?
Many third world countries promote such development. They see export-oriented investment as a source of quick capital which should allow the country to generate its own growth and to earn foreign exchange to meet balance of payment deficits. However, only a small elite benefits in any substantial way. This type of growth widens the gap between the rich and the poor and, by permitting an elite to control virtually all industry, allows politically repressive regimes to consolidate and extend their power.
Developing countries often compete to attract investment by multinational corporations, offering incentives such as free exploitation of natural resources, favorable tax situations, subsidized utilities, lax health and safety standards, free trade zones and especially a cheap labor force. In many countries, political repression ensures that this labor force will remain unorganized and not demand higher wages, benefits, or better working conditions. Often strikes are prohibited by law and unions are either forbidden or government-controlled.
The hoped-for benefits for the developing countries - increased employment, transfer of technology and skills, and foreign exchange earnings - have been minimal. Most production processes located in the third world require low skills and have made only a small dent in the unemployment situation. Foreign exchange earnings have been minimized by tax concessions and subsidized services.
international development banking
Multinational banks and international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) encourage and support export-oriented industry and agriculture in the world. In order to attract multinational investments, developing countries have had to invest capital in infrastructure and in developing the energy sources required for the establishment of factories, and in military equipment needed to control the political situation of the country. This has meant loans from international banks and consequent spiraling debt. This in turn has had adverse effects on the population, especially the poorest. It has meant devaluation of currency, rising costs of living, unemployment, scarcity of goods and services.
The benefits of internationally financed and developed energy sources are often not distributed equitably but enhance the position of the multinationals and a small local elite at the expense of the majority of the population and of local farmers and businesses who cannot compete with the multinational corporations.
the effects on industrialized countries
Multinational corporations also play a major role in the economies of the industrialized countries in which they are based. Richard Bamet, co-author of Global Reach: The Power of Multinational Corporations, writes: "The U.S. economy is now the North American division of the world economy. Because there are no effective world public authorities, no community-based planning in the United States, the managers of the multinationals in their daily operations have by default become the principal planners for the U.S. economy. The size and power of the multinationals, which makes it possible for them to locate plants wherever conditions are most favorable, undermines the efforts of workers and unions in industrialized countries to achieve better wages and working conditions and of environmentalists to control pollution and the disposal of toxic substances.
Small businesses and farms in industrialized countries, as in developing ones, are being squeezed out of existence by the competition of the big enterprises.
women on the assembly line
Many export-oriented industries, particularly agribusiness (food processing, preserving and harvesting) and light manufacturing such as electronics, textiles, toys and shoes, preferentially hire women. As a result, enormous numbers of women have been brought into the money economy, many of them for the first time, as wage earners.
Integrating women into the labor force has been seen as a way of promoting women's economic independence and power and thus "integrating" them into the development process. Employment by multinationals has not resulted in any substantial gains for women, however. On the contrary, women are super-exploited by these enterprises whose main motivation for hiring women is the higher profits derived from paying women lower salaries.
The exploitation of and discrimination against women in export-oriented industries in the third world is linked to that of women in the labor force in already industrialized countries. Almost everywhere women receive lower wages than men for the same work, receive fewer benefits, are more easily laid off or fired. This is justified by the argument that women are only supplementing family income and the father or husband is the main earner in the family. This myth continues in spite of the fact that a large percentage of women in the work force of both developing and industrialized countries either head their families or support themselves and other members of their families. However, in many of the export-oriented industries in Asia and Latin America, women are paid bare subsistence wages.
Maternity leave and benefits are also used to justify paying lower wages to women because of the costs to the company of providing benefits. Very often, however, maternity leave and benefits are simply not provided. Many industries hire young, unmarried women and lay them off after a few years, or even a few months. In this way, they avoid paying not only maternity benefits but also higher wages to more experienced or senior workers. A large pool of young women available for employment enables companies to do this. Moreover, the fact that these women are new to the formal labor force offers the multinationals the advantage of employees who are unorganized and who have had no experience in organizing.
Women are also considered best suited to the monotonous, unskilled work involved, in particular, in the electronics and textile industries - work requiring patience, willingness to work hard, and the "nimble" fingers of young women.
On top of this, women carry a double burden of work: in the field or factory and then in the "reproduction of the labor force" at home, caring for the house, the meals, the clothes, the children and the other needs of the family. Where there are few or inadequate social services - and this is the case generally in both industrialized and developing countries - women's burdens are even heavier. They are usually left with finding individual solutions for caring for children, the sick and the old. Exhaustion and its detrimental effects on physical and mental health are added to those of unhealthy conditions at the workplace. The electronics, textile and agribusiness industries which preferentially hire women are among those with the highest health and safety hazards.
