China-owned businesses in Malta are subject to Maltese, not Chinese, labour laws
The conditions of work at China-owned Leisure Clothing in Malta, described today in court by one indentured labourer who tried to run away, are identical to those reported in this BBC Panorama investigation into factories in China, where iPhones are made.
BBC Panorama reports on workers having their identity documents taken from them; moving between the factory and cramped dormitory buildings; starting the day at 7am and ending it late at night; routinely working 12-hour shifts day in, day out, without time off; overtime built into the shift as mandatory; payslips in which the horrendous number of hours worked are disguised as ‘production bonuses’; workers falling asleep on the job through exhaustion and others running away or killing themselves because they couldn’t stand it.
We are shocked because that happens in China. Then how much more shocked should we be that it is happening in Malta, where a Chinese operation is subject to Maltese labour laws but, in violation of those laws, instead recreates wholesale on EU soil a Chinese factory with Chinese employees operating in abominable Chinese conditions.
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I who always worked very long hours, out of my wish to do the best I could, cannot imagine that kind of working life.
Reading that girl’s testimony in court, I was silently crying, and screaming out for justice for her and the others who worked in those horrendous conditions.
It’s OK, Daphne, we had that credible story in The Malta Independent verifying that everything is fine at Leisure Clothing.
Yes, we had a video of a Maltese woman wearing a Santa hood and beard together with an ugly array of black front teeth (showing her level of education), telling us that one worker GAVE her €580 to purchase an iPhone.
Now, who in normal circumstances, would want to purchase something worth that amount of money but then has to ask someone else to buy it for her?
Then we had the reporter asking the obviously wrong questions in the wrong circumstances – whether they have seen any human trafficking?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7oFDlj3mGw#t=277
The slavery of totalitarian rule, but also a new face of capitalism. One divorced from democracy but remarried in totalitarianism.
First of all a big welcome back. I sure miss your posts. I hope you had a lovely time with your family. Best wishes to all and a big THANK YOU for your sterling work.
Don’t you think you are not being positive about the above subject? Tsk-tsk, you’re betraying the Movement.
Why bother about Chinese workers? We Maltese only worry about Maltese workers, who by the dead silence of the GWU, must be working in perfect conditions.
This video should be sent to all Enemalta workers. I am sure that they would not believe the documentary because it is not produced by Joseph Muscat the leader of the Liberal and Modern Party.
Maybe I am out of time…too old. I never understood this cult for these brand names. It feels like tagging oneself, and in doing so making oneself important.
There is nothing exclusive in owning a tool of communication.
There is nothing exclusive in running around like a daft person with a paper cup with Starbucks printed on it. I call them walking adverts, dunderheads with a D and G splashed over their tee shirts, feeling on top of the world.
These weak-minded people who get a thrill just by touching an iPhone are the very ones who are encouraging these slave centres equivalent to concentration camps. I am thankful that I don’t, and hope I never will be an indirect participant in such horror.
Like you, I could never understand why anyone should pay through the nose to give free advertisement to a big rich company.
The answer is in sheer narcissism and pomposity. One must show that one is progressive and up-to-date, sometimes even when one cannot afford it.
There is a difference between makes and brands.
Yes, as long as we refuse to accept the right to consume without trampling on others’ rights, we’re party to exploitation.
As long as we refuse to make things ourselves, expecting industry to remain a question of labour costs, enslaved to so-called free market dynamics, it will go on.
Even because we have been brainwashed to associate brands with luxury and prestige. When their style of doing is anything but.
This instead, is a make.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJLcoGMPQ94
Thatcher was wrong when she chose to destroy a society’s right to produce and workers to grow in aspiration.
Germany’s balanced social forces are proof, but is now facing the EU dilemma; cannibalise Italy and France to survive or lead the project.
Here’s another one, centred around work and its surroundings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2qLElNmQ5g
Meantime, Fiat Brazil is experimenting open source product development and intends to politicise its business plan in South America. Even because sustainability has become key.
It is truly a case of spontaneous democractic renewal versus orthodox socialist detente.
Design, now that beauty is ours to determine, will save us.
Cheap “precarious jobs” that do not worry the General Workers Union and their impact on the indigenous Maltese members of that union.
Ironic and tragic that on the 50th anniversary of national independence, these morons sell off 33% of Enemalta to a foreign dictatorship. Never mind the spin.
But Ms Caruana Galizia, you forget that this magistrate adapted the Laws of Malta to fit Mellieha, so perhaps there are some Hal Far adjustments which need to be made in this case.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-12-30/local-news/Alleged-human-trafficking-victim-tells-court-of-sweatshop-working-conditions-at-Leisure-Clothing-6736128030
Anything purchased with a Made in China label is likely to have been produced under Dickensian working conditions.
