Who’s Telling The Truth About Fiji’s Garment Workers?

Don
Wiseman, RNZ Pacific Senior
Journalist

Fiji’s union movement wants garment workers
to earn more and has accused the country’s factory owners of
dragging the chain.

Last week, RNZ Pacific spoke with
Jotika Gounder-Sharma about the work the Fiji Trades Union
Congress (FTUC) is doing with the New Zealand civil society
group UnionAID to bring a living wage to the garment
workers.

But Mike Towler, a former president of the
Textile Clothing and Footwear Council of Fiji, has taken
issue with much of what the Fijian union official
said.

RNZ Pacific interviewed Towler and began by
asking about the state of the garment sector in the
country.

(This transcript has been edited for
brevity and clarity).

Mike
Towler: It’s quite dire. You know, one of the main
reasons, before I talk about wage rates, the issue that,
straight after Covid in 2022 and 2023, Fiji lost around 20
to 25 percent of its skilled workforce to both Australia and
New Zealand.

Our industry, like everybody else, lost a
lot of its skilled workers. And those skilled workers were
being attracted to Australia through all sorts of means,
particularly the PALM (Pacific Australia Labour Mobility)
scheme here in Fiji that supplies workers to industries in
Australia.

But we also lost skilled workers [to]
working in industries like the meat industry in Australia,
where a senior machinist in a garment factory, next thing
you know, they’re a boner in a Perth factory. Now how that
happened I’ve got no idea but the Fijian government should
be held to account for that. We also lost a lot of skilled
workers who used a scam back door visa to get into
Australia. It’s a student visa so got people who were 30,
40, 50 years of age working as a skilled worker in Fiji was
able to go to Australia on a student visa and work as a
barista in a cafe or whatever.

This all sort of
drained Fiji of its skilled workforce. We ended up with a
lot of people working in our industry who weren’t skilled.
Our productivity just went through the floor at the same
time, the wage rates were going through the roof, a no win
situation. But a lot of the information that’s contained in
that
article that was written is just simply
wrong.

Don Wiseman: Let’s look at that. What was
wrong?

MT: Well, the first thing is
that the garment industry had always paid the national
minimum wage. Jotika is saying that when it was $2.32 an
hour, and when it increased to $2.68 an hour, still the
garment industry remained below $2.68 an hour. That’s
totally incorrect. We were compelled by law, and we did pay
all of our staff the national minimum wage at the time,
which is now $5 an hour, or they were paid above
it.

DW: All right. Well, let’s look at what
they’re talking about. They want a living wage for these
workers, FJ$8 an hour. Would the industry be able to support
that?

MT: The industry is
not going to be able to even pay $6 an hour, which is the
government’s policy, to move from five to $6 an hour before
the end of this current term. So $8 an hour, they call that
a living wage.

But look a majority of women that work
in our industry are the second income earner of a household.
Yes, there are instances where they are the primary income
earner of a household, but an industry can only afford to
pay wage rates that are commensurate with what is the
productivity.

Of course, we could pay $8 an hour if
our workforce was more skilled and was more productive, but
it just simply isn’t.

I’ve been in business in Fiji
here for 33 years, and I’ve just closed my business totally
because I was unable to sustain the overheads – not only
wages, but productivity and costs associated with getting my
raw material into Fiji and my finished product out of
Fiji.

I had no choice in there. I had to close my
business before I went broke.

DW: You lost a
lot of workers overseas going to Australia, as you say,
under this PALM scheme. And New Zealand, yes, but they’ve
left because they could earn more money. That’s the simple
thing.

MT: That’s a given.
But you earn more money in places like Australia [and] New
Zealand, but the living costs are also quite high. The wage
rates in Fiji can measure it with the living costs for the
local population.

DW: Do you think people can survive
on $5 an hour?

MT: Yes, people can
survive on $5 an hour here in Fiji. But also $5 an hour is a
base rate. Like, for instance, if you’ve got a machinist in
your factory who has been there for three to five years and
she’s become quite skilled in a number of operations, you
can’t pay that machinist $5 an hour because she’ll just
simply go somewhere else that’ll pay a six and $7 an
hour.

Most of my skilled machinists before I had to
close my business were only in the $6 to $7 an hour for a
skilled machinist, because that was the rate I had to pay to
to maintain their employment.

