Can you imagine having to work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week for 24 Eurocents (25 Dollarcents) an hour?
If you'd work in the Tung Tat Garment Factory in China, you would. Chinese sewers manufacture Adidas-equipment in that factory.

That is just one of hundreds of anecdotes in Austrian journalist Klaus Werner and his German colleague Hans Weiss' book 'Schwarzbuch Markenfirmen' (Brandfirms BlackBook). The facts in this book aren't new; 'This is a book to piss off its readers, to kick them a conscience', says Weiss.

Fifty multi-nationals are aimed in their study: from Adidas to Chicco, from Hilfiger to Levi's, from Nike to Shell.

The top three: Bayer ('import of raw materials from war-area's, finance of unethical medical tests, obstruction of the dispersal of cheap Aids-drugs, sales of dangerous pesticides'), TotalFinaElf ('active everywhere where there is oil and human rights are being violated: Myanmar, Sudan, Angola, Nigeria'), and the usual suspect: McDonald's ('environmental damage, exploitation of Chinese children in the creation of Happy Meal-toys').

Werner and Weiss went undercover in both Congo and Eastern-Europe.
In Congo, they ended up in the forgotten war: the war for coltran (substance needed for cellular phones) ("We see people jump out of the WTC-towers live on CNN. In Africa, there ain't no camera's, although three million people died there.") Bayer is the world's largest coltran-importer.

Some other facts: at least 250 million children between FIVE and TWELVE are slaves: 12 million of them work in the 'export-business'. Under pressure of international movements, some multinationals have pushed their suppliers to not use children anymore. The result: their places are being taken by young adults, who get paid the same as those children. The consequence: they don't make enough money to supply thier children, who end up in the streets, begging for money. In Mali, you can buy a child for 25 Euros/25 USD. They're used to work from 6am to 9pm, 7 days a week, guarded by dogs. Way to go, Nestlé.

In Eastern-Europe, they found out that Bayer pays lots of money to clinics to use their patients for 'experiments'.

What really bothers me, is that Bayer boycots those cheap AIDS-drugs. IMO, that makes Bayer guilty of murder...mass-murder. I'm all for capitalism, and I don't like those 'anti-globalism'-movements (although I lub Manu Chao ), but what Bayer is doing here, is way off...

What we need, imo, is world-wide union movements (although I have something against unions): we need to 'export' the syndical movements we had some 100 years ago to the third world (if possible, unified in a global movement; hence the globalism). There's no real sense in fighting battles when the media ain't around anymore.

Some links:

Clean Clothes Campaign
Attac: the world is not for sale