Colombian company creates bed that can double as coffin
By CÉSAR GARCÍA 0/8/2020

1 of 8

Rodolfo Gomez, to center, and his employees demonstrate how their design of a cardboard box can serve as both a hospital bed and a coffin, designed for COVID-19 patients, in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 8, 2020. Gomez said he plans to donate the first units to Colombia's Amazonas state, and that he will sell others to small hospitals for 87 dollars. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — 

A Colombian advertising company is pitching a novel if morbid solution to shortages of hospital beds and coffins during the coronavirus pandemic: combine them.

ABC Displays has created a cardboard bed with metal railings that designers say can double as a casket if a patient dies.

 2 OF 8

Rodolfo Gomez, left, and his employees demonstrate how their design of a cardboard box can serve as both a hospital bed and a coffin, designed for COVID-19 patients, in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 8, 2020. Gomez said he plans to donate the first units to Colombia's Amazonas state, and that he will sell others to small hospitals for 87 dollars. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Families in the coastal city of Guayaquil waited with dead loved ones in their homes for days last month as COVID-19 cases surged. Many could not find or were unable to afford a wood coffin, using donated cardboard ones instead.“Poor families don’t have a way of paying for a coffin,” Gómez said.

Gómez said he plans to donate 10 of his new beds to Colombia’s Amazonas department, where resources are in short supply. So far there is no indication whether the beds will be put to use and no orders have been placed.


The Bogota-based company is usually at work on advertisements but has been mostly paralyzed over the last month as Colombia remains on lockdown. The South American nation has reported nearly 9,500 confirmed cases of the virus.


3 OF 8

Workers at a company that designs packaging for product displays carry a box containing one of their co-workers to demonstrate how their new design of a cardboard box can serve as both a hospital bed and a coffin, designed for COVID-19 patients, in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 8, 2020. Owner Rodolfo Gomez said he plans to donate the first units to Colombia's Amazonas state, and that the company will sell others to small hospitals for 87 dollars. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

The beds can hold a weight of 330 pounds (150 kilograms) and will cost about $85 each, Gómez said. He said he worked with a private clinic on the design, which he hopes will be put to use in emergency clinics that might become short on beds.

At least one doctor was skeptical of how sturdy a cardboard bed might be. He also warned that any corpses should first be placed in a sealed bag before being put in a cardboard coffin to avoid potentially spreading the disease.

4 OF 8

Rodolfo Gomez, center, owner of a company that designs packaging for product displays, sits with his employees on top of a box to demonstrate the sturdiness of their design of a cardboard box intended to serve as both a hospital bed or coffin for COVID-19 patients, in Bogota, Colombia, Friday, May 8, 2020. Gomez said he plans to donate the first units to Colombia's Amazonas state, and that he will sell others to small hospitals for 87 dollars. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

REST OF THE FOTOS HERE 

 https://apnews.com/22c8922f3bf6b09125bdfb72de1f5c21/gallery/66865a7a3085408aa54a04164ede9eba

UPDATE 
 Hundreds Of People Are Seriously Ill After A Deadly Gas Leak In India

At least 11 people have died after styrene gas leaked from the LG Polymers factory in the city of Visakhapatnam, although it is feared the death toll will rise.

Nishita JhaBuzzFeed News Reporter
Reporting From New Delhi May 7, 2020

- / Getty Images

NEW DELHI — Hundreds of people have been taken to hospital after a styrene gas leak at a chemical factory in southeast India.

At least 11 people have died after the leak took place in the middle of the night in the city of Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh state, although the death toll is expected to rise. More than 1,000 people are thought to be ill as a result of the incident.


- / Getty Images
People gather in front of the LG Polymers plant following the gas leak.

Operations at the South Korean–owned LG Polymers factory were only just resuming due to coronavirus-related restrictions in place since March. A spokesperson confirmed from Seoul that a security guard discovered the leak overnight.



- / Getty Images
Rescuers evacuate people following the gas leak.

Styrene is a gas that is used to make plastics and rubber. Extremely distressing pictures and videos of people struggling to breathe and collapsing on sidewalks have been posted online. Several showed limp bodies of adults and children being loaded into cars and ambulances.


Srijana Gummalla@GummallaSrijana
Primary report is PVC gas (or Styrene) leaked from LG Polymers, Vepagunta near Gopalapatnam in Visakhapatnam at around 2:30 AM today Because of the leakage of the said compound gas hundreds of people have inhaled it and either fell unconscious or having breathing issues.02:51 AM - 07 May 2020


Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC)@GVMC_OFFICIAL
Precautionary Measures for Gas Leak accident.06:38 AM - 07 May 2020
Reply Retweet Favorite
The director-general of India’s National Disaster Response Force told broadcaster NDTV that people admitted to the hospital were semiconscious, showing signs of nausea and skin irritation.


NDTV@ndtv
WATCH | "As of now, the gas leakage has stopped but a lot of people have been hospitalised and are in a semi-unconscious state. Many of them are facing breathing problems, skin irritation": SN Pradhan, DG, NDRF. #VizagGasLeak04:07 AM - 07 May 2020


According to the AP, an 8-year-old girl was among those who died, as well as a person who died falling into a well while trying to escape the gas.

A member of the state police has told HuffPost India that at least 70 people are in critical condition in different hospitals, while the director-general of police said that 20 people are on ventilators.

"We are currently assessing the extent of the damage on residents in the town and are taking all necessary measures to protect residents and employees in collaboration with related organizations," LG Chem, the owner of LG Polymers, said in a statement. Another representative from LG Polymers told the state’s chief minister that in order for casualties to decrease, emissions would have to “come to zero,” which had not happened yet.

Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation (GVMC)@GVMC_OFFICIAL
GVMC officials blowing water through mist blowers to subside the effect of Syrene Gas leak at Gopalapatnam area of Visakhapatnam.05:25 AM - 07 May 2020

An official from the state of Gujarat said that 500 kilograms of another chemical that was likely to neutralize the gas leakage was being airlifted to the chemical plant.


tv9gujarati@tv9gujarati
After request of Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister @ysjagan , Gujarat Chief Minister @vijayrupanibjp gives orders to chemical companies in Vapi to send PTBL chemical by road to Daman for airlift: Ashwani Kumar, Secretary to #Gujarat Chief Minister #TV9News11:06 AM - 07 May 2020

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said he had spoken to officials from the federal home ministry and the National Disaster Management Authority, who were monitoring the crisis.

Narendra Modi@narendramodi
Spoke to officials of MHA and NDMA regarding the situation in Visakhapatnam, which is being monitored closely. I pray for everyone’s safety and well-being in Visakhapatnam.04:32 AM - 07 May 2020

India’s National Human Rights Commission has also taken notice of fatalities as a result of the leak and asked the state’s officials to conduct an investigation.

SEE 
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/update-indians-recall-horrifying.html

 https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/update-more-evacuations-near-indian.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/hundreds-of-people-are-seriously-ill.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/05/update-more-evacuations-near-indian.html







MORE ON THIS
This Shocking Video Shows Workers Being Sprayed With Unknown Chemicals During A Coronavirus Lockdown

Nishita Jha · April 1, 2020

At This Coronavirus Graveyard, Family Members Have To Bury Their Loved Ones With Their Own Hands

Nishita Jha · April 20, 2020

FOTO ESSAY'S
California's 'weed nuns' on a mission to heal with cannabis
The "Sisters of the Valley," California's self-ordained "weed nuns," are on a mission to heal and empower women with their cannabis product
Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2bhyT

'Joint-smoking nuns
Based near the town of Merced in California's Central Valley, which produces over half of the fruit, vegetables and nuts grown in the United States, the Sisters of the Valley grow and harvest their own plants - cannabis plants.

Weed Nuns Marihuana Nonnen (Reuters/L.Nicholson)
No halo
Despite the moniker, the nuns don't belong to any order of the Catholic Church. "We're against religion, so we're not a religion. We consider ourselves Beguine revivalists, and we reach back to pre-Christian practices," says Sister Kate, who founded the sisterhood in 2014.

Kalifornien Nonnen verarbeiten Marihuana (Reuters/L. Nicholson)
From 'Sister Occupy' to 'weed nun'
Sister Kate adopted the nun persona after she took part in an Occupy Wall Street protest in 2011 dressed as a Catholic nun, a look that led her to be known by protesters as "Sister Occupy."

The group's Holy Trinity is marijuana
Sister Freya ladles cannabidiol salve made from hemp. CBD, the abbreviation for cannabidiol, has analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anti-anxiety properties. The nuns explain that hemp, a strain of marijuana, has very low levels of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive compound in the plant.

For the sake of well-being
Members turn the hemp into cannabis-based balms and ointments, which they say have the power to improve health and well-being. Sister Kate reports that the group had roughly $750,000 (€700,000) in sales last year, the most since it started selling products in January 2015.

