Twenty years ago today, I was serving as a missionary in the city of La Romana in the Dominican Republic. Back in December, I wrote a post that offered a general introduction to the city. Today, I want to post some information I've gathered about the zona franca, a complex of factories just outside the city. On P-days, when we missionaries would take the bus out to Casa de Campo, a tourist resort, we would drive past the zona franca, which from that viewpoint was just a bunch of warehouse-type buildings behind a gate. I have a memory of one morning watching crowds of people push their way onto the buses that would take them out to work in the zona franca. I also remember talking once with a woman who worked in the zona franca. She'd just been given a new sewing machine at work and was trying to figure out the instructions for using it, which were in English, not Spanish. I spent some time trying to help her out, though I had no idea how to translate a lot of the terms.
I've seen the term zona franca translated various ways: free zone, free trade zone, duty-free zone. The idea is that the Dominican Republic has set up these zones to encourage foreign companies to set up production, with the expectation that they'll hire local people and, ideally, make use of other local resources. Companies that set up factories in the zona franca are exempted from paying various kinds of fees and taxes for a period of 15 years. The zona franca I used to ride past was the first one created in the DR, back in 1969. Today there are various zonas francas in different parts of the country.
According to a 2000 report from the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), in 1997 zonas francas employed 17 percent of the Dominican workforce. In other words, nearly 1 in 5 Dominicans who are employed work in a zona franca. According to the same report, zonas francas accounted for 80 percent of the country's exports, most of which went to the U.S. The white shirts I bought at Mr. Mac's to take with me on my mission were made in the DR: I figure it's very likely they were made in a zona franca. Clothing manufacture is the primary industry in the zonas francas; the majority of the workers are women.
Since that report was written, the recession and changes in the global clothing market have led to a downturn for the zonas francas: plants have been closed, and tens of thousands of people have lost their jobs. The phasing out of an international trade agreement called the Multifiber Arrangement (MFA) has a lot to do with this because it means the DR can't compete with places like China as well as it used to. I haven't looked into this enough to know what the MFA is. My ignorance on this matter makes me realize how little I know about the mechanisms of the global economy—even though these mechanisms govern my life and the lives of Dominicans I'm personally connected to.
According to one source I found, in 2006, the government-mandated minimum wage for the zonas francas was RD$4,450 a month. I also learned that as of January of this year, that minimum wage is supposed to have risen to RD$6,320. I don't know what that means in terms of purchasing power. When I was a missionary, 20 years ago, we received about RD$2,800 a month: that was supposed to cover food, utilities, and incidentals (but not rent, which the mission office paid for directly).
The HIID report tells me that most firms operating in the zonas francas pay a bit more than minimum wage. However, some people who work in the zonas francas might be making less money than they would be making if they did the same work outside a zona franca. This is because Dominican law mandates different minimum wages for different kinds of work, except in the zonas francas where there's one minimum wage mandated regardless of the kind of work. That minimum wage is lower than the wages mandated for some kinds of work outside the zones.
I've found multiple sources that identify "low labor costs" as one of the things that make the zonas francas attractive to foreign firms. Let's be clear about what that means: The firms can pay workers less in the zonas francas than they would have to pay in some other countries. That's not something anyone should feel good about, even if, as I'm sure the firms would say in their defense, people are better off working in a zona franca than they would be if they didn't have those jobs. Perhaps at the judgment bar, God will have something extenuating to say about that, but the inherently exploitative nature of the situation is a sign that "the world lieth in sin" (D&C 49:20).
Wages aside, the labor situation in the zonas francas is not good. An article in Making It magazine reports "deplorable" working conditions, illegal unpaid overtime, and union-busting. Even the HIID report, which aims for a balanced assessment, points to "'numerous reports' of forced overtime in the Dominican free trade zones, when the exit doors of the factory would be locked and workers fired if they refused to work overtime." I heard such stories as well from people I met on my mission. The HIID report also reports that "unions have 'considerable difficulties' in negotiating collective agreements. The seven returned as of the date of the study were very limited in scope, with no agreements on wages for example." This quotation from the HIID report is especially infuriating:
Most (10) managers said that the absence of a union was a major or crucial factor in their decision to locate in the Dominican Republic. One manager said that he would "leave immediately" if a union started in his factory. Another said that a number of years ago union organization began to take place in his firm, but that he "took care of it" by firing everybody suspected of organizing it. As a result he had been to court on a number of occasions, but he had won on each occasion and felt that the time and effort was "definitely worth it."That last individual is fortunate that a fiery hell doesn't actually exist.
I'll give the last word in this post to this zona franca employee interviewed by BehindtheLabel.org:
In Jesus' name, amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment