When workers at a garment factory in Yangon, Myanmar, went on strike in February to protest starvation wages, their employer had the army called in.
“[It’s a] classic case of union-busting ... Military vehicles and police showed up to threaten them,” says Ray Cheng (鄭中睿), director of Youth Labor Union 95 (青年勞動九 五聯盟), a Taiwan-based labor rights group that exposes abuses by Taiwanese transnational corporations. “Then the company fired all 26 union members, claiming they’d skipped work [during the strike] and violated their contracts. It was outrageous”
The company in question is Taiwan-headquartered Pou Chen (寶成), the world’s largest manufacturer of branded athletic and casual footwear. The company has an ignominious history of rights violations in Southeast Asia. In 1997, reports of physical and sexual abuse at Pou Chen factories in Vietnam surfaced; in 2011, supervisors at a Pou Chen facility in Indonesia were caught assaulting their staff. Pou Chen dismissed the incidents as “isolated cases,” promising to improve training procedures.
Photo courtesy of Tom Fisk
The violations in Myanmar suggest little has changed. By establishing facilities in a country where labor rights oversights are practically nonexistent and independent unions have been outlawed following a military coup in 2021, Pou Chen has made little progress when it comes to labor rights.
The corporation is far from anomalous among Taiwanese manufacturers, as Cheng made clear at a recent labor rights conference.
Another company with a questionable rights record is Nien Hsing Textile Co (年興紡織), the world’s sixth-largest denim fabric producer, and a supplier for major brands such as Levi Strauss & Co. A 2019 report by the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) — a US-based NGO that monitors labor rights in the garment industry — uncovered systemic gender-based sexual harassment and violence by supervisors at the company’s factories in Lesotho.
Photo courtesy of Van Long Bui
With employees distrustful of Nien Hsing’s internal resolution mechanisms based on previous failures and the company’s attempts to limit freedom of association, union activists and women’s rights groups took their grievances directly to the brands for whom Nien Hsing contracts. Historically such approaches had not enjoyed much success because of the “pricing power” of the manufacturers, says Cheng.
“When they don’t comply, the brands can’t do much because they can’t find anyone else to take up 60-plus percent of their supply,” says Cheng.
BRAND AWARENESS
However, there are signs that the brands are accepting responsibility for ensuring all elements of their supply chains are following environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) regulations.
In the Nien Hsing case, unions and rights groups in Lesotho signed individual agreements with each brand, compelling them to reduce orders from the Taiwanese supplier in cases of the latter’s non-compliance.
Separate accords were inked with Nien Hsing itself, and the WRC and other US-based NGOs were also signatories to the agreements, which are now enforceable in US courts.
As an executive committee member of the Clean Clothes Movement East Asia Coalition, Cheng focused on Taiwan’s garment manufacturers during his presentation at the conference, which was organized by Taiwan Transnational Corporations Watch (TTNC Watch, 台灣跨國企業監察), a Taiwan-based coalition of seven groups advocating for human rights, labor rights, and environmental protection.
Another by Chang Yu-yin (張譽尹) spotlighted Formosa Plastics Group (FPG, 台塑集團), whose diverse operations include biotech, petrochemicals and electronic components production.
Chang, an attorney and executive director of the Environmental Jurists Association (環境法律人協會), expressed concern for the well-being of veteran activist Diane Wilson who has been on hunger strike since Oct. 31 to protest FPG transgressions in Vietnam and the US.
“She is becoming weak,” said Chang, whose Taiwan-based NGO comprises lawyers and scholars with expertise on environmental issues. “But Formosa has not responded.”
JUSTICE FOR ALL
Wilson’s action was initiated outside the FPG’s factory at Point Comfort, Texas to protest inadequate compensation for fishing communities in Vietnam that were devastated by toxic effluence from plants run by FPG subsidiary Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corp in Vietnam’s Vung Ang Economic Zone in 2016.
She also cited the Point Comfort facility’s continued flouting of a “zero discharge” order as a motivation for her action.
The discharge condition was part of a US$50-million settlement — a record payout for a civil suit in the United States under the federal Clean Water Act — imposed on FPG in 2020 for plastic pollution of coastal waterways in Texas. At a congressional briefing in Washington, DC in September, Wilson noted that FPG had violated the order more than 500 times since the ruling, resulting in further fines of US$12.8 million.
“Our intent is to bring justice to the Vietnamese fishermen, and our petition in front of Formosa Plastics, Texas is to do just that,” Wilson told attendees at the briefing. “The Vietnamese fishermen deserve justice no less than the Texas fishermen did.”
In an e-mailed response to inquiries about the case, a spokesperson from Formosa Plastics Corporation, U.S.A. expressed “gratitude” for media interest in the case.
“Your coverage plays a vital role in raising awareness and holding us accountable for ensuring the safety of our environment,” wrote Mark A. Walker, a representative of the corporate communications department.
CAMPAIGN OF INTIMIDATION
Meanwhile, attempts to have the violations in Vietnam brought before Taiwan’s courts had seemed futile, before a milestone ruling by Taiwan’s Supreme Court in 2020. This overturned a High Court decision to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction.
However, Chang stressed that the process remained an uphill struggle, partly because of issues with lawyers gaining unfettered access to the Vietnamese plaintiffs and their advocates, who face persecution by the Vietnamese authorities, including lengthy incarceration and severe beatings.
“In some cases, it has been almost impossible for the Vietnamese plaintiffs to meet Taiwanese lawyers,” said Chang. “To do so, they would have to notify the local authorities, and that is basically like sending the victims to their oppressors.”
Last week the Economist (“A short history of Taiwan and China, in maps,” July 10) and Al Jazeera both sent around short explainers of the Taiwan-China issue. The Al Jazeera explainer, which discussed the Cold War and the rivalry between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), began in the postwar era with US intervention in the Chinese Civil War and the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) retreat to Taiwan. It was fairly standard, and it works because it appeals to the well-understood convention that Taiwan enters history in 1949 when the KMT retreats to it. Very different, and far
Eight months after President Xi Jinping (習近平) pledged to bring 50,000 US students to China to stabilize ties, Beijing has made its largest outreach yet. For some Americans, the most progress came in surprising moments outside the official program. Groups affiliated with the Chinese government welcomed some 220 young Americans to a weeklong bonding festival in the southeastern province of Fujian last month. But while many US attendees said they were grateful to visit the world’s No 2 economy, several criticized the youth festival as scripted and lacking open dialogue. With ties between the two superpowers tense over Beijing’s support for Russia’s
To step through the gates of the Lukang Folk Arts Museum (鹿港民俗文物館) is to step back 100 years and experience the opulent side of colonial Taiwan. The beautifully maintained mansion set amid a manicured yard is a prime example of the architecture in vogue among wealthy merchants of the day. To set foot inside the mansion itself is to step even further into the past, into the daily lives of Hokkien settlers under Qing rule in Taiwan. This museum should be on anyone’s must-see list in Lukang (鹿港), whether for its architectural spledor or its cultural value. The building was commissioned
July 15 to July 21 Depending on who you ask, Taiwan Youth (台灣青年) was a magazine that either spoke out against Japanese colonialism, espoused Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) ideology or promoted Taiwanese independence. That’s because three publications with contrasting ideologies, all bearing the same Chinese name, were established between 1920 and 1960. Curiously, none of them originated in Taiwan. The best known is probably The Tai Oan Chheng Lian, launched on July 16, 1920 by Taiwanese students in Tokyo as part of the growing non-violent resistance movement against Japanese colonial rule. A crucial part of the effort was to promote Taiwanese