DW: The garment
industry in Fiji used to employ 20,000 odd people, and it’s
gone right back over the last 15 years or so, hasn’t it? So
5000 workers there now, not the same number of companies,
Can the remaining operators
survive?

MT: That figure is
now below 4,000. We’ve become a bit of a rump of what we
used to be. Yes, there were 22,000 workers in the garment
industry in Fiji at the turn of the century. But all sorts
of reasons for why that has reduced over the years. But
uncompetitive pricing is the major reason. And what’s left
now is industries that are boutique, niche or they’ve got a
vertical business where they manufacture and
retail.

The largest garment manufacturer in Fiji is a
company called Lyndhurst, who make the Kookai brand of
clothing, and they retail the product in their own stores in
Australia and New Zealand. They’re able to manufacture in
Fiji and retail in Australia. So there’s no middleman
there.

But a majority of the factories that are left
here aren’t vertical like that. They are factories that
manufacture for a wholesaler in Australia or New Zealand,
and then as wholesalers then sell to the retail trades at a
profit margin of 20.

And quite frankly, we’re becoming
less and less competitive in that sort of market because
people are able to take their business to places in
Southeast and North Asia that are much more competitive. So
they do.

DW: The imposition of Trump tariffs will
have some impact in a whole lot of those
markets.

MT: Look, I just don’t
think the tariffs is a longterm issue. I think that changing
the supplier from Vietnam to Fiji is not as easy as you
think it is. And quite frankly, everybody’s going to be able
to negotiate a deal, because that’s what it’s all
about.

At the end of the day, Fiji was also tariffed
to something like 32 percent, so places like Bangladesh and
Vietnam and, to some lesser degree China, they are going to
negotiate a better deal than what Fiji’s currently
got.

Nobody’s going to be rushing to move to places
like Fiji because these tariffs aren’t good.

This is
not going to happen and one of the major reasons why people
won’t rush to Fiji is: we have a skilled worker shortage in
this country, our wage rates are nearly double what they are
in our competitor countries, and there’s no raw material
here, so you’ve got to get it all here first.

Those
are all the hurdles that you’re going to face in operating a
business here in Fiji. But the biggie is the fact that we
have got a huge lack of skilled workers.

That unionist
talks about importing Sri Lankans. Well, she [Jotika]
totally got that wrong. Actually, what the industry has had
to do is import Bangladeshis. Now all of those people come
into this country under a contract, and that contract has to
be approved by both the Minister of Employment and the
Minister of Immigration to get them to come into
Fiji.

You cannot actually write a contract that is
below the national minimum wage. In fact, you want to track
Bangladeshi workers into our industries in Fiji – and it’s
not only the garment industry that is importing workers from
Bangladesh – there’s a lot of different industries are doing
it, but you can’t pay them $5 Fijian an hour and get them
here. They won’t come.

And secondly, they come under
contract, so I’m not too sure what the union thinks they can
do for them after they’ve got it here.

One of the
things that you failed to mention in that interview [is]
that every factory in Fiji that employs more than 20 workers
is compelled by law to have a Labour Management Consultation
and Co-operation Committee, which is a representative
committee of workers in your factory. You are compelled, by
law, to meet with them at least once a month and discuss any
grievances that they have.

Believe you me, anybody
that’s got a grievance in your factory, those people bring
it to that committee, brings it to management’s attention in
our monthly discussions, and we resolve it because it’s in
our interest to resolve it.

I’m not too sure what she
thinks you can do for the Bangladeshi workers. They’re not
Sri Lankan workers, Bangladeshi workers, in the factories,
particularly in Lautoka, because quite frankly, I can’t see
what they could possibly do from when they’re actually
brought here on a three year contract.

The contracts
are pretty clear under what they’re supposed to be said. I’m
not too sure where she’s coming from.

Some of the
information that she’s given you there is completely wrong.
Like, for instance, she’s saying that the majority of
workers in Fiji come from the Indian community. That’s just
complete rubbish. 25 years ago, the majority of workers in
garment factories might have been Indian workers.

But
today, more than 60 percent of the workers in garment
factories are iTaukei Fijians, and in my own factory, I had
less than 20 percent Indian employees. She’s not even up to
date with the actual information for the people that are
actually working in our industry.

Quite frankly, I
think she is either misinformed or she’s uninformed, or
she’s just simply sprouting old information that suits their
purposes.

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