Annotations
subsistence
ŋ the means by which one maintains liIe
tedious
ŋ tiresome by reason oI length slowness or dullness boring
cloak of transience
ŋ der Schleier der 9ergÃnglichkeit
perched upon
–auf etwas draufgesetzt sein
to pervade
– to be present throughout
assembly line
ŋ an arrangement oI workers machines and eTuip-
ment in which the product being assembled passes consecutively
from operation to operation until completed
incentive
ŋ a motivating influence
to lure
ŋ provoke someone to do something using oIten Ialse or
exaggerated promises or persuasion
upshot
– the effect
wages below subsistence
*
and the work low-skill and tedious*. As an
economic model, today’s export processing zones have more in common
with fast-food franchises than sustainable developments, so removed are
they from the countries that host them. These pockets of pure industry
hide behind a cloak of transience*: the contracts come and go with little
notice; the workers are predominantly migrants, far from home and with
little connection to the city or province where zones are located; the
work itself is short-term, often not renewed.
As I walk along the blank streets of Cavite, I can feel the threatening
impermanence, the underlying instability of the zone. The shed-like
factories are connected so tenuously to the surrounding country, to the
adjacent town, to the very earth they are perched upon*, that it feels
as if the jobs that flew here from the North could fly away again just as
quickly. The factories are cheaply constructed – and tossed together on
land that is rented, not owned. When I climb up the water tower on the
edge of the zone and look down at the hundreds of factories, it seems
as if the whole cardboard complex could lift up and blow away, like
Dorothy’s house in The Wizard of Oz. No wonder the EPZ factories in
Guatemala are called “swallows”. Fear pervades* the zones. The govern-
ments are afraid of losing their foreign factories; the factories are afraid
of losing their brand-name buyers; and the workers are afraid of losing
their unstable jobs. These are factories built not on land but on air. […]
The air the export processing zones are built upon is the promise of
industrialization. The theory behind EPZs is that they will attract foreign
investors, who, if all goes well, will decide to stay in the country, and the
zones’ segregated assembly lines
*
will turn into lasting development:
technology transfers and domestic industries. To lure the swallows into
this clever trap, the governments of poor countries offer tax breaks, lax
regulations and the services of a military willing and able to crush labor
unrest. To sweeten the pot further, they put their own people on the
auction block, falling over each other to offer up the lowest minimum
wage, allowing workings to be paid less than the real cost of living.[…]
Today, with seventy countries competing for the export-process-
ing-zone dollar, the incentives* to lure* investors are increasing and the
wages and standards are being held hostage to the threat of departure.
The upshot
*
is that entire countries are being turned into industrial
slums and low-wage labor ghettos, with no end in sight.
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L’ORDINATUEUR