Sexual harassment and exploitation are other hazards commonly found in the workplace. Male supervisors often demand sexual favors from women in return for hiring them, keeping them on, promotion or raises, or simply because they are in positions of authority over women and have the power to intimidate them. Male co-workers also harass women. This hazard is found in both developing and industrialized countries and has its root causes in sexist attitudes towards women.
electronics
Electronics is a relative newcomer to the multinational scene, and one of the most rapidly growing. This industry produces the components - the integrated circuits - which are used in computers, calculators, digital watches, electronic games, military systems, word processors and the like. The production processes involved are carried out literally on a "global assembly line," stretching from California, USA, halfway around the world to East and Southeast Asia. In the United States in 1975, 40 percent of the 11 million electronics workers were women and women made up 90 percent of the production workers. It is estimated that nearly half a million women are employed by the same industry today in East and Southeast Asia, comprising more than 85 percent of all electronics workers in this region. Many of the largest corporations have their head offices in the United States, in the Santa Clara Valley of California. The trend to move the labor intensive parts of the production process to Latin America and Asia began in the 1960s and increased in the 1970s, to take advantage of the large and cheap labor force. The management, engineering and highly skilled processes remain in the industrialized countries. Production processes are allocated in such a way that the factories in the various countries perform only a part of the process. This is possible in the electronics industry because the component parts are tiny, lightweight and easily transportable. This global assembly line enables the multinationals to make use of their workers at will. When workers in California, for instance, press for safer working conditions, the companies can threaten simply to move to Malaysia, and in fact have done so. Today electronics plants are found in Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Mexico. The early 1980s, however, have begun to see some movement back to the richer countries because of the increasing automation of some of the formerly labor-intensive production processes.
Electronics factories create a high number of serious health and safety problems for their workers, in spite of the superficially "clean" appearance of neat rows of uniformed workers and air conditioning - which are provided for the protection of the equipment, not the comfort of the workers. Workers peer through microscopes the whole day attaching hundreds of minute wires to silicon chips. After several years of work, many of them find their eyesight deteriorating, at which point they are no longer capable of performing the job and find themselves out of work. Other workers are occupied in dipping the chips into toxic acids, or coating them with silicon which can cause a fatal lung disease. High work quotas force women to work under intense pressure, and under the threat of losing their jobs to the thousands of other women looking for employment or to another plant of the same multinational. Workers are often set in competition with workers in another plant of the same company. Breaks are short and sometimes insufficient to eat properly and even visits to the toilet are often considered privileges.
The management of multinationals have devised a number of subtle techniques to control workers. Companies foster a paternalistic family spirit and encourage women workers to take up western consumer habits and values, by such things as promoting beauty contests and selling cosmetics and western-style clothing on their premises. They try to sell women the idea that "freedom" or "liberation" from traditional societies can be gained through spending earnings on western-style consumer goods. Many women, however, have been driven to seek employment in the cities because of the decline of the rural areas and are a major means of support for their families left behind in the countryside. They are caught between two worlds.
In some places companies house women in dormitories, with several women sharing the same room and even the same bed, taking turns sleeping during the different shifts. The company becomes virtually their whole world.
On the other side of the globe, microelectronics is having a great impact on the quantity and quality of jobs, especially those which traditionally employ many women, such as office work. Women are finding themselves replaced by computers and word processers or moved from secretarial positions to the more alienating word processing pool.
textiles
The textile industry is much older than electronics and has been a traditional employer of women for more than a hundred years. There are many similarities between the electronics and the textile industries in terms of wages, working conditions and social control of workers. Many factories of the multinational textile industry, however, closed down operations in industrialized countries and regions and "ran away" to areas and countries with cheaper labor forces much earlier.
In the United States, the southern states provided the raw material, cotton, for the manufacturers of the north who employed large numbers of women, many of them immigrants, in sweatshop conditions. As labor became organized, the garment plants picked up and moved first to the south, and then to Mexico, Latin America and Asia. When economic conditions warrant, the plants simply move back or on to yet greener fields. Because this affects mainly women's jobs, there has been little of the hue and cry now being heard over plant closings and runaways in fields such as the auto and rubber industries which primarily affect men's jobs.
Japanese and European multinationals have expanded into cheap labor areas of Asia, such as South Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia. In Europe, an influx of migrant workers from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and southern Europe forms another source of cheap labor at home. Some textile companies, especially in Europe and Australia, simply parcel out garment sewing to piece workers, women who work at home and are paid by the piece, without any benefits such as minimum wage, insurance, or sick-leave. One of the main reasons women resort to this type of employment is that it is the only way they can earn money while caring for children and the home.
Piece work is used as a means to keep wages low. When workers begin producing so much that they earn more, the company may lower the pay per piece. Where piece work has been replaced by a daily wage, workers are usually required to fulfill a quota, often so high that it is necessary to skip meal breaks and work overtime.
As the electronics industry, textiles has its health hazards, one of the most serious being fiber dust which can cause lung disease.
agribusiness
Agribusiness is the corporate control of food production and processing. Increasingly over the past two decades, multinational corporations have come to determine what is grown, where and how, how it is processed and where it is distributed. They have been buying up vast tracts of fertile land in third world countries and converting it into plantations for cash crops, usually a single crop meant primarily for export. Agribusiness is also flourishing in countries such as the United States where more and more small farms have been put out of business or swallowed up by these giant corporations. Some of these corporations are "vertically integrated"; that is, they control all the processes in the production of food, from planting and harvesting to processing, packaging, storing, transporting and marketing.
In many developing countries, agribusiness has taken large areas used for producing food for local consumption and turned them over to the production of cash crops for export. This negatively affects agricultural self-reliance and many countries once completely or nearly self-sufficient in food have become importers of basic foods.
Agribusiness repeats a common pattern in many countries: it draws men into the money economy, employing them in cash cropping and giving them - when needed for the work - technical know-how and equipment. Women are left to continue subsistence farming to supply the family's food needs under even more difficult circumstances than before. They are not provided with equipment to lessen the burden and are often deprived of the best land and the labor of men who traditionally performed some of the tasks involved in food production.
Agribusiness also exploits the labor of women. Depending on the crop and the area of the world, women are employed in planting, growing and harvesting. They are often hired as cheap seasonal labor for some of the most monotonous and difficult jobs such as weeding and picking. While women work in all aspects of food production, they are found especially in the food processing and packaging sectors. Whether they are Mexican migrant laborers in the onion fields of Arizona or Filipinas cleaning bananas on the plantations of Mindanao, they are subject to the same health hazards of pesticides and toxic chemicals, the same low wages and job insecurity. Where people find the land on which they were growing food crops taken over by multinationals, they have little choice but to seek employment in them, no matter how exploitative the conditions, or to migrate to the cities. Agribusiness contributes to driving women off the land to seek jobs in the cities in the textile, electronics or other industries.
the global supermarket
Multinational corporations have a great and growing impact on what people consume in nearly every part of the world. Through their decisions and power to control what is produced and where it is distributed, and through their multi-million dollar advertising campaigns, they have created a "global supermarket," reaching into the remotest areas and competing with small businesses, local products and markets. Women, as primary providers of food, health care, clothing and the household needs of their families, are prime targets of these campaigns.
Multinationals claim they are offering people more "freedom of choice" with their wide range of products. Is this really so? We have seen how agribusiness causes a decrease in the production of food crops for domestic consumption by converting large areas of land for production of export crops. Through their control of the seed industry and through seed patenting, they are also dramatically decreasing the variety of seeds and plants available. Their high powered advertising campaigns create new needs and desires in both industrialized and developing countries. Local products in developing countries cannot compete with the imported goods of multinationals and are pushed off the market. The same is true for goods produced by small businesses in the home countries of the multinationals as well. Consumers may actually have less choice because of the activities of multinationals.
Since multinationals are concerned mainly with profit, not the well-being of people, their advertising and promotional activities do not necessarily have positive effects on consumption patterns. A glance at the media suffices to show how multinationals create aspirations for a certain kind of materialistic lifestyle, desires and needs for non-essential goods. The impact of the food and drug industries on people's lives and health is even more serious.
The food processing, packing and distributing industries spend enormous amounts developing, producing and promoting processed foods such as colas and soft drinks, processed cheese, sweetened breakfast cereals, highly refined bakery goods, artificially flavored snack foods, powdered milk and infant formula, candies, instant coffees and teas, and so on. In industrialized countries such as the United States, many people are poorly nourished because of their high consumption of "junk" foods - snacks and other highly refined and sweetened food and drink. In developing countries, more severe nutritional problems often arise. Convinced by sophisticated advertising that imported goods, colas and snacks are better, healthier, more desirable and attractive than local products, women will spend scarce money on less nourishing food and drink for their families. Very often, however, they have no choice. Nothing else is available on the market.
This can create absurd situations: for instance, people living in citrus producing countries may have difficulty finding fresh citrus fruit drinks and must choose between artificially flavored soft drinks or powdered orange drink. In the meantime, the citrus fruit is shipped to colder climates where agribusiness can make more profits from the demand for year-round fresh tropical fruit they have helped create.
The pharmaceutical industry sells everything from medicines to pesticides, to infant formula, cosmetics and soap. Where government controls and regulations are lax, which is the case in some third world countries, corporations are able to sell products banned in their home countries. They may fail to provide adequate labeling or information about medicines and the potential side-effects of these and other products. Governments, medical professionals and development agencies bear part of the responsibility for the lack of control in the sale and use of medicines and other products. This is clearly the case where they promote the use of contraception which is still in the experimental stages or without informing women of the side-effects and enabling them to make an informed choice of the kind of birth control they want to practice.
Manufacturers of infant formula - many of which are well known food or drug companies - lead aggressive advertising and promotional campaigns for their products in third world countries. These practices include the distribution of free samples through clinics and hospitals, funding research and conferences, and giving grants to clinics and medical personnel. Non-governmental organizations have been instrumental in bringing worldwide attention to the effects of these practices on children.
The World Health Organization (WHO) points out: "Breastfeeding is ideally suited to the physiological and psychosocial needs of the infant everywhere. In adverse socioeconomic and environmental circumstances breastfeeding has considerable advantages over artificial feeding because of such factors as the possible use of contaminated water for mixing feeds, the lack of facilities for the proper preparation and storage of breastmilk substitutes, and lack of information about their proper use."
effects on culture
In managing the global supermarket, multinationals have profound effects on culture, creating new needs and desires, changing, eating and living habits, determining what food and goods are available. They play a prime role in spreading throughout the world a homogenous culture, holding up western-style goods as the ideal and replacing locally produced products with more expensive processed and synthetic goods. These changes represent an abrupt break with or disruption of culture in many places, rather than an evolution. On the other hand, multinationals often reinforce some of the worst sexist aspects of societies, especially in sex roles and division of labor.