Kalifornien Nonnen verarbeiten Marihuana (Reuters/L. Nicholson)
Critics of marijuana legalization won't stop the nuns
President Donald Trump's administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime critic of marijuana legalization, have worried some in the country's nascent legalized marijuana industry. But the "weed nuns" say the new administration has strengthened their resolve.

Kalifornien Nonnen verarbeiten Marihuana (Reuters/L. Nicholson)
Critics of marijuana legalization won't stop the nuns
President Donald Trump's administration and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a longtime critic of marijuana legalization, have worried some in the country's nascent legalized marijuana industry. But the "weed nuns" say the new administration has strengthened their resolve.

Salvation in Canada
"The thing Trump has done for us is put a fire under our butts to get launched in another country," says Sister Kate. "Our response to Trump is Canada." The group makes online sales to Canada, and hopes to launch an operation there in two months.

Italian Army grow cannabis for medical purposes
Cannabis cures: Italy launches a pilot project for domestic production of cannabis to become independent from Dutch imports and meet the demand for medical cannabis.

Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2YGh6

Person looking at cannabis plants
(Getty images/AFP/F. Monteforte)
Cannabis-based medicine is produced by the Italian Army at
Stabilimento Chimico Farmaceutico Militare in Florence.


Italy military building (Getty images/AFP/F. Monteforte)
Military project
The production of cannabis is just one of the activities of the military's 164-year-old chemical and pharmaceutical institute. The body prides itself on the fact that its cannabis was registered as a pharmaceutical product by Italy's medicines agency in September 2015. The end product is very different from most of the cannabis consumed around the world.


Cannabis plant (Getty images/AFP/F. Monteforte)
Less THC, more CBD
The component that gets recreational users high - tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - is less useful to doctors than another active ingredient, the anti-inflammatory cannabidiol (CBD). An estimated 2,000 -3,000 Italians currently use medical cannabis for instance to relieve multiple sclerosis pain and spasticity or combat nausea after chemotherapy.


"I have never tried it!"
"No, I have never tried it, and I don't have any intention of trying it either," says Antonio Medica, the colonel in charge of the Italian military's cannabis laboratory in Florence. He laughs that one of his colleagues joked the other day, saying they spent 40 years trying to stop the troops smoking it in the barracks and "now we are producing it ourselves'."


Suiting up for the growing room
Production in a sterile, sealed environment is very important. "That is the only way you can ensure a consistent product and one free from the toxic materials, particularly heavy metals like mercury, that the plants can easily absorb when grown in fields," Medica explains.


Relief for cancer patients
The German parliament In January 2017 voted unanimously in a landmark bill to legalize the use of medical marijuana, for instance ot help cancer patients feeling nauseaous after chemotherapy. The drug is also said to help fight a lack of appetite and weight loss in tumor patients, and can alleviate symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

Italien Militär baut Cannabis für Schwerkranke an (Getty images/AFP/F. Monteforte)
Made in Italy
Above, a pharmacist prepares a prescription of marijuana in the laboratories. The first batches of made-in-Italy pot have just arrived in pharmacies.

Grubhub Collected Record Fees From Restaurants Struggling To Stay Alive During The Pandemic 

Restaurants expect to lose $240 billion by the end of the year, but for Grubhub, “COVID-19 is a net tailwind” for now.
Venessa Wong BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on May 7, 2020

Cindy Ord / Getty Images
As empty restaurants around the country struggle against an uncertain future and perhaps unrealistic guidelines for reopening during the coronavirus pandemic, takeout-ordering company Grubhub reported record revenues of $363 million from January through March, up 12% from the same quarter a year ago.

Restaurant owners have long complained that fees charged by ordering platforms like Grubhub, often ranging from 15% to 30%, make orders less profitable, and sometimes unprofitable — but businesses have no choice but to use them if they want to retain customers. They also discovered Grubhub was secretly buying up thousands of restaurant domain names and using them to build shadow websites that competed with pages operated by restaurants. Now, with dining rooms closed and lockdowns still in effect, takeout orders facilitated by platforms like Gruhub have become a crucial source of business.

Susie Cagle@susie_c
The owner of @ChiPizzaBoss shared this nightmarish Grubhub invoice that will haunt me for days. https://t.co/VMDcIgAqxd
09:26 PM - 30 Apr 2020

San Francisco and Seattle recently implemented emergency fee caps on delivery services, but Grubhub has not reduced fees in other markets during the pandemic, including in New York, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.

“I can’t believe that we have to legislate over a company whose gross food sales are in the billions in order for them to give local restaurants a break."

