Fiji's garment exports have halved in the last decade. Photo: 123rf
Fiji's union movement wants garment workers to earn more and has accused the country's factory owners of dragging the chain.
Last week, RNZ Pacific spoke with Jotika Gounder-Sharma about the work the Fiji Trades Union Congress (FTUC) is doing with the New Zealand civil society group UnionAID to bring a living wage to the garment workers.
But Mike Towler, a former president of the Textile Clothing and Footwear Council of Fiji, has taken issue with much of what the Fijian union official said.
RNZ Pacific interviewed Towler and began by asking about the state of the garment sector in the country.
(This transcript has been edited for brevity and clarity).
Mike Towler: It's quite dire. You know, one of the main reasons, before I talk about wage rates, the issue that, straight after Covid in 2022 and 2023, Fiji lost around 20 to 25 percent of its skilled workforce to both Australia and New Zealand.
Our industry, like everybody else, lost a lot of its skilled workers. And those skilled workers were being attracted to Australia through all sorts of means, particularly the PALM (Pacific Australia Labour Mobility) scheme here in Fiji that supplies workers to industries in Australia.
But we also lost skilled workers [to] working in industries like the meat industry in Australia, where a senior machinist in a garment factory, next thing you know, they're a boner in a Perth factory. Now how that happened I've got no idea but the Fijian government should be held to account for that. We also lost a lot of skilled workers who used a scam back door visa to get into Australia. It's a student visa so got people who were 30, 40, 50 years of age working as a skilled worker in Fiji was able to go to Australia on a student visa and work as a barista in a cafe or whatever.
This all sort of drained Fiji of its skilled workforce. We ended up with a lot of people working in our industry who weren't skilled. Our productivity just went through the floor at the same time, the wage rates were going through the roof, a no win situation. But a lot of the information that's contained in that article that was written is just simply wrong.
Don Wiseman: Let's look at that. What was wrong?
MT: Well, the first thing is that the garment industry had always paid the national minimum wage. Jotika is saying that when it was $2.32 an hour, and when it increased to $2.68 an hour, still the garment industry remained below $2.68 an hour. That's totally incorrect. We were compelled by law, and we did pay all of our staff the national minimum wage at the time, which is now $5 an hour, or they were paid above it.
DW: All right. Well, let's look at what they're talking about. They want a living wage for these workers, FJ$8 an hour. Would the industry be able to support that?
MT: The industry is not going to be able to even pay $6 an hour, which is the government's policy, to move from five to $6 an hour before the end of this current term. So $8 an hour, they call that a living wage.
But look a majority of women that work in our industry are the second income earner of a household. Yes, there are instances where they are the primary income earner of a household, but an industry can only afford to pay wage rates that are commensurate with what is the productivity.
Of course, we could pay $8 an hour if our workforce was more skilled and was more productive, but it just simply isn't.
I've been in business in Fiji here for 33 years, and I've just closed my business totally because I was unable to sustain the overheads - not only wages, but productivity and costs associated with getting my raw material into Fiji and my finished product out of Fiji.
I had no choice in there. I had to close my business before I went broke.
DW: You lost a lot of workers overseas going to Australia, as you say, under this PALM scheme. And New Zealand, yes, but they've left because they could earn more money. That's the simple thing.
MT: That's a given. But you earn more money in places like Australia [and] New Zealand, but the living costs are also quite high. The wage rates in Fiji can measure it with the living costs for the local population.
Photo: Fiji Trades Union Congress
DW: Do you think people can survive on $5 an hour?
MT: Yes, people can survive on $5 an hour here in Fiji. But also $5 an hour is a base rate. Like, for instance, if you've got a machinist in your factory who has been there for three to five years and she's become quite skilled in a number of operations, you can't pay that machinist $5 an hour because she'll just simply go somewhere else that'll pay a six and $7 an hour.
Most of my skilled machinists before I had to close my business were only in the $6 to $7 an hour for a skilled machinist, because that was the rate I had to pay to to maintain their employment.
