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DEVASTATING IMPACTS/
HUMAN RIGHTS
source: www.gacg.org/pdf/rapport_uk.pdf
www.anti-counterfeitcongress.org/
wco2004/website.asp
www.osce.org/item/14492.html
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Counterfeiting is now big business, and is practiced by organisations that produce at any cost. Many are pushed to exploit their workforce… - according to the European Commission, international criminal organisations involved in counterfeit production "exploit their workforce, often largely consisting of children who are locked up in cramped conditions without any concern for personal safety or human rights ". Before buying such products, consumers must question themselves concerning who is profiting from the sale, and the type of conditions the product was made in;
- human trafficking is centred around exploitation: illegal migration is a part of the global migration regime that participates in reproducing the existing global economic order. Illegal migration management is presently a profitable business with low risks, which exists along with other trans-national forms of criminal activities like trafficking in drugs and weapons;
- over-exploitation, low salaries, absence of formal obligations to employees, impunity for deceits and groundless dismissals are estimated as advantages of illegal forms of employment by unscrupulous employers. Sometimes the nature of a business excludes legal employment. This is true for trafficking in drugs and arms or prostitution. A clandestine sweatshop producing counterfeit goods will never hire workers legally as well;
- counterfeiters often use undeclared workers as cheap labour because they are docile and highly profitable. For instance, it is a well-known fact that the Florence region contains a large number of illegally workshops employing undeclared workers of Asian origin. In July 2002, further south in Naples, the Italian police seized 4,000 designer bags and searched an undeclared workshop, which was fitted out with very sophisticated machinery and employed seventeen undeclared workers;
- a press article about music piracy in Spain, published in September 2002, reported comments by Sergeant Pastor, of the Spanish Civil Guard central operations unit, who said that “industrial piracy is conducted by well organised international gangs. […] A network brings in illegal immigrants who have to work to pay off their debts to the people smuggler. Some of them sell in the street, others cut the records, make the jackets or deal with distribution”. The journalist goes on to say that “the network leaders buy large quantities of engravers, computers and blank CDs and rent apartments and cellars where dozens of exploited workers are crammed, in scarcely bearable health conditions, to copy records 24 hours a day;
- in South Africa, a security document has lifted the veil on Pakistani ‘mafia’ who have been operating relatively undetected in Cape Town and Johannesburg, running sweatshops and pumping drug into the local market. The sweatshop factories exploit Pakistanis, African immigrants and some South Africans, who make cheap and illegal imitations of well-known brand-named goods. The sweatshops used the labour of Pakistani immigrants, often brought in specifically to work, as well as refugees from other African countries. (1)
(1) Ashley Smith, “New drug 'mafia' targets South Africa”, November 09, 2003; [ www.iol.co.za]
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