 you would work hard finding a job.” Factories cram up to eight people into small dormitory rooms of 20 square meters and deduct the cost of their beds, electricity, water, and food from their pay.
Conditions are just as dismal in the laundries. After jeans are sewn, they are treated with more chemicals at a laundry. Workers haul the jeans into giant washing machines, throwing bleach, enzymes, and a pumice stone into the tumbler to break down the indigo. At the end of the wash, workers pull out the wet load with bare hands and bring them to the drying area, where temperatures exceed 40 degrees Celsius. This constant change in temperature and humidity leads to arthritis and skin lesions. Laundry workers also suffer from the toxic fumes released by huge dryers. “You do this job for three or five years and leave the factory as a wreck,” says Li Hui, a 40-year-old laundry worker.
Most Chinese factories do not protect workers adequately, if at all, according to Verite, a U.S.-based organization that investigates workplace safety around the world. Chinese labor laws, born out of socialism, tend to treat workers favorably. But the country’s breakneck economic growth outpaces government monitoring. “Many factories have no people on staff or procedures to deal with health and safety emergencies,” says Dan Viederman, executive director of Verite. “It is an accident that there is no accident when health and safety are left to the whim of the machines.”
About 90 percent of Chinese factories do not pay workers adequately for overtime, says Viederman. Buyers, Western brands included, impose unrealistic deadlines and low fees on factories, which in turn protect profits by shorting employees. Both factory and brand representatives collude by lying to labor inspectors and rewarding workers who tell auditors they don’t work overtime. “The system at this point embraces cover-ups. The brands and the factories know they have problems but there are very few incentives for them to work together to resolve them,” Viederman says.
But the days of the Chinese sweatshop are numbered, thanks to rising living standards, improved education, and international labor regulations. Demand for skilled workers outstrips supply, and any worker with a mobile phone can spread news of any mistreatment. “Workers are much more aware of the law and their rights these days,” laments Wei Fang, a factory owner friend of Huang. “You can’t force them to work long hours, you can’t force them to stay. If you hit them, they would go straight to the police and you would be in big trouble.”
Despite the hardships, workers do stay. Dou Yongwen, 24, punched a button maker through his finger recently as his concentration lapsed late into his shift. He’s punched nearly 10,000 buttons a day, every day, for eight years. “It’s not life I’m living, punching buttons day and night,” says Dou. “But I’m trying to learn the trade and, hopefully, in a couple of years I will save enough money to open a button workshop.
Huang Yaohong, owner of the factory that distresses jeans, achieved Dou’s dream. He grew up in the distant Sichuan province in western China, son of a poor farmer. He came here two decades ago, just as leader Deng Xiaoping began to reverse the excesses of Mao’s hard-line regime by targeting a few regions in southern China for capitalist experimentation. Huang, then 16 years old and penniless, left his village.
“When I came to Guangdong, I was just another peasant and my dream was to have a warm stomach after every meal,” Huang recalls. With two shirts to his name, he took on exhausting, menial jobs, toiling through nights to earn a place to sleep. Through hard work, courage, and the sheer luck of being in China’s economic gold coast at a time of unprecedented industrial expansion, Huang became a business owner. He brought some family members to work with him, and soon, relative-by-relative, grew his workforce to some 80 people.
Most orders come in at midnight and are collected at dawn. Huang’s factory can rough up 10,000 jeans per day, mainly for the domestic market. Revenue 