There are 1,000 workers, and at least 80 percent of them are young women. A daily work shift is from 7:30 a.m. to 8:00 p.m., seven days a week. It's not uncommon to be forced to work beyond 8:00 p.m., working a 24-hour shift right through the night. They are paid 9 to 20 cents an hour, which is 40% to 70% below the legal wage.
Under EPZ regulations in Bangladesh, sewing operators are to be paid 3360 taka a month for a 48-hour workweek. In U.S. dollars, this amounts to $69.28 a month, $15.99 a week, and 33 cents an hour. However, at the Beximco factory, the women sewing Wal-Mart garments are illegally paid just 2,000 taka per month, which means they are earning just $41.24 each month, $9.52 per week, and 20 cents an hour. .
In December 1998, twenty workers were illegally fired at Beximco and denied their legal severance pay for refusing to work an all-night shift on top of their daily 12 1/2 hours of work.
There is no maternity leave, no health care, the workers need a ticket to go to the bathroom and are timed, they are yelled and cursed at, and unions are illegal (www.nlcnet.org).
Wal-Mart is not the only company to have sweatshops. Nine U.S. clothing companies, including Disney, are guilty of "allowing low wages and poor working conditions in their foreign operations", according to the National Labor Committee (NLC). .
According to a 1999 report issued by the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee (HKCIC), Chinese factory workers manufacturing clothing, hats, and shoes for the Walt Disney Company are regularly forced to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week during peak production, and earn poverty wages. During an eight-month investigation, researchers found frequent violations of both Chinese labor laws and Disney's own Codes of Conduct for Manufacturers in respect to overtime, pay, and contracts. According to the report, workers at the four investigated factories earn between 13.5 and 36 cents an hour, depending on the production schedule.