Dominating the world's mass media and communication systems through ownership and financing them through advertisements, multinationals promote a consumer society and images of women and women's roles most profitable to themselves. They target women especially in the whole genre of women's magazines, radio and television programs. Educational materials are also increasingly concentrated under their control.
Multinationals play a major role in affecting patterns of migration from rural to urban areas. We have seen how agribusiness squeezes farmers off the land. Multinationals also force small merchants out of business. These people, many of them women, are forced to seek employment in the cities. Some find jobs in multinational industries such as electronics and textiles, others join the ranks of the unemployed or turn to prostitution. This massive migration to urban areas has contributed to the great spread of slum dwellings in the cities.
The tourism industry, largely controlled by multinational interests, also affect culture. "Through tourism, developed nations export their politics, trade and lifestyle to give them both economic and political gain. Materialistic and money-oriented political systems are reinforced, thus undermining the heritage and destroying the human dignity of the indigenous people and leading to the violation of human rights."
The tourist industry exploits women in particular as sex objects to attract tourists ans as workers. It employs women as waitresses, barmaids, "hospitality girls" and masseuses. As the phenomenon of sex tourism increases, more and more jobs entail prostitution.
Women play an important role in transmitting the effects of multinationals on culture. As mothers and educators of the young, women pass on these images, needs, desires and reliance on the products of multinationals to their children. More often than not, women have little or no choice in the matter, so profoundly have the multinationals affected their living situations and the products available.
development agencies and multinationals
Development agencies and international bodies are not doing a great deal to counteract the negative effects of multinationals. On the contrary, many of them actively promote the development of agribusiness and export-oriented industries. International financial institutions such as the World Bank give loans to develop the infrastructure needed. Development agencies of industrialized countries, such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the United Nations agencies, such as the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), give loans, grants and technical assistance for the promotion of multinationals' investment in developing countries.
The commissions and agencies of the United Nations giving attention to the problems created by multinationals often neglect the specific situation of women. Notable exceptions are the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF which have taken up the issue of the sale of infant formula and a code of conduct with recommendations about the promotion of baby foods by multinationals. The United Nations Commission on Transnational Corporations, charged with drawing up a code of conduct for multinationals, has involved few women, however. The draft code makes no mention of the specific discrimination and exploitation of women by multinationals. Only a few of the non-governmental organizations researching and taking action against the detrimental effects of these corporations give more than cursory attention to the particular situation of women workers.
women organizing
The power of multinationals and the problem they create are enormous. Combatting the negative effects of multinationals is an enormous task but, while it is very difficult, it is not impossible. People are organizing around the issue of multinationals on many levels, in factories and communities as well as nationally, regionally and internationally, in various kinds of groups and organizations. Women are active on all these levels.
In spite of the risks of organizing, in spite of repressive working and living situations, women are not passively accepting their exploitation and oppression. From the fields of New Mexico to the sweat shops in South Korea, from the office workers of Boston to the textile workers in free trade zones, women are organizing strikes, educating themselves and each other about their rights and researching the activities of multinational corporations. They are also organizing consumer education, information and action campaigns. Some of these actions are described in the following reports.
sugar workers organize in the Philippines
The stories of Flora and Della are taken from No Time for Crying by Alison Wyne. This book is a series of "stories of Philippine women who care for their country and its people." It is available in English from the Resource Centre for Philippine Concerns, C.P.O. 2784, Kowloon, Hong Kong. Dutch, Italian and German versions are also available (see Resource listings).
Flora
I worked in a hacienda of seventy two hectares with workers. In 1972 the workers elected me as their leader. We heard on the radio that all workers should receive a minimum wage of 7 pesos (US.95) per day and yet we received only 3 pesos (US.41). We decided to take our complaint to the local constabulary. When we arrived the commander told us to go to the National Labour Relations Commission. We went there, thirty eight of us, asking for the minimum wage, medical benefits and other things the government said we should receive. A hearing was set for a future date, then it was postponed and scheduled for another time, and this treatment went on and on for months. During this time the union member workers were locked out and had no work. I was surprised that the management locked us out simply because we complained and asked for the benefit which was ours by government decree. We were very angry because we had no money and our families were going hungry. Even when we received the back-to-work order the hacienda owner would not take us back.
One evening, all of us who were out of work discussed what we could do. We decided to go to the owner of that hacienda and explain what we wanted. We simply wanted work so that our children would no longer be hungry. He told us "Go away. You are rebels." That is how we are regarded when we are no longer ignorant of our situation as workers.
We traveled from one hacienda to another, but could find no work because we were known to be union members. Sometimes we would go secretly to a hacienda to organize the workers and talk with them in the evenings so that they could learn their rights. One time two people were sent to tell me, "Stop your work or you will be stockaded." But I ignore the threats...
