Table of Contents
The Fijian garment industry has had a short and often turbulent history. A product of the post-1987 coup strategy of export-led economic development coupled with key preferential trading arrangements, it experienced a dramatic early growth. The industry rapidly became a critical part of the economic structure of Fiji, often surpassing sugar as the number-one export sector. Immediately before the 2000 coup, about 105 factories were employing 18,000 to 20,000 workers and were exporting more than $F300 million in garments to Australia, the USA, Europe and New Zealand. This accounted for an estimated 28 per cent of local weekly waged employment (Keith-Reid 2001). Not only was the industry important in terms of providing employment to some of the estimated 17,000 annual new entrants into the labour market (new formal sector jobs typically average 2,000 annually), it was recognised as the largest employer of urban low-income earners in the country. From 1997 to 2001, garments replaced sugar as the country’s leading export sector, accounting for an average 26 per cent of total exports (MoF and National Planning 2002: 15). It was even hoped that the Textiles, Clothing and Footwear (TCF) sector would reach $F1 billion in exports in 2005, that employment would reach 30,000, and that the industry would be in a position to move beyond its reliance on preferential trade agreements and its dependence on Australasia and the USA (FTIB 1999).
Despite the industry’s rapid and impressive growth there has always