New York City lawmakers have proposed capping delivery service fees at 10% and banning advertising or processing fees when a state of emergency has been declared. Meanwhile, consumers filed a lawsuit against Grubhub, Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Postmates last month, accusing them of using their monopoly power to charge restaurants high fees that are passed on to customers during a financially catastrophic pandemic. The companies’ “fees are shocking when one considers how little value Defendants provide to restaurants and consumers,” their complaint stated.

“I can’t believe that we have to legislate over a company whose gross food sales are in the billions in order for them to give local restaurants a break of a few hundred dollars per month!” New York City Councilmember Justin Brannan said to BuzzFeed News.


JustinBrannan@JustinBrannan
To all food delivery app drivers & workers: NYC thanks you endlessly and the @NYCCouncil is here to protect and support you. We have a bill (@FranciscoMoyaNY's Intro #1908) that would require a one-time emergency cap of 10% commission for delivery apps during the pandemic.  04:59 PM - 02 May 2020

Grubhub’s record quarter included about two weeks at the end of March that were negatively impacted by coronavirus closures, but its business quickly rebounded. The company reported the number of daily average orders in April increased by 20% compared to a year ago, and “all of our non-New York markets are experiencing a growth surge with many over 100% year-over-year.”

“For now, COVID-19 is a net tailwind for our growth metrics,” Grubhub noted in its earnings release. Executives told investors on Thursday that while business is up significantly, the company is merely breaking even, that it will invest nearly all profits in the second quarter to helping restaurants boost their orders, and that it has deferred $100 million in commissions to help restaurants (although restaurant owners say the fine print on the deferral program makes it far less helpful than waiving or reducing fees).

Critics say such measures are not enough. “If Grubhub and other delivery apps truly want to support the local restaurants they depend on for their billions, they don’t need to come up with creative schemes. Just cap the commission so the local restaurants can survive this crisis,” said Brannan.

In its call with investors, Grubhub executives called fee caps ineffective and harmful, reiterating claims it made in an April letter to New York lawmakers: “This arbitrary cap would limit how restaurants, and especially small and independent establishments, can market themselves and therefore severely limits how many customers and orders we can bring to these restaurants.”

MORE ON THIS
This Restaurant's "Exhausting" List Of Coronavirus Procedures Shows How Hard It Is To Reopen
Tasneem Nashrulla · May 4, 2020 

Georgia, Tennessee, And Alaska Want Restaurants To Reopen — McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, And Dunkin’ Are Saying Not So Fast .   
Venessa Wong · April 27, 2020 

These Updating Charts Show The Record Number Of Americans Filing Unemployment Claims
Lam Thuy Vo · March 20, 2020 



\Venessa Wong is a technology and business reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

Zara’s Billionaire Owner Was Praised For Helping In The Coronavirus Crisis. Workers In Myanmar Paid The Price.

Fast fashion was always a problem. Now, COVID-19 has deepened the inequity between garment workers and fashion labels rebranding themselves as saviors.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING LONG READ FEATURE

Nishita JhaBuzz Feed News Reporter
Reporting From New Delhi Posted on May 7, 2020

Cameron Spencer / Getty Images
Zara's first store opening in Australia, in Sydney in 2011.

NEW DELHI — A woman immaculately dressed for quarantine reads on a plush sofa in her black crop top and anti-fit denim pants. Another, dressed in a flouncy floor-length peach dress, dances in her kitchen with joyous abandon. A third socially distances on a boat, her white poplin shirt dress a contrast to the lush green surroundings.

Meanwhile, in crowded factories located in chaotic, crime-filled industrial hubs, the workers making these clothes find themselves abandoned by Zara, the global retail brand that’s making quarantine look so glamorous.

When more than one-third of the planet went under coronavirus-related lockdowns, fashion changed. The globe-trotting, stylish woman from Zara’s campaigns moved indoors — or at least, that’s where you’ll see her in the slickly produced videos that the global fashion brand uploads to Twitter. It’s possible that no one will don a Versace cape anytime soon, but consumers are ordering clothes online to reflect their new lives: clothes to wear on work Zoom calls, athleisure for exercising at home, sweats and pajamas for lounging around, and clothes that simply make us feel good. The world might be full of uncertainty, but being able to choose the fit, color, and fabric of the shirt we pair with those comfy pajamas still offers the possibility of feeling in control.