I hold district meetings of the sugar workers in several areas once a week. We sit and talk, and plan how to solve the problems which arise among the workers. Every time I go to places for meetings I am harassed. The police follow me all the time, but I am not afraid. I give thanks to God that I can still do my work and help people to stand up and feel more human. Now that I have discovered my rights I am determined to pass on this knowledge to others. The minds of the workers are very closed. The workers are afraid to stand up for themselves. I want all of them to say, "I am a person, like you. These are my rights that I am demanding." We must unite to achieve our demands. We cannot do it alone because of the forces of oppression which are against us.
Now the hacienda owners are becoming afraid. They say to me, "Why are you disturbing my workers and causing trouble?" Before the workers were afraid of the owners. Now the workers are getting strong and the owners are becoming afraid.
Four years ago a friend of mine was killed because of his educational activities among the workers. Many citizens have been held in the stockade for periods of three months to a year, simply for talking to the sugar workers. I have received numerous warnings - "Stop work or we will kill you." But I don't stop. My husband and son were both held for a week at one time, but so far I have not been held. When I began working I was afraid, but now I have no more fear because knowledge has taught me my rights, and I am happy to be free and working for a better society. I am called the tiger woman because I am not afraid. I will not be intimidated.
Della
Ever since I can remember I have known poverty. Most days we had very little food. If there was no work we lived on tapioca and camote. I worked in the hacienda from the age of nine, weeding the sugar canes ...
At the age of sixteen I married one of the hacienda workers. He joined the union, and so was locked out. Once you are marked, no plantation will give you work. We would go from one place to another and work for a while until our names were discovered on the list of union members which the hacienda owners have compiled and share with each other.
For two months we had no money and could only manage to give our baby a little food once a day. For ourselves, we had only water or coffee. One day in desperation we went to the priest who gave us 10 pesos (US$1.35). We used this money to travel to the city and tell our plight to the National Federation of Sugar Workers. It was there that we heard about this community project, and were glad to have the chance to come and live here. At least here we have a roof over heads. We have simple food to eat each day, and there is plenty of work to do in planting the lands, and there is hope ...
This communal farming project was begun two years ago by some community workers who wanted to help unemployed people. They knew the land was available for renting, so signed an indefinite lease for ten hectares. Thirty-seven people began the project, and after a while they all dispersed to their own communities leaving the project for landless, locked-out union workers like us to carry on. We are four families - fourteen persons in all. These three nipa huts are divided into separate living quarters for each family. We have three carabaos, and are farming tapioca, rice, camote, ginger and vegetables. We are raising chickens, pigs and rabbits. We are working towards self-sufficiency but at the moment the project is subsidised with funds from an agency. As we bring more of the land into production we will be able to support a greater number of families.
More and more people are becoming unemployed and homeless as the hacienda owners turn to mechanisation. This experiment in communal farming is hoped to be a model which will help others to find some means of supporting themselves and their families. There are several small areas of unused lands available for renting. If people can see that it is possible to make this venture work, then perhaps agencies will fund other groups to set up communal farms like ours.
solidarity with women workers of Conel, Peru
In February 1980, the feminist group Accion para la Liberacion de la Mujer Peruana (Alimuper) made an appeal for international solidarity with women factory workers in Peru. They wrote:
Forty women workers of the Consorcio Electronico who took over the factory in December 1979, to defend the stability of their jobs are asking for support and solidarity to continue their struggle and to take over the administration of this enterprise.
The managers of CONEL decided to close the factory, alleging that they were in a difficult economic situation. This maneuver was encouraged by the authorities of the Ministry of Labour. For ten months the women workers- most of them mothers of families - have not received their salaries. They are living in a precarious situation: sleeping on mats or in the factory yard, not knowing if there will be food from one day to the next. On 3 January 1980 they were attacked by fifty thugs sent by the director of the factory. They defended themselves courageously.
The decision to remain inside the factory was taken in order to prevent the owners from removing the machinery. CONEL is a business which makes replacements for electrical appliances and which mainly employs women. The workers have verified that the owners have established new businesses with the profits of CONEL.
The forty women remain inside the factory, ready to face renewed violence from the thugs and the police, in spite of an eviction order. Among them are two mothers in late stages of pregnancy, as well as children of two, three and four years.
ALIMUPER is requesting letters to be sent to President General Morales Bermudez, demanding the end of violence against the women workers and that they be permitted to exercise their right to work.
The appeal was taken up and passed on to women all over the world through the International Feminist Network. Letters supporting the women workers arrived from Denmark, England, Belgium, Japan, Netherlands, Mexico, Sweden, the United States and other countries. Feminist publications in many countries wrote articles about the Peruvian women's occupation of their factory, while feminist groups and union women in the Netherlands helped sponsor a trip of one of the Peruvian women worker to meet with women's groups and the media in Europe. In Peru, feminist groups joined mass demonstrations in support of the workers.
The women of Conel were able to continue their occupation for well over a year. During this time, they strengthened their consciousness as workers and as women and developed their organizing ability. The international support and solidarity they received from feminists, unions and women's organizations played a significant role in this.
campesinas meet
This article by Anita Anand and Saralee Hamilton appeared in the Fall 1980 issue of AFSC Women's Newsletter of the Nationwide Women's Program, American Friends Service Committee, 1501 Cherry Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19102, USA.
