Question

SESSION 12 Workers for Ivanka's clothing company The reality of working in a factory making clothes for Ivanka Trump’s label has been laid bare, with employees speaking of being paid so little they cannot live with their children, anti-union intimidation and women being offered a bonus if they don’t take time off while menstruating.

The Guardian has spoken to more than a dozen workers at the fashion label’s factory in Subang, Indonesia, where employees describe being paid one of the lowest minimum wages in Asia and there are claims of impossibly high production targets and sporadically compensated overtime.

The workers’ complaints come only a week after labor activists investigating possible abuses at a Chinese factory that makes Ivanka Trump shoes disappeared into police custody.

The activists’ group claimed they had uncovered a host of violations at the plant including salaries below China’s legal minimum wage, managers verbally abusing workers and “violations of women’s rights”.

In the Indonesian factory some of the complaints are similar, although the wages paid to employees in Subang are much lower.

Here we look at life inside the factory through interviews with workers, all who have asked for their details to be changed to avoid losing their jobs.

“We don’t like Donald Trump’s policies” Alia is nothing if not industrious. She has worked in factories on and off since leaving her provincial high school, through the birth of two children, leading up to her current job making clothes for brands including Ivanka Trump at the PT Buma Apparel Industry factory in Subang, West Java.

Throughout her marriage to her husband, Ahmad, one or both of them has always worked. And yet, says Alia, the couple can never think about clearing their debts. Instead, what she has to show for years of work at PT Buma is two rooms in a dusty boarding house, rented for $30 a month and decorated with dozens of photos of their children because the couple can’t dream of having enough money to have them at home. The children live, instead, with their grandmother, hours away by motorcycle, and see their parents just one weekend a month, when they can afford the gasoline.

Alia makes the legal minimum wage for her job in her province: 2.3 million rupiah, or about $173 a month – but that legal minimum is among the lowest in Indonesia as a whole, and as much as 40% lower than in Chinese factories, another labor source for the Ivanka Trump brand.

PT Buma, a Korean-owned garment company started in Indonesia in 1999, is one of the suppliers of G-III Apparel Group, the wholesale manufacturer for prominent fashion brands including Trump’s clothing.

Many Buma workers know who Ivanka Trump is. Alia noticed her labels popping up on the clothes about a year ago.

Ahmad, who also works in the local garment industry and who, like his wife and most of the workers at her PT Buma factory, is an observant Muslim, said: “We don’t like Donald Trump’s policies.”

He had followed news of the so-called Muslim ban on TV this year. “But we’re not in a position to make employment decisions based on our principles,” he said.

When Alia was told the gist of Ivanka Trump’s new book on women in the workplace, she burst out laughing. Her idea of work-life balance, she said, would be if she could see her children more than once a month.

There are currently 2,759 workers at Buma, according to the regional manpower office, of which the total unionized workforce is about 200, split between two unions.

or the majority of non-union Buma workers, their job is a run-of-the-mill hardship to be endured. About three-quarters of them are women, many are mothers and several, like Alia, devote almost all their income to children with whom they can’t afford to live.

Sita, 23, is one such worker. She had to drop out of college when her parents got sick and started working at Buma last year. She told the Guardian that her contract will be terminated soon, after seven months of work.

“That’s one of the company’s ways to cope with extra expenses,” she said. As a contract worker, she will not get any severance. “I can’t stand it anymore. I work unpaid overtime every day and still earn just 2.3 million [rupiah] a month. I’m planning to move from Subang, where the minimum wage is too low. But I don’t know where to go yet. I haven’t got any connections.”

But for some the chance of a job and a pay packet – albeit a small one – is cause for some satisfaction.

Eka, a single mother in her 30s with two children, who has spent seven years at Buma, told the Guardian: “I still like my job. It’s not too hard.”

And Yuma, a young unmarried woman, said, “I’m glad that I work at Buma now because my parents are farmers and it’s a tiring job. Here, at least there is air conditioning.”

The workers spoken to appear to typify the average employee making Ivanka Trump clothes in Indonesia. They are not egregiously abused but are in circumstances so far removed from the first daughter’s “women who work” brand that it was impossible for them to imagine a situation where anyone would wear the dresses they were sewing. Ivanka Trump stepped down from running her brand in January, although all products still bear her name on the label.

Women who are permanent employees at the Buma factory do get certain concessions: three months’ paid maternity leave (usually split between six weeks of pregnancy and six weeks post-birth), mandatory federal health insurance and a monthly bonus of $10.50 if they don’t take a day off for menstruation.

These reports of the Buma factory seem largely typical of the other factories in West Java, said Andriko Otang, of Indonesia’s Trade Union Rights Centre. “Using unrealistic production targets to justify unpaid overtime is very common.”

