I was surprised to see the following recent Facebook post by John Clarke, former major organizer for the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), without any comments:
The brand name companies profit from exploitation and brutality but contract out the messy details to local enforcers. From The Guardian.Leading fashion brands including Barbour and PVH, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, have said they will pay £400,000 to garment workers in Mauritius after an investigation found that migrant workers were forced to pay thousands of pounds for their jobs.Transparentem, a US-based organisation that investigates workers’ rights, looked into conditions at five factories in Mauritius and interviewed 83 workers in 2022 and 2023.In a recently published report, Transparentem claims it found multiple signs of forced labour, defined as a form of modern slavery by the United Nation’s International Labour Organization. As well as workers paying illegal recruitment fees for their jobs, it alleges they were subjected to deception, intimidation and unsanitary living conditions – including having no access to clean drinking water, as well as cockroach and bedbug infestations.The five factories supply brands including Boden, Asos and the Foschini Group, which owns Whistles and Hobbs.After commissioning their own audits of conditions at the factories, fashion brands including PVH and Barbour have said that they will reimburse workers at REAL Garments, one of the factories named in the report, up to £400,000 in illegal recruitment fees.Ben Skinner, president of Transparentem, said: “Migrant workers showed great courage in bearing witness through Transparentem. To date, only three brands have shown by their actions that they really listened to them. The cost of reform is high. But the cost of failure to reform is higher.”PVH said it was committed to ensuring migrant workers were reimbursed for recruitment fees and related costs.Barbour said it was taking Transparentem’s findings seriously and was working with other brands at REAL Garments to resolve the situation as soon as possible. “As an immediate action, we have made a commitment to contribute towards the remediation of impacted workers,” it said.“We are also expanding our audit processes to ensure that we do everything possible to prevent this happening in the future,” a spokesperson said.REAL Garments also said it was taking the findings of the investigation seriously and had taken action to remedy the situation for its workers. “We confirm that all the remediations including repayment of local transportation fees have been completed,” it said.The Foschini Group said: “We have investigated this in full and are comfortable that we have taken appropriate action.”Asos and Boden did not respond to a request for comment.
We certainly should point out such superexploitation and try to stop it. However, the implicit assumption is that, once superexploitation has stopped and the wages are repaid the fees they paid to obtain their jobs, then exploitation stops. However, exploitation is a necessary characteristic of private-sector employers–without such exploitation, there would be no profit (see for example The Rate of Exploitation of General Motors Workers and The Rate of Exploitation of the Workers of Rogers Communications Inc., One of the Largest Private Employers in Toronto).
By not including regular workers in the category of exploited workers, the article in fact justifies such exploitation by not even referring to its existence.
References to the International Labour Organization (ILO) without engaging in a critical analysis of that organization also plays into the hands of the class of employers. The ILO considers it possible for there to be such a thing as “decent work” in the context of working for an employer.The ILO talks about “decent work” and the like, and it claims that labour should not merely be treated as a commodity–but workers need to treat themselves necessarily as commodities, and euphemisms about “decent wages” and “decent work” serve to hide that fact. From Gerry Rodgers, Eddy Lee, Lee Swepston and Jasmien Van Daele (2009), The International Labour Organization and the Quest for Social Justice, 1919–2009, page 7:
Key passages from these documents are reproduced in Appendix II. Together, they identify the principles, issues and means of governance that lie at the heart of the ILO ’s work.
Five basic principles can be distinguished in these texts.
- Lasting peace cannot be achieved unless it is based on social justice, grounded in freedom, dignity, economic security and equal opportunity.
- Labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity or an article of commerce.
- There should be freedom of association, for both workers and employers, along with freedom of expression, and the right to collective bargaining.
- These principles are fully applicable to all human beings, irrespective of race, creed or sex.
- Poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity everywhere, and must be addressed through both national and international action.
These moral and political principles guide the action of the ILO , and provide the cognitive framework for its work – the spectacles through which the ILO sees the world. The first of these, that peace must be based on social justice, has been considered above. It lays out the overriding reason for the existence of the Organization. The second provides the fundamental principle guiding its action. It expresses the dignity of labour and the recognition of its value, in contrast to the Marxian notion that, under capitalism, labour becomes a commodity. In the ILO ’s vision, all forms of work can, if they are adequately regulated and organized, be a source of personal well-being and social integration. Of course, labour is bought and sold, but market mechanisms are subordinate to higher goals. The original 1919 Constitution states that “labour should not be regarded merely as a commodity”. By the time of the Declaration of Philadelphia, the same idea is expressed more strongly: “Labour is not a commodity.”
Labour in Marxian economics is certainly not a commodity, but labour power is–the capacity to work or to use means of production to produce a product. The ILO simply denies that it labour (power) should be a commodity–all the while denying the reality that it is in fact a commodity and must be a commodity if capitalist society is to emerge and to continue to exist. (Of course, unfree forms of labour (so that workers cannot freely choose a particular employer) can exist side by side with free labour–but the existence of free labour power as a commodity is still necessary. It may not be very pleasant to think about the social implications of the necessary existence of labour power as a commodity, but it is necessary to do in order to enable the working class to formulate policies that will more likely enable them to control their own lives by abolishing all class relations.
The ILO places a veil over the eyes of workers by arguing that labour (power) should not be a commodity–whereas it is necessarily a commodity in a society dominated by a class of employers, with the associated economic, social and political structures.
I would like to know what is meant by decent wages. Are the wages received by the unionized workers for Magna International, Air Canada, Rogers Communication, Suncor Energy or Telus decent wages? (see various posts that attempt to calculate the rate of exploitation for these unionized workers–for example The Rate of Exploitation of Workers at Air Canada, One of the Largest Private Employers in Canada). If so, how does the ILO square such a view with the fact of exploitation? If not, then the concept of decent wages has no relevance for workers other than as an ideological cloak for their continued exploitation.
Conclusion
A favourite trick of social reformists or social democrats is to refer to the superexploitation of workers–and to remain silent concerning the daily regular exploitation of workers.
Clarke’s uncritical reproduction of a social-democratic or social-reformist point of view is hardly an effective strategy for challenging the class of employers.
The Abolitionary 