During a three day event last spring (1980) in El Mirage (Maricopa County) Arizona, carnpesinas spoke to one another about their lives, their work and their struggles. They shared personal testimonies of their efforts to decrease the precariousness of their lives and those of their families. Many of these women had participated in farmworker struggles in the Southwestern US and Mexico. Many declared how these experiences revolutionized their lives. They now see themselves as "having a purpose beyond the immediate roles of wives, mothers and workers." They described how they now see themselves as equals with men on picket lines, as women who can win victories by being outspoken, organized and determined. They were unified in feeling capable of making changes in their lives.
Appeals were made to defend basic rights to obtain work, minimum wages, equality in fields and home, access to essential services like health care, child care and information about other farmworker struggles.
Slide presentations of onion workers in the Southwest and Mexico vividly pointed out the similarities and differences between farm labor situations in the two countries whose economic and agricultural structures are intensely interlocked. A slideshow, A Day in the Life of a Campesina has been compiled.
Virginia Rodriguez observed, "We lived with no knowledge of what was happening in the rest of the world. An 80 day onion strike of 3000 workers in 1978 changed my life forever. The strike woke me up. I started to become active in the world around me."
Adela Serrano, Director of Centro Adelante Carnpesino, traced the idea for this regional gathering to experiences of three campesinas from Maricopa County while attending the Women and Global Corporations Conference in Des Moines in October 1978. She stressed that they wanted to organize a similar event put together and organized entirely by women farmworkers. Adela has worked on other aspects of follow up to the Des Moines conference and is active on the steering committee of the Women's Network on Global Corporations. The Network provided technical assistance in fundraising and literature resources at the request of the Arizona women.
subdued women can also strike back
Malay women workers in the Free Trade Zone of Bayan Lepas, Penang describe a few experiences of their "attempts to secure some degree of just wages for the work that we do." These are recounted in Struggling to Survive: Women Workers in Asia, published by CCA-URM, 57 Peking Road, 5/F, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
It all started at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) where we produce electronic components. In September (1980) our hopes soared when we received a memorandum informing us of an increase in wages.
Alas, we rejoiced too soon. Staff members earning over $200 monthly got a $60 raise, but we, the backbone of the factory, earning well below $200, got only a mere $5 extra. But we are the tools and the machines that make the factory run. Without us, there will be no production!
A wave of spontaneous anger at this injustice swept over us. Management was taken by surprise to find that the subdued and frail women whom they thought were easy prey for their exploitation could down their tools in angry protest.
We slowed down our production and when the afternoon shift workers came, we rallied together, and by nightfall, a full strike was on.
Luckily for us, the bus drivers who bring us back and forth to work, supported our action and refused to obey management's command to take us home, on the pretext that it was risky for fear their vehicles might be damaged.
Management was stunned and tried to identify the leaders but even we ourselves did not know who the real courageous leaders were. Perhaps our feelings were aroused simultaneously by the gross injustice and as the message was passed around by word of mouth, we all rose up together to defend our rights and to take concerted-action.
Although we were ignorant and exploited, our spontaneous strike impressed management who grudgingly offered an increase of $40.
Our success in this factory inspired many other downtrodden workers to take similar action. However, not all of them met with the same degree of success.
Management always managed to outwit us by wily methods. For example, on paper we were entitled to a $30-50 increase monthly but the actual increase came to less than $10.50 a month.
In Intel, workers also fought for a more adequate wage but failed through lack of support from the whole work force. Management was quick to capitalize on this weak point and dismissed their claims with a $40 increase, not in their basic pay but in the cost of living allowance, which means in actual fact that whenever a public holiday, overtime, or bonus occurs, there is no increase in wages at all, since no allowance is ever given on those occasions.
Another factory, RUF Malaysia owned by Germans, producing transistor radios and electronic components, also met with some reactions from their 850 exploited workers.
On September 19, the entire work force - 90% female - stopped work to ask for an increase of $2-3 daily, free transport, subsidised food and reduced working hours.
Management flatly refused to consider their claims, pointing out that they just had had a raise on July 1. But it was precisely this mockery of a pay increase that led the deceived workers to take industrial action...
Riot police were called in to disperse the workers who were reminded that it was illegal to form groups of more than five for any purpose. Management then sacked all the workers. Later, all were allowed to return to their former jobs but with the pay they had before the strike.
Thirteen workers who had been more active in the strike were dismissed. Even the two newspaper reporters who covered the story at the request of the workers were also detained by management.
The only good thing that came out of the strike was that management recognized the need to meet with the workers and at least to listen to their grievances...
the international infant formula campaign
One of the biggest and most effective campaigns beyond the local level is the international infant formula campaign, which has brought the issue to international attention and forced some changes in corporate practice.
In the early 1970s, European non-governmental organizations such as War on Want in England and the Third World Action Group in Switzerland began researching and publicizing the sometimes disastrous effects of the aggressive promotion of infant formula in the third world by large multinationals. One of these corporations, Swiss-based Nestle, brought a lawsuit against the Third World Action Group for defamation. While the verdict upheld Nestle's claim, it also admitted that advertizing practices could endanger people's health.
