“LAST WEEK ALL OF A SUDDEN THE NEEDLE
went right through me fingernail. But you can’t use
a thimble-it would hold you back.”
Women who work in Jamaica’s “free trade zone” export
assembly factories were meeting in a small house where four
families of mothers and children share a common kitchen.
“Today I didn’t make my quota because I was feeling
sick, so I’ll have to work all day instead of half on Saturday
to make it up.” “The minimum wage [currently equivalent
to $15.38 daily] just covers the basics, like flour, cornmeal,
rice, and a little sugar and milk for the children. You have to
work a lot extra to pay your bus fare and the rent, or if you
expect to eat chicken once in a while.”
“You can’t be too old, or too tired, and especially you
can’t get pregnant. If they find out they fire you, but they wait
until 3 pm on the last day of the pay period, so you lose your
last two weeks wages.”
“The government has said we can’t bring free zone
problems to them because what goes on in there is the
owners’ business. The free zone is a state unto itself.”
The workers have the story right. The World Bank calls
the zones “a simulated free trade regime.” In the Bank’s free
trade dream world, elimination of “anti-export biases”–such
as minimum wage laws, protection of local agriculture and
industry, and government and union “interference”-would
enable the free market alone to “maximize efficiency.”
Conditions in today’s free trade zones prefigure the consequences
of unrestricted global free trade.
“Textiles are working so well in the Caribbean,” says
World Bank program officer Christian Del Voie, because,
“the investors already have the marketing channels, to
Bloomingdale’s and other stores. All the investor then has to
do is to look at the cost of labor. Local labor skills are not
important, and local inputs are not an issue, because all they
are doing is cut-and-sew.” Average hourly earnings of semiskilled
workers in export factories in the Dominican Republic,
Jamaica, and Haiti in 1987 were 79 cents, 63 cents, and
58 cents respectively, equivalent to 1/17th, 1/22nd, and 1/
24th of the wages of U.S. workers in the same category,
according to a World Bank study.
The Bank claims the most effective export-promoting
policies undertaken by Caribbean governments have been
the currency devaluations required as a condition of IMF
and World Bank loans that depressed wages and living
standards in the mid-1980s. “Only the Dominican Republic
and Jamaica undertook real devaluations,” wrote the Bank.
“The rapid growth of their manufactured exports after their
devaluations confirms the key role exchange rates play in
export promotion.”
AID has also begun to press for the expansion of Caribbean
free trade zones. A 1988 AID memorandum on Caribbean
development states that, ”Investors like
them.. ..Caribbean countries could do more for themselves to
attract investment to their shores. They could, for instance,
eliminate restrictions on foreign ownership, withdraw curbs
on remittances [of profits], remove exchange and trade
controls, loosen moratoria on new construction, roll back
excessive taxes on business, and revise depreciation rates on
facilities.” In addition, AID says, “Investment would be
much easier to attract if wages were not so high. Countries in
Women assemble electronics for export in St. Vincent
these categories might find it useful to reconsider their
exchange rate policies.”
JAMAICAN WOMEN HAVE SHOWN THEMSELVES
willing to work long and hard to sustain themselves and
their families. But many have balked at accepting sub-poverty
wages and dangerous working conditions. Nor have they
submitted meekly to abusive language by factory managers
or to body searches carried out, factory operators say, to
detect stolen cloth or thread.
For three days in March 1988, more than 2,000 women
from the Kingston free trade zone demonstrated to protest
conditions in the garment factories. Word of their movement
spread to women in the Dominican Republic, Antigua,
Montserrat, and the Windward Island nations. When the
government of Trinidad and Tobago announced a plan to
establish export processing zones, it was met with strong
protest by Trinidadian women.
World Bank economists resent the intrusion of Caribbean
women and other workers onto the Bank’s plush-carpeted
turf. Says Christian Del Voie, “The World Bank knows the
needs of the Jamaican economy better than some local
women’s association. We can’t direct the development of the
Jamaican economy on the basis of the needs of those women
in Kingston.”
There is no evidence that the net contribution of free trade
zones to Caribbean economies is positive. Low wages and
the low proportion of value added to export products means
that the zones bring in little foreign exchange. Due to a lack
of linkages to other sectors, the zones create few additional
jobs outside the export factories. Most of the jobs created are
temporary, lasting only as long as incentives and low labor
costs add up to a more profitable deal than that offered by
competing countries. The skills learned by export assembly
workers are limited and typically not transferable to other
productive activities. The number of jobs created in export
manufacturing does not begin to make up for those lost by
structural adjustment-mandated public sector layoffs and the
failure of local businesses competing for scarce foreign
exchange. It is no coincidence that the Caribbean countries
which have shown the greatest “success” in export
manufacturing-Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic-
have .experienced dramatic decreases in living standards
and the most political turmoil.
As low as wages in the Caribbean factories are, they are
two to three times higher than those of export factory workers
in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines, and far higher
than wages in China. This fact alone casts doubt on the notion
that export zones are the key to Caribbean development
Menu