According to a photo of a timetable one worker showed the Guardian, the production targets, broken down for every half hour between 7 am and 4 pm, are between 58 and 92 garments per period, while the actual numbers produced are recorded as 27 to 40.

“The management is getting smarter: they tap out our ID cards at 4 pm so you can’t prove anything,” said Wildan, a 25-year-old male worker.

Seven workers also said they were subject to verbal abuse, being called things like “animals, moron, and monkey”. Otang said this, too, was fairly common.

Beyond this, Buma also has a pattern of firing workers right before Ramadan and rehiring them a month later, to avoid paying a “religious holiday bonus”, according to several workers. Indonesian law dictates all workers are owed a holiday bonus according to their religion, which works out to at least a month’s wages or more depending on seniority. In May 2017, there were about 290 people fired before Ramadan, according to Toto Sunarto, a leader of the SPSI union in Subang.

“The buck stops with her” Indonesia has the largest gap among Asian countries between high and low wages for unskilled garment workers, according to the International Labor Organisation. None of the workers the Guardian spoke with have ever received performance-based raises, only federally mandated ones – even though some of them have worked at the factory continuously for seven years.

“You have to assess minimum wages in the context of the country itself and, in that context, it’s not a living wage,” said David Welsh, Indonesia and Malaysia director at the Solidarity Center. “Given the disparity in wages across Indonesia, we see a trend whereby factories are migrating increasingly to the lowest wage jurisdictions … whose terms are essentially dictated deliberately by western brands.”

None of the not-already unionized workers who spoke to The Guardian expressed a desire to join one, citing fears of being fired and a general sense that their work wasn’t all that bad. Sita, for instance, said she “voluntarily” worked overtime almost every day because they never met their targets.

“It’s not surprising to me that in a factory like this, you have rank and file workers who are unclear on what their rights are, and what the law says in terms of wages and rights,” said Jim Keady, an American labor rights activist who has worked extensively in Indonesia. “But with these poverty wages — and I would call it that — just because something is legal, doesn’t mean it is moral.

“The buck stops with her,” said Keady, of Ivanka. “It’s her name that’s on the dress. Without her, there is no brand.”

Carry Somers, founder of the non-profit Fashion Revolution said: “Ivanka Trump claims to be the ultimate destination for Women Who Work, but this clearly doesn’t extend to the women who work for her in factories around the world.”

In March, Indonesia was called out by President Donald Trump for having an unfavorable trade balance with the US. The president took issue with Indonesia’s $13bn surplus last year and vowed to penalize “cheating foreign importers”.

The fortunes of Ivanka’s brand have fluctuated wildly in the past year. During her father’s campaign, net sales for her brand increased by almost $18m in the year ending 31 January 2017, according to G-III data. But in recent months, several department stores have pulled her brand and G-III discreetly relabelled some Ivanka Trump merchandise under a different house brand, Adrienne Vittadini.

Hepi Abdulmanaf, an official with the local manpower ministry, was flattered by the Trump connection. “It’s proof that Indonesian goods are good enough for the world. Hopefully this – quality garments – becomes something Indonesia is known for.

” Meanwhile, the word “minus” was a common refrain among Buma workers, denoting ongoing debt. “We can never think about leaving debt,” said Alia. The cost of infant formula, school books, or a family visit can put these workers over the edge in any given month.

Fadli, a young man who works in the warehouse part of the factory, sees all the brands’ price tags as they are prepared for shipment to the United States.

“Sure I’m proud to make clothes for a well-known brand,” he said. “But because I see the price tags, I have to wonder, can’t they pay us a bit more?”

The Guardian contacted PT Buma to comment on the claims made in this article. A spokeswoman said neither she, nor anyone else at Buma Jakarta, nor anyone else at Buma Subang, wanted to comment.

G-III Apparel, which became the exclusive supplier of Ivanka Trump’s brand in 2012 told the Guardian in a statement: “G-III Apparel Group, Ltd. is committed to legal compliance and ethical business practices in all of our operations worldwide; we expect and require the same of our business partners throughout the world. We audit and inspect our vendor’s production facilities and when issues arise we work with our partners to correct them promptly.”

The Guardian also approached the White House for comment. None was forthcoming at the time of publication. The Ivanka Trump brand’s public relations company declined to offer any comment.

1. Examine this news story.

2. Describe what you read and give your reaction:

Answer 1

1. Every Trump needs a personal brand, and, for the longest time, Ivanka’s has been as the Platonic ideal of the modern working woman—one who, through sheer determination, will have it all. She has been known to post photos to Instagram in which she poses in elegant evening wear, clearly about to depart for a night out, while one or another of her children frolic at her feet wearing pajamas; her Twitter profile advertises that she identifies as a “wife, mother, sister, daughter” as well as an “advisor to POTUS.” Shortly after Trump introduced her fashion brand, in 2014, she launched a hashtag campaign, #WomenWhoWork, organized around “content that inspires and empowers women to create the multidimensional lives they want to live.” Her 2017 book is called Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success. In it, Trump writes that when she engaged New York ad agencies to refine her brand’s message, the admen cautioned her against overdoing the language around working, what with its associations with “professional tedium.”