During the two-year court case the publicity campaign about the use of infant formula and the advertizing practices of multinationals grew in both industrialized and developing countries. Groups and organizations in the third world used
written and audio-visual materials to demonstrate the possible danger to life and health of using formula where people lack the hygienic conditions and money necessary for its proper use. They also collected documentary evidence about the multinationals' promotion and advertizing practices.
This evidence was used by groups in the home countries of the multinationals to bring a number of actions against these companies. In the United States the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) and the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT) were in the forefront of organizing many activities including negotiations with corporations shareholder actions against companies, presentations before Congressional committees, and a national boycott of Nestle products.
An international coalition, International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), was set up with offices in Switzerland. The issue has also been taken up in numerous publications of feminist groups, churches and non-governmental action, research and consumer groups.
These activities and campaigns brought the issue to international attention. In 1979 the World Health Organization(WHO) and UNICEF organized an international meeting bringing together representatives of governments, industry and the non-governmental organizations involved in the infant formula campaigns. After a two-and-a-half-year process, the World Health Assembly adopted, in May 1981, a Code of Conduct with recommendations to member nations to adopt legislation regulating the promotion and sale of infant formula. The Code was adopted by a vote of 118 to one. The United States cast the sole negative vote with Argentina, Japan and South Korea abstaining.
The campaign can claim some significant successes with the adoption of the Code and some concrete changes in corporate practice. Nevertheless it is far from ended. Continued vigilance, publicity and action are needed. Feminists, in particular, are beginning to point out that the issue of infant formula and breast feeding cannot be seen in isolation from "the organization of society as a whole, which perpetuates the poverty of certain social groups and which also does not provide the conditions necessary to enable women to fulfill, without undue difficulty, their roles as workers, mothers, wives and citizens while still enjoying their rights to education and rest."
international solidarity
Because of the global nature and power of multinational corporations, international solidarity and organization are needed to combat effectively the negative effects of multinationals. This is vital since corporations try, and often succeed, in dividing workers, pitting the employees in the factories of one country against those in another. In addition to the essential organizing and consciousness raising of women workers in local plants, there are a number of things which could and are being done. Some of these are:
- forming networks and communications channels to share information and research, organizing international solidarity for local struggles and activities;
- working for national legislation to curb the power and exploitative activities of multinationals, for health, safety and environmental regulations, and to prevent the exportation of pollution and the dumping of unsafe products abroad;
- pressuring United Nations agencies to include women in any codes or negotiations dealing with multinationals;
- monitoring the enforcement of national legislation and international codes;
- researching the activities of multinationals and of development agencies, international financial institutions and United Nations organizations in regard to multinationals;
- pressuring non-governmental organizations researching and organizing around multinationals to take seriously the exploitation of women and to include a feminist perspective in their work;
- organizing local, national and international campaigns against the negative effects of multinationals, such as the infant formula campaign;
- providing workers in local factories with information about the activities of the multinational elsewhere;
- questioning the model of development promoted by multinationals and the concept of integrating women into the labor force at any cost;
- providing alternatives to employment by multinationals.
Women must ensure that they and their problems are taken seriously and are an integral part of these activities, not relegated to secondary or peripheral positions. Feminists have often neglected the issue of multinationals in the past, but they can make an important contribution by bringing a feminist perspective to the analysis of multinationals and the oppression of women. This oppression ties women together globally and must be fought globally and in solidarity around the world.
Footnotes
1 The following description of multinationals and export-oriented development is based on material listed in the resource section of this chapter. For a more detailed analysis and examples, see especially: Richard J. Barnet, Global Reach: The Power of Multinational Corporations (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975); Barnet, "Multinationals: A Dissenting View,"Saturday Review, February 7, 1975; Barnet, "Are Multinationals and Development Compatible?" Engage Social Action Forum, 56, November 1979; Barbara Ehrenreich and Annette Fuentes, "Life on the Global Assembly Line," MS Magazine, January 1981; "Free Trade Zones and Industrialization of Asia," Ampo: Japan-Asia Quarterly Review, vol. 8 no. 4, vol. 9 nos. 1-2, 1977; Rachael Grossman, "Women's Place in the Integrated Circuit, "Southeast Asia Chronicle, no. 66 and Pacific Research, vol. 9 nos. 5-6; Linda Y. C. Lim, "Women Workers in Multinational Corporations," Michigan Occasional Paper, no. IX, Fall 1978; Minangkabau! Stories of People vs TNCs in Asia (Hong Kong: Urban Rural Mission - Christian Conference of Asia, (URM-CCA), 1981); "Multinational Corporations and Global Development," Hunger, no. 24, July 1980; Lenny Siegel, "Microelectronics Does Little for the Third World," Pacific Research, vol. X no. 2, 1979; Siegel, "Orchestrating Dependency," Southeast Asia Oironicle, no. 66; Holly Sklar ed., Trilateralism (Boston: South End Press, 1980).
2 A free trade zone is an enclave within a country that is partially or totally exempt from customs and tax levies and other laws and decrees of the country. For a good brief description of a free trade zone, see "Free Trade Zones: A Capitalist Dream," Race and Oass, vol. 22 no. 2, Autumn 1980. A detailed analysis of free trade zones and their effects in Asia is found in "Free Trade Zones and Industrialization of Asia, "Ampo, 1977.