The cost of this retail therapy, the longing for comfort and normalcy under lockdown, is being borne by workers thousands of miles away, faces you’d never see in a summer fashion campaign, even when the videos include token models of color. These workers cannot work from home and, in some cases, they are being forced to labor in factories in close proximity to each other without concern for protecting them from the coronavirus. While brands like Zara, which has stores in 96 countries, ramp up work at logistics centers, workers assembling clothes, swimwear, accessories, and shoes are being sacrificed to meet the demand

Zara / @Zara / Via Twitter: @ZARA, Zara / @Zara / Via Twitter: @ZARA, Zara / @Zara / Via Twitter: @ZARA A selection of still images from Zara's recent Twitter campaigns.

Issues with fast fashion far precede the emergence of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, but its rapid spread has deepened the incredible inequity between garment workers who work at one end of the supply chain and wealthy individuals like Zara’s Spanish billionaire owner Amancio Ortega, the world’s sixth-richest man, who are rebranding themselves as benevolent saviors.

At the height of the pandemic in Spain this year, Zara’s parent company, Inditex, closed more than 3,000 stores. Ortega pivoted his fashion empire to making hospital gowns and masks, and according to Forbes, flew in medical supplies worth millions from China. Ortega also made sure that Zara’s Spanish employees received their full salaries during the crisis — all of which won him plenty of great press and support in Spain. On March 28, ambulance crews gathered outside his home to wish him a happy birthday. But Ortega’s generosity and concern for Zara’s workers stopped at the borders of Spain.

Nacho Louro@NachoLouroLas ambulancias de La Coruña delante de la casa de Amancio Ortega para expresar el agradecimiento de toda la sociedad y felicitarle por su cumpleaños. Felicidades Amancio, Marca España 🇪🇦07:38 PM - 28 Mar 2020Reply Retweet Favorite

Although Inditex does not publicly disclose the list of factories it sources clothing from, BuzzFeed News has spoken to employees from two factories that form part of Zara’s supply chain in Myanmar, where workers put in 11-hour shifts, six days a week, for as little as $3.50–$4.74 per day.
While people sang “Happy Birthday” to Ortega from their balconies in Spain, more than 500 workers at the two factories were laid off when they asked to be supplied with durable masks and for social distancing to be introduced to protect them from the coronavirus. One of the factories, Myan Mode, fired every single member of a workers’ union, along with a woman who had complained of being sexually harassed at the factory last year.



Obtained by BuzzFeed News
Inside a Zara factory in Yangon, Myanmar.

Inditex told BuzzFeed News it was working with suppliers to ensure they were following official guidance to protect workers during the pandemic. A spokesperson said that the dispute at Myan Mode had been at least partially resolved, with 29 sacked workers reinstated.

Anxiety about being laid off or having your salary slashed because of the coronavirus crisis has led to thinkpieces, graffiti, and “eat the rich” memes. Britney Spears might be a communist now, and teenagers on TikTok are calling Karl Marx “daddy.” Jeff Bezos — memed mercilessly for losing a minuscule portion of his money — has in fact now added $25 billion, more than the GDP of Honduras, to his total wealth since the coronavirus crisis began. Billionaires in the US have seen their net worth increase by tens of millions of dollars in the last three months.

Many want the ultra-rich to do more, which might be why Rihanna, who has donated millions of dollars to coronavirus relief efforts, has been described as a “one-woman COVID-19 foe.” But the pandemic and its economic repercussions have laid bare the hypocrisy of the super-wealthy who do just enough to make sure they get good press, while treating workers who labor for their brands as disposable.

“We could all die, and for what? Making already rich brands super rich,” one worker said on the phone from Myanmar’s capital, Yangon, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The working class is being sacrificed so they can wear good clothes.”



Sai Aung Main / Getty Images
A man wearing a face mask walks on an empty road, amid restrictions put in place to halt the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Yangon on April 10.

The coronavirus has so far not spread extensively in Myanmar, despite the country sharing a nearly 1,400-mile border with China, and the fact that an estimated 10,000 migrant workers were crossing the border on a daily basis until late January. As of May 7, the country has officially recorded only 176 cases and six deaths.

The country’s first positive case of the coronavirus was recorded on March 23 — a Myanmar citizen living in the United States who had recently returned for a wedding. Until then, Myanmar’s government was still patting itself on the back because there were “no cases of coronavirus in the country” — something the health minister said the people owed to their diet and lifestyle. There was still no mention of social distancing. But like several parts of Southeast Asia, it is difficult to give a true picture because there is insufficient testing — as of May 1, the government had administered 8,300 tests. Experts fear that if the number of coronavirus cases increased dramatically, the country’s public healthcare system would collapse. The World Bank has estimated that Myanmar has only 249 ventilators for a population of almost 55 million.