One sees the admen’s point. Trump’s message—online, in person, in her books—is one of constant, indefatigable self-improvement: “We’re training for marathons and learning to code. We’re planning adventures with our kids and weekend getaways with our friends,” she writes in her book. Whatever one thinks of this approach to life—we are, are we?—Trump has been an exemplar of it. There’s nothing wrong with being good at multitasking, except when one of your tasks is to profit from a Trump-branded business, and another is to help run a Trump-branded White House. Trump made her first high-profile faux pas as the president’s daughter days after Donald Trump won the election, in November 2016, when she appeared on 60 Minutes wearing a $10,800 gold-and-diamond bangle from her own jewelry line, and, a day later, her brand’s marketing department sent an email blast publicizing the bracelet’s cameo.

Abigail Klem, the president of the Ivanka Trump brand, blamed a “well-intentioned marketing employee.” Trump’s company issued an apology, and then, soon after, got caught up in another series of ethical mishaps. A hashtag campaign called #GrabYourWallet had been urging people to boycott retailers that sold Trump family–connected goods. People particularly targeted Nordstrom for stocking the Ivanka Trump brand, and by February 2017, Nordstrom had dropped the line, a decision it described as being “based on the brand’s performance.” Soon, President Trump was tweeting that Nordstrom had treated his daughter “so unfairly,” and his adviser Kellyanne Conway was telling viewers of Fox News to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff,” adding, “I’m going to give a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody; you can find it online.” To avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest, Ivanka Trump had earlier handed day-to-day control of her brand to Klem and in March 2017 transferred its assets to a trust, but, according to The Wall Street Journal, she still received certain financial information and a share of the company’s profits. Now, with the closure of her company, Ivanka Trump’s working-woman brand has been further fractured.

All this comes at a moment when the line between politics and culture, if there ever was one, has utterly vanished. Corporations have demonstrated that they are susceptible to hashtag campaigns and public outcry. Ordinary people continue to leverage this fact to get attention for the causes that stir them, and the fallout is often swift. See also: ABC’s cancellation of Roseanne Barr’s TV show due to a racist tweet she posted about a former Obama adviser, and the departures of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, and Kenneth C. Frazier, the CEO of Merck, from Donald Trump’s business councils, in response, respectively, to the president’s withdrawal from the Paris climate-change agreement and his lukewarm response to the violent white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville.

Ivanka Trump, of course, could never have distanced herself from the Trump administration the way these other businesspeople did, as she’s an active participant in it. Instead, the slow fallout of #GrabYourWallet-style activism appears to have forced her hand. The Journal reported that Trump had closed her brand because she had grown “frustrated” by the restrictions she had been forced to impose to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. If that’s one factor, though, it’s likely not the only one. Rakuten Intelligence, a research firm that tracks online sales, estimates that sales of the Ivanka Trump brand, on the websites for Amazon, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and others, fell 27 percent in the year ending June 2017, compared with the previous year. In the year ending June 2018, they fell another 55 percent. A spokeswoman for Rakuten said that while the data is somewhat limited—it is based on a sample of thousands of customer receipts, and covers only online sales on certain sites—it likely tracks with overall sales trends for the brand. It would seem that the death of the fashion line represents, at least in part, Trump’s decision as a businesswoman to maximize profit and minimize losses, within the political constraints inherent in being a Trump. In this, at least, she remains as on brand as ever.

2.My reaction is that the wages are igh so the long term idea of this country would ddefinately improve the administration of the country by its growth and its output theory

At one point, according to WWD, the label was worth $100 million. Part of the company’s DNA was a lifestyle campaign promoting working women, Women Who Work, which spotlighted working moms and was a “celebration of the multifaceted nature of the working woman,” as Trump described it to Racked in 2015.

Once her father took to the campaign trail in 2016, though, the situation got more complicated for Ivanka the person, and by extension, Ivanka the brand. Trump campaigned for her father, gaining mass appeal from young white female voters (dubbed the Ivanka voters). From the very early days of the campaign, there were murmurings of conflict of interest. At the Republican National Convention in July 2016, Ivanka Trump wore a dress, jewelry, and shoes from her brand to introduce her father — then still a candidate — as a speaker. A photo of Trump standing in the outfit in front of a crowd was tweeted out by her company, recommending that followers “Shop Ivanka’s look from her #RNC speech.” The tweet linked to Trump’s dress on sale at Macy’s for $138. It sold out the next day.