3 See especially "The International Monetary Fund and the Third World," Hunger, no. 22, February 1980; Cheryl Payer, The Debt Trap (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974); Howard M. Wachtel, The New Gnomes: Multinational Banks in the Third World (Washington: Transnational Institute, 1977).
4 Examples of this can be seen in the hydro-electric projects along the Chico River and Mindanao in the Philippines. These are described in: Joel Rocamora, "Agribusiness, Dams and Counter-Insurgency" and Martha Winnacker, "The Battle to Stop the Chico Dams," Southeast Asia Chronicle, no. 67, October 1979.
5 Barnet, "Multinationals: A Dissenting View." This article gives a good overview of the effects of multinationals on industrialized countries.
6 The material in this section and in those following on women in electronics, textile and agribusiness industries is based on the documentation in the resource section of this chapter. For a general overview of women workers and for statistics on numbers of women workers, wages and the division of labor among men and women, see Ehrenreich and Fuentes, "Life on the Global Assembly Line," MS; Ofelia Gomez and Rhoda Reddock, "Multinationals and Female Labour in Latin America," Scholas Journal, no. I, 1979, pp. 60-80; "Maquiladoras ," Boletin Informativo, no. 9, November, December, January1979-1980, pp. 1-14; Kathleen Newland, The Sisterhood of Man (NewYork: W.W. Norton and Co., 1979) pp. 129-134; Newland, Women, Men and the Division of Labor (Washington: Worldwatch Institute, May 1980); Soon Young Yoon, The Halfway House - Mncs, Industries and Asian Factory Girls, (UNAPDI, 1979); and Struggling to Survive: Women Workers in Asia (Hong Kong: CCA-URM, 1981).
On the electronics industry, see especially: "Electronics Factories: Hazards and Harassment," Majority Report, January 6, 1979; Maria Patricia Fernandez, Francisca Lucero, (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 1978); Susan S. Green, Silicon Valley's Women Workers (Honolulu: East-West Center, July 980); Grossman, "Women's Place"; Mary Alison Hancock, Electronics: The International Industry (Honolulu: East- West Center, 1980); Lim, "Women Workers"; "Microcomputers: Big Profits from Tiny·Chips," Dollars and Sense, February 1978, pp. 3-5; Diana Roose, "Asia's Silicon Valley," The Nation, August 25 - September 1, 1979; "Delicate Bonds: The Global Semiconductor Industry," Pacific Research, vol. XI no. 1, January 1981; Siegel, "Fairchild Assembles an Asian Empire," Pacific Research, vol. IX no. 2, January-February 1978; A. Sivanandan, "Imperialism in the Silicon Age," Race and Class, Autumn 1979; Robert T. Snow, The New International Division of Labor and the U.S. Workforce (Honolulu: East-West Center, 1980); Christina Tse, The Invisible Control: Management Control of Workers in a US Electronic Company (Hong Kong: Center for the Progress of Peoples,1981).
On the textile industry, see especially: Asian Women's Liberation, no.2, April 1980; "Capital's Flight,"NACLA's Latin America and EmpireReport, vol. XI no. 3, March 1977; Michael Flannery, "America's Sweatshops in the Sun," AFL-C/0 Federationist, May 978. On agribusiness, see especially: Alternative News and Features, no. 10, July 1981; Joyce N. Chinen, Cigars and Support Hose (Honolulu: American Friends Service Committee, 1977); Susan George, Feeding the Few (Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1979); George, How the Other Half Dies (New Jersey: Allenheld, Osmun and Co.,1977); Sally Hacker, "Farming Out the Home: Women and Agribusiness," Science for the People, March-April 1978; "Transnational Poisoning," IDOC Bulletin, no. 7, July 1981.
7 On the microelectronics revolution, see especially Michael Goldhaber, "Politics and Technology," Socialist Review, no. 52, July-August1980; "The Microelectronics Wave," /DOC Bulletin, nos. 1-2, January- February 1981; Colin Norman, Microelectronics at Work (Washington: Worldwatch Institute, October 1980).
8 On the global supermarket and its effects on culture, see the material listed above under agribusiness (footnote 6).
9 Infant and Young Child Feeding: Current Issues (World Health Organization, Geneva, 1981), p. 7.
10 Minangkabau! Stories of People vs TCNs in Asia (Hong Kong: URM-CCA, 1981), p. 28.
11 See especially, Alternative News and Features, no. 10, July 1981; Ehrenreich and Fuentes, "Life on the Global Assembly Line," MS; Minangkabau!, pp. 109-112; and Anita Anand and Ann Fraker, "Women and the U.N. Code of Conduct on Multinationals" (Washington DC: United Methodist Church) 1980.
12 For a history and description of the struggle of the women workers of CONEL, see Mujer y Sociedad no. 2, December 1980 and no. 3, June 1981.
13 Marie-Angelique Savane, "Yes to Breast Feeding, but... How?" Assignment Children, no. 49/50, Spring 1980, p. 86.