DW: The garment industry in Fiji used to employ 20,000 odd people, and it's gone right back over the last 15 years or so, hasn't it? So 5000 workers there now, not the same number of companies, Can the remaining operators survive?
MT: That figure is now below 4,000. We've become a bit of a rump of what we used to be. Yes, there were 22,000 workers in the garment industry in Fiji at the turn of the century. But all sorts of reasons for why that has reduced over the years. But uncompetitive pricing is the major reason. And what's left now is industries that are boutique, niche or they've got a vertical business where they manufacture and retail.
The largest garment manufacturer in Fiji is a company called Lyndhurst, who make the Kookai brand of clothing, and they retail the product in their own stores in Australia and New Zealand. They're able to manufacture in Fiji and retail in Australia. So there's no middleman there.
But a majority of the factories that are left here aren't vertical like that. They are factories that manufacture for a wholesaler in Australia or New Zealand, and then as wholesalers then sell to the retail trades at a profit margin of 20.
And quite frankly, we're becoming less and less competitive in that sort of market because people are able to take their business to places in Southeast and North Asia that are much more competitive. So they do.
DW: The imposition of Trump tariffs will have some impact in a whole lot of those markets.
MT: Look, I just don't think the tariffs is a longterm issue. I think that changing the supplier from Vietnam to Fiji is not as easy as you think it is. And quite frankly, everybody's going to be able to negotiate a deal, because that's what it's all about.
At the end of the day, Fiji was also tariffed to something like 32 percent, so places like Bangladesh and Vietnam and, to some lesser degree China, they are going to negotiate a better deal than what Fiji's currently got.
Nobody's going to be rushing to move to places like Fiji because these tariffs aren't good.
This is not going to happen and one of the major reasons why people won't rush to Fiji is: we have a skilled worker shortage in this country, our wage rates are nearly double what they are in our competitor countries, and there's no raw material here, so you've got to get it all here first.
Those are all the hurdles that you're going to face in operating a business here in Fiji. But the biggie is the fact that we have got a huge lack of skilled workers.
That unionist talks about importing Sri Lankans. Well, she [Jotika] totally got that wrong. Actually, what the industry has had to do is import Bangladeshis. Now all of those people come into this country under a contract, and that contract has to be approved by both the Minister of Employment and the Minister of Immigration to get them to come into Fiji.
You cannot actually write a contract that is below the national minimum wage. In fact, you want to track Bangladeshi workers into our industries in Fiji - and it's not only the garment industry that is importing workers from Bangladesh - there's a lot of different industries are doing it, but you can't pay them $5 Fijian an hour and get them here. They won't come.
And secondly, they come under contract, so I'm not too sure what the union thinks they can do for them after they've got it here.
One of the things that you failed to mention in that interview [is] that every factory in Fiji that employs more than 20 workers is compelled by law to have a Labour Management Consultation and Co-operation Committee, which is a representative committee of workers in your factory. You are compelled, by law, to meet with them at least once a month and discuss any grievances that they have.
Believe you me, anybody that's got a grievance in your factory, those people bring it to that committee, brings it to management's attention in our monthly discussions, and we resolve it because it's in our interest to resolve it.
I'm not too sure what she thinks you can do for the Bangladeshi workers. They're not Sri Lankan workers, Bangladeshi workers, in the factories, particularly in Lautoka, because quite frankly, I can't see what they could possibly do from when they're actually brought here on a three year contract.
The contracts are pretty clear under what they're supposed to be said. I'm not too sure where she's coming from.
Some of the information that she's given you there is completely wrong. Like, for instance, she's saying that the majority of workers in Fiji come from the Indian community. That's just complete rubbish. 25 years ago, the majority of workers in garment factories might have been Indian workers.
But today, more than 60 percent of the workers in garment factories are iTaukei Fijians, and in my own factory, I had less than 20 percent Indian employees. She's not even up to date with the actual information for the people that are actually working in our industry.
Quite frankly, I think she is either misinformed or she's uninformed, or she's just simply sprouting old information that suits their purposes.
