China, Guangzhou: H&M have more than 400 supplier factories just in the peoples republic of China where the enterprise supposedly “is encouraging workers to get organized and stand up for fair wages”. Not quite just by chance we visited the MASSUE FASHION LTD factory in Guangzhou at the top of the pacific delta where Honkong is at the tip facing the ocean.  The hourly wages here are 3 EURO. There are Labour unions, but they are state run cheer leading organizations who distinguish themselves by always trying to prevent strikes.  However recently a spontaneously organized strike did break out here. This was then put down with great brutality and many arrests  by the police. The strike was against the fact that MASSUE FASHIONB LTD  was to outsource half of its production to Nigeria.  The hourly wage there is just above 1 EURO …

 Kadma in Nigeria is a city with an seemingly gigantic textile industry. Even at a first glimpse however we are corrected by bystanders.  The Nigerian textile industry has lost more than 2 million jobs to China since the 1970s. The decline started in 1997 when the Nigerian government decreed the total liberalization of the textile market. Soon thereafter exact copies of the unique African designs and materials started arriving in the Nigerian market coming from China where they could be produced much cheaper. The local textile industry is now, with a few exceptions,  reduced to printing the cotton materials imported from China and has thus lost more than half of its work force.  The   D.V. Fashion Limited 1, a subsidiary of the MASSUE FASHION LTD of Guangzhou is now building a modern Textile factory here but they are not thinking of creating more than a maximum of 800 jobs.