I'm just here for lunch

This morning, one of our Indian social and environmental compliance auditors took me to a handwork center where workers apply beads and sequins to garments by hand. One of the things I like best about traveling for work is that I get to see areas of cities that tourists normally wouldn't get access to and I can see how real citizens of a community live.

We drove to the outskirts of Delhi where streets are narrow, there was mud and cow dung all over the unpaved roads and people lined the sidewalks. I'd never seen this much concentration of poverty before and it was kind of disconcerting. Stalls were open selling fruit, juices and other wares, but seriously filty and malnourished people were just out and about, going at their daily routines or just sitting there, existing.

We meandered through the streets and went up a narrow flight of stairs to a small room on the third floor of a building. In it, 21 men sat on the floor, diligently applying silver beads to women's tops with a red and white floral pattern. To me, the garment was kind of hideous so I was glad to learn that the product was not The Corporation's, but a competitor's.

I learned that this particular art of beading and sequinsing is done by men only. It's a trade that's been passed through generations and is considered an Indian handicraft. The effect cannot be replicated by machine, so many brands must rely on hand work to accomplish the effect.

Per each order, a group of men will be hired to work for the duration of time until the order is complete. Thus, depending on the size of the order, the number of workers in the room can range from 15 to 30. And during this period, they receive a wage per garment finished, a food stipend of 50 rupees per day (the cost of my ample lunch yesterday!) and they receive lodging through the night. For those craftsmen who are skilled enough to perform this task, it is apparently a good way to make money to support a family.

I'd never seen a hand work center of this nature before and it was quite a contrast to the garment factories I've visited. There's no production line, just a worker with a bag of beads and a garment stretched on a hoop. A television and radio were available for entertainment and they seemed content to be working.

The center's manager took us a few buildings down and we visited another one of his centers on the building's top floor. This one housed 15 men applying beads to the same product. After checking through this facility, we walked down a flight of steps and my co-worker asked what the other rooms in the building were used for. The manager responded that he didn't know because they belonged to other businesses.

Curious, my co-worker opened one of the doors and was startled to see a small cramped room in which about two dozen men were sewing shirts for a local Indian brand. One boy who looked like he was nine-years-old (he was probably 14 - all workers I've ever seen in factories look very young for their ages) and when my co-worker asked how old he was, he responded, "I'm just here for lunch."

Fortunately, this facility has no relationship to The Corporation, but it hammered home the plight that India's poor face. Poverty-stricken families send (or sell) their children to work and earn a wage. They depend on every able-bodied member of the family to contribute to the family's subsistence. Education is not an option for them and their concerns are immediate: putting food on the table for tonight.

It broke my heart to see such conditions since I'd only ever seen factories that The Corporation uses. And despite what people may think, The Corporation has one of the most rigorous social and environmental programs in the industry. The factory I visited later in the day was a stark contrast: orderly cut & sew lines, workers with age documentation and employment contracts, clean canteens that served healthy meals and protective equipment for each worker. We were given access to wage and hour records and we were allowed to interview random workers individually.

But regarding the handwork centers, we expressed concerns to the manager that his operations were in close proximity to facilities that would never be approved by The Corporation. We encouraged him to relocate his centers so that his work wouldn't be in the same building as a facility that clearly operated unethically and employed child labor. Even though the makeshift factory was not working for The Corporation, we want to make sure we distance ourselves from conditions we cannot approve.

By the afternoon, the handwork manager had consolidated his operations into one building where he could oversee working conditions and we were free to audit on an announced or unannounced basis.

I know we alone cannot change some of the horrible human tragedies that occur in the global garment industry, but I am glad to work for a company that is doing what it can, has been making continuous progress and is protecting the workers who make the products that The Corporation sells.