How about we stop hiding behind the ‘qalb kbira tal-Maltin’ ‘poplu m’ghawnx bhalu’ bull and face the “howls of disapproval from a number of Maltese Leisure Clothing employees who were present” as our 2015 new year’s resolution.
I watched Diane Kruger’s ‘The Bridge’ lately and felt so at home.
Malta has become an orchestra of corruption where the law accommodates the crime and everyone stays silent or sings as directed by the hand that feeds him. The voices of reason are few and far between.
I am sure that the ALL the Chinese massage parlours in Malta are nothing less than brothels.
They begin by asking for 20 euros for a massage and later ask for a additional money if you want a massage with a happy ending.
One begins with a happy ending until you become a regular client and they are sure that you can be trusted. Later on, at a higher price, intimate sex is performed.
The Chinese women working there are promised a better life in Malta such as a receptionist in a hotel. On their arrival in Malta their passport is taken so they can’t leave.
They are bullied by the pimps who take most of the money they gain.
In one place I know, the women are there in the parlour from 9am to 9pm – a 12-hour shift every day including Sunday. They have no lunch breaks or even a cup of tea. They eat miserable food in between one massage and another.
Other women, mainly from the former Soviet states and even South American states are available too at a higher price (because even pricing for these things reflects Maltese racism).
I guess it would be a relief for them if the authorities had to clamp down on these operations, same as is happening in Leisure Clothing.
The Chinese, especially, are so sweet and gentle with their clients. It is as though they are your slave. They will help you with buttoning up your shirt, putting your socks, and shoes on because of their feeling of inferiority.
The general public’s interest is more concerned with individual ego, celebrity affairs, other people’s affairs, social media and sports results rather than an educational documentary or anything that might pertain to learning how the things they possess come to be.
We are living in a world in which most people measure themselves by what job/career they have, by the clothes they wear, by the car they drive, by the phone they use and by the hairstyle they sport and by the money in their wallet or bank account.
And what they fail to realise or suppress when brought into consciousness is that other human beings are putting their lives and mental health at risk in order to supply these commodities.
This did not mean that investment in the roads should not be made, but the people were being overly pampered and, in the environmental context, prevention was better than cure. – GWU president Victor Carachi, Times of Malta
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20141231/local/gwu-calls-for-courageous-decisions-on-traffic.550169
Toni Abela, the deputy leader of the Muscat Movement, was in Rabat last Sunday for a party at the Labour Club.
I am a Laburista but the way they are governing there won’t be a vote for them next election.
Toni Abela warned us that lots of black people are coming to Malta in 2015. He said not to fight with them and to make friends with them, and that the reason these blacks are coming to Malta is to work. But don’t worry he said, because they do the jobs that you don’t do.
Toni Abela thought that we don’t know the blacks he was referring to are Chinese people. I’d like to ask Toni, are you paying these Chinese like they are paying the ones at Leisure Clothing?
Are you paying these Chinese with prekarjat like the Leisure Clothing Chinese employees?
Toni, why are you getting the Chinese to take the Maltese jobs?
Where is Malta l-ewwel? Vera bniedem ipokrita bil-partit b’kollox. Malta gejja tac-Cinizi. Kelli nitlaq il-barra mill-kazin ghax kont ha nirremetti nisimghu jitkellem.
It was sickening listening to this report about Apple company.
What about Maltese people earning a bit more than €4 an hour, whilst the person that employs them pockets €10 an hour?
This abuse has been going on for years, and the rich get richer, whilst the poor get poorer.
Let’s look after Maltese/EU citizens first. This is an EU country and nothing since has been done about it although it has been mentioned many a time in the media.
“In 2010 Mr Han explained that Leisure Clothing …internal processes are audited by Intertek, the global ethical code verifier.” – Times of Malta
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100808/business/bulebel-textile-manufacturer-wins-giorgio-armani-contract.321382
Was Leisure Clothing given some sort of certification that they follow these regulations?
http://www.intertek.com/investors/governance/
and their code of ethics:
http://www.intertek.com/investors/governance/code-of-ethics/
Dear Daphne,
I was once employed as a carer, ‘prekarjat’. I used to earn a miserable €4 per hour and I was never paid for holiday leave or sick leave.
I didn’t know what the word bonus meant. When I took a day off because of illness, the company that employed me sent the doctor whilst I was out at my doctor, so of course he didn’t find me in.
I got a warning sent by registered mail. I emailed back asking why the company doctor had been sent, when we never get paid for taking sick leave. I am a Maltese, an EU citizen.