Not a whole lot had changed in the working practices at Myan Mode, the Zara factory which lies in the heart of the industrial district of Hlaing Tharyar, in Myanmar’s capital, Yangon. Since the factory, whose owners are based in South Korea, opened in 2016, half of all orders have been from Zara.

Hlaing Tharyar is a crowded hub of garment factories and light manufacturers, home to gang violence, police violence, and union clashes. Most of Myan Mode’s workers are young women from rural villages — Myanmar’s garment workforce is over 90% women. At the insistence of the workers’ union, factory bosses had added a basin for workers to wash their hands, while temperature checks took place as workers entered the factory. Employees had been provided with cloth masks in February but they were not durable, and the factory did not supply any other masks.



Courtesy Ohmar Myint
Ohmar Myint


Then suddenly, in the last week of March, everything changed. “The husbands of two women who worked at the factory returned from Thailand and were showing symptoms of COVID-19,” Ohmar Myint, a 34-year-old sewing machine operator at Myan Mode, told BuzzFeed News. “The women and their husbands lived in the dormitory, so everyone found out.”

On March 28, the union decided to speak to the factory’s owners again. “We wanted masks to be made mandatory, an end to mandatory overtime while the crisis was on, and we wanted them to send home the two women whose husbands had COVID-like symptoms,” a veteran union leader named Mau Maung, who was part of the negotiating committee, said. “It was a half-day, Saturday, so the management told us it would come back with a decision soon.” A few hours later, an official came to the room where the workers were gathered and read out a list of 571 names. Everyone on the list, including Myint, Maung, and 520 union members, was fired on the spot, representing about half of Myan Mode’s workforce.

“We were given no notice at all,” Maung said.

Nearly half a million people in Myanmar work in garment factories, living cheek by jowl in dormitories that factories rent to them for half of their salaries. The country’s minimum wage is one of the lowest in Asia, and following a wave of strikes last year, approximately 50,000 garment workers have joined or formed unions. These unions are a lifeline for people who are treated by big brands as convenient, but ultimately disposable, cheap labor. Myan Mode’s union was able to negotiate small victories for the workers, like permission to be up to 15 minutes late for work, and more reasonable working hours than other factories demanded — 44 hours a week, with up to 14 hours of overtime.

Dig into Zara’s history, and you will find its owner Ortega’s origin story recounted in breathless detail. It always begins with poverty, the seed for his philanthropic nature was planted when as a 12-year-old boy he saw his mother being denied food on credit at a local shop in La Coruña.

That kind of poverty is familiar for Myint, who was one of the 571 employees laid off at Myan Mode.

When she spoke to BuzzFeed News on the phone from Yangon, she sounded defiant and sad in turns — the factory had fired every single union member, and a woman who had complained that a senior colleague at the factory had made sexual advances toward her.

Myint said sexual harassment was rampant at garment worker factories in Myanmar, and she admired the way the union stood by the complainant, their solidarity ultimately leading to the man’s resignation from Myan Mode. This, she said, was why she joined the union. BuzzFeed News has been unable to contact the complainant, who union members say has left Yangon and returned to her native village.

“Workers cannot oppress workers, but that’s what happens at the factories,” Myint said. “The factory owners have absolute power — we cannot talk back to them no matter how much they exploit us, or demand better pay, or even ask for leave. If we take even one day off, we lose money. On days we finish our work early, we cannot sign out of the factory, we’re simply given another task, and then another, and another...the work never stops.”

Being in the union gave Myint more bargaining power, she was part of a collective of over 500 people, most of whom were women. But at the end of each day, Myint said, she still felt as though she was a machine whose batteries had died. Her entire body ached from hunching over the zippers and lining she sewed into skirts, jackets, shirts, and hoodies for Zara and its rival Spanish brand, Mango. Once her shift ended, there was still housework to be done, groceries to be carried home, food to be cooked for her family. She had five hours to herself in the entire day, and those were meant for sleep.

Myint said she first learned about the novel coronavirus in January, while browsing Facebook.

“[I was reading about] how contagious it is, and that’s scary for me, because we work so close to each other all day, if one of us fell sick, everyone would fall sick,” she said.

By February, Myint and the other union members had heard that the supply of raw materials from China, things like zippers, fabric, buttons, rivets, and velcro, had stopped coming to Myan Mode. That’s when Myint and the union decided to talk to their employers at the factory.

“We told them, ‘If you have plans to close the factory or fire workers because of coronavirus, let the union know first so we can help people look for other work,’” she said. “The owners agreed, but said there was no plan to close the factory yet.” Myan Mode confirmed the details of this conversation.



Iago Lopez / AP
Amancio Ortega, founding shareholder of Inditex fashion group, in July 2013.

The reputation that Ortega, Inditex’s billionaire founder, enjoys as a small-town hero in Spain is bolstered by stories about his legendary humility. Stories like how his first fashion distribution network began in 1963 at the port city of La Coruña to help women earn money, while their husbands went out to sea to fish. At Inditex’s headquarters in Arteixo, northwestern Spain, he sits at a desk in a corner of a Zara Woman workspace. Ortega, now 84, is so reclusive that until 1999 no photograph of him had even been published. Until lockdowns in Spain forced everyone to stay indoors, Ortega still drank his coffee at his favorite local café.

But Ortega’s true gift is speed. Inditex owns several other brands, including Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Bershka, Oysho, Stradivarius, Zara Home, and Uterqüe. But the company’s crown jewel is undoubtedly Zara. Last month Spanish media gleefully noted that even Pablo Iglesias, Spain’s second deputy prime minister and one of Ortega’s most vocal critics, was spotted wearing a black, fitted Zara Man jacket.

Over the years, as Zara evolved both its name — from Zorba to Zara — and its fashion ethos, the brand built its reputation by trend-spotting and delivering those trends to customers at warp speed: in fashion terms, weeks, instead of months.

Ortega’s quick thinking served him well even when the coronavirus hit Spain. He directed 11 of his factories in Galicia, northwest Spain, to immediately switch to making personal protective equipment (PPE). Zara also delivered washable, splash-proof, even arguably stylish turquoise hospital gowns to medical workers in the city of La Coruña. Soon after that, Ortega flew in another 3 million units of PPE from China, along with 1,450 ventilators for Spain.

In a pre-coronavirus world, Ortega’s way of doing business courted plenty of controversy. In 2015, Zara was accused of discriminating against black employees at its corporate offices (Zara denied the reports), while conditions in factories in Brazil were likened to “slavery” (Zara Brazil responded to the charges saying “the alleged criminal offences pointed out by the inspection report refer to third-party conduct that is not to be confused with Zara’s”). In 2016, Inditex was accused of tax evasion worth over 550 million euros, about $596 million (Inditex published a lengthy response denying the allegations). In 2017, workers making clothes for Zara in Turkey began sewing pleas for help into their lining.

When confronted by these allegations from Brazil and Turkey, Zara turned to the argument often used by big brands that rely on cheap labor for supply chains — they had a contract with the factory, and the factory alone. The way those factories treat their employees is not the brand’s business.

“That’s completely false, of course,” Andrew Tillett-Saks, a labor rights activist who lives and works in Myanmar, told BuzzFeed News. “If these brands were to indicate any interest in keeping workers safe, the factories would immediately follow suit. The fact is the brands have all the power to change things. They just don’t because they prioritize their financial profits over the people who make their clothes.”

To some extent, fashion’s exploitative practices looked like they were about to change following a massive factory accident in Bangladesh’s Rana Plaza in 2013, when an eight-story commercial building collapsed, killing over 1,000 garment factory workers. Inditex was among 200 fast fashion labels to sign a worker safety accord for Bangladeshi workers following the accident — but increasingly, that accord has ceased to matter. This month, for instance, thousands of workers including those who sew clothes for Zara are returning to garment factories in Bangladesh, even during the pandemic.

Courtesy the Myan Mode union
Workers protest unsafe conditions at garment factories in Yangon, Myanmar.

As Thingyan, Myanmar's annual new year water festival, began in April, hundreds of workers returned to their hometowns, uncertain of when they would return to work. Some had accepted a small severance from the factory; others had not. Myint said she and the other union members were growing increasingly certain that they were being punished. Another factory, Rui Ning, located in the same industrial complex as Myan Mode, had laid off 30% of its workers, most of whom were union members too. By this time, the coronavirus crisis was also growing: Yangon imposed a lockdown during the holiday season from April 10 to April 19, as well as a night curfew when it was discovered that 80% of the country’s positive COVID-19 cases were in the capital.

In the past, labor unions and NGOs have been wary of publicly calling out brands because they were afraid of precisely what happened at Myan Mode and Rui Ning — troublemakers would be fired, or the brand would shut that particular factory down and sign a contract with another. “Owners briefly shut down the factory only to quickly reopen with new, nonunion workers,” Tillet-Saks, the labor rights activist, said. “Often, they will change technical details such as the factory’s name or registrant to circumvent labor laws, while maintaining the same core operation.”

VIDEO

 https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/nishitajha/coronavirus-zara-spain-inditex-myanmar
A union leader in Rui Ning explains what happened at the factory.

But the prospect of being unemployed during a pandemic might change that. For the past month, around 30 members of the Myan Mode union who were sacked appeared daily outside the factory’s gates in protest, where they ate, slept, sang union songs. The union has also approached the South Korean consulate and Yangon’s Arbitration Council. “If that does not work, we might even sue,” one leader told BuzzFeed News on the condition of anonymity. BuzzFeed News also learned that union members from the Myan Mode and Rui Ning unions have reached out to union workers in Spain, who have assured them that they will add pressure to negotiations with Inditex and Mango.

“If the Spanish unions do help, this is a great step in the international labor rights movement. It will mean a lot to the union in Myanmar,” said Tillett-Saks, who was aware of emails exchanged between the unions in Myanmar and Spain. “With the employers and brands being so multinational, workers need to be united internationally as well if they are going to have any power to improve the garment industry. All they want is that workers who were fired should be reinstated and that they do not use the pandemic as an excuse to attack the union.”

Inditex’s own code of conduct states that the company supports unions and wants factories to treat workers in the supply chain with care for their health and safety. Days after BuzzFeed News reached out to the company’s ethics committee for a response on the sacking of workers at Myan Mode, a representative from Inditex said the dispute at Myan Mode with 29 workers had been resolved through dialogue, and that the factory had agreed to reinstate the protesting workers. The more than 500 workers who had accepted severance pay could possibly be able to return to the factory once it resumed work at full capacity — although it was unclear when that might happen.

“We have communicated with suppliers to follow local government recommendations and instructions and/or to implement measures to ensure they are following the health protection guidelines for workplaces detailed by the WHO regarding Covid 19,” the Inditex representative wrote.

“We are working closely with our suppliers at this difficult time and we expect continued compliance with our Code of Conduct, which clearly requires fair treatment of workers and no discrimination against workers’ representatives.”

But union workers said the olive branch from Zara, which arrived on May 6, more than a month after 571 workers were fired, was a belated attempt at damage control. “This union-busting case using COVID-19 as cover has not yet been resolved,” a union worker told BuzzFeed News, speaking on the condition of anonymity. The union worker said that the offer to reinstate 29 people fell short of the union’s demands.

For instance, more than 500 workers who were laid off still had no jobs, and the fact that they had accepted a paltry severance was being used against them. Myan Mode had failed to honor an agreement that it would not target the union and lay off workers during the pandemic, the union member said. Myan Mode is still refusing to recognize the union officially, while it has hired hundreds of daily migrant workers who are not members of any union.

Mango did not respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment.


Sai Aung Main / Getty Images
Firefighters wearing protective clothing spray disinfectant along a street as a preventive measure against the spread of COVID-19 in Yangon, April 23.

Across Asia, countries have had two kinds of responses to the pandemic: complete shutdowns like India and Sri Lanka, or partial lockdowns with restrictions, like Cambodia, Indonesia, and Myanmar, where governments have banned gatherings but kept factories running. While these decisions have largely depended on the health of each country’s domestic economy, countries suddenly closing down their borders have caused panic — particularly among the poorest and most invisible populations of migrant workers, who cross domestic and international borders searching for work. This exodus of worried workers, desperate to return home as the worst economic and health crisis grows around them, is occurring in tandem with spikes in COVID-19 cases.

Everything is terrible — but the pandemic is particularly worrying for the people making our clothes, because readymade garment workers work on short-term contracts or are sometimes paid per piece of apparel, existing precariously close to poverty. Already, several brands have canceled orders of clothes that have already been made in factories, and many have reneged on payments promised to workers in Asia. The relentless consumer hunger for branded clothes and fast fashion means that when the worst of the crisis is over, and our appetite for shopping returns, all that a big brand has to do is find the next bunch of cheap laborers.

For too long, we’ve pretended that fast fashion and eco-consciousness can coexist, that the worst excesses of sweatshop exploitation are a thing of the past. Brands like Zara and Mango advertise sustainability all over their stores; other brands assure customers that they recycle all their packaging. But in the middle of a pandemic, it is no longer enough to wear faux concern. ●



Nishita Jha is a global women's rights reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in India.
Contact Nishita Jha