Chris Slee

Sri Lanka's clothing industry, which directly employs 340,000 workers and indirectly employs another million, faces a “sudden collapse” when the Multi-Fibre Agreement (MFA) expires next year, according to Kalani Subasinghe, a staff member of the Sri Lankan Oxfam office.

The MFA allocates quotas for poor countries exporting clothing to the US and the European Union. Subasinghe told a meeting organised by Oxfam/Community Aid Abroad in Melbourne on September 11 that a large proportion of clothing factories in Sri Lanka could close down when the MFA expires. Production will be shifted to other countries, particularly China, where wages are even lower than in Sri Lanka. Some of the larger and more efficient factories will probably survive, but it seems likely that at least half the workforce could lose their jobs.

Clothing factories in Sri Lanka mainly employ women from rural areas who are unable to get other jobs because of the very high rural unemployment.

Oxfam has initiated the formation of the Apparel Industry Labour Rights Movement (ALARM), which brings together unions and labour NGOs. It is demanding a living wage for Third World clothing workers, compensation for those who lose their jobs, better living conditions and freedom for workers to join unions.

ALARM has held meetings for workers in their dormitories, and has organised protests and gained media coverage. It has pressured the Sri Lankan government to take action to ensure that workers' entitlements are protected, so that employers can not close factories without paying workers what they are owed.

Oxfam is also lobbying the World Trade Organisation and the EU to extend the quota system for clothing imports.

From Green Left Weekly, October 20, 2004.
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