Made in Thailand (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Made in Thailand Jane Kiser Made in Thailand, videotape by Eve-Laure Moros and Linzy Emery. 1999. 30 minutes. This videotape, using a quasi-documentary style, presents the viewer with the words and images of Thai women organizers and the women factory workers they seek to mobilize - against strong odds. These are powerful images, and inspiring, when one considers the probable consequences for any worker who expresses an interest in union representation or engages in any kind of collective action. We see a rally of women workers, wearing red banners of protest around their foreheads and responding enthusiastically to their leader as she blasts their employer's likely closing of their plant. But what employer was this? We aren't told. In another segment, we see others protesting outside a government ministry. Why? It wasn't very clear to me. Throughout the video there are excerpts from interviews with several women who have worked in factories in Bangkok and gone on to do labor organizing (though with no explicit background information). They describe abuses: long hours, heavy lifting, repetitious motions that cause injuries. This dialogue is interspersed with scenes of factory work, stock footage, it appears. As the video progresses, the viewer begins to realize that one organizer is talking about a particular workplace: the Kader Toy Company, which burned in 1993, claiming the lives of 188 employees, most of them women who were trapped inside because management had locked doors to fire escapes. Later, another survivor of the fire, surrounded by cutesy Disney stuffed animals, describes the horror of leaping from the building onto the bodies of her friends who had jumped before, and footage is shown of burned and mangled bodies. The video intermingles the stories of the Kader fire and the stories of other unsafe, unpleasant, and unhealthy factory work to paint a bleak picture of oppression. At one point, the daily wage of toy workers ($3 in 1999) is compared to the average price of one doll ($25), leaving the viewer to conclude that surely these workers could be paid more and treated better than they are —while still earning a profit. Mostly, this video is impressionistic. That may be what you want in a video for some situations: setting the stage for a discussion of the ethics of the practices of multinationals who locate production in Thailand and other low-wage countries to export to the U.S. and other wealthy countries, and our ethics in buying things that are made under such conditions. But if you want more information, you will have to turn elsewhere. You do not learn what U.S. corporations are doing business there, what the status of labor law in Thailand is, whether there are Thai labor unions that are making headway, or whether any progress at all is evident since Thailand emerged in 1996 from four years of military rule. You do not learn who to contact if [End Page 100] you want to learn more or what organizations are involved in international solidarity actions to pressure the Thai government to adopt internationally recognized labor standards. There is insufficient history and analysis provided by the video. Because of these limitations, this video, in my opinion, despite its powerful images, is not nearly as good as it could have been. If you have a limited budget for videos, you might look elsewhere for videos that teach about the effects of globalization and women in the global economy. Made in Thailand, videotape by Eve-Laure Moros and Linzy Emery, may be ordered for $195 from Women Make Movies, 462 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10013, 212.925.0606, www.wmm.com Jane Kiser Division of Labor Studies Indiana University Northwest at Gary Copyright © 2006 the West Virginia University Press, for the United Association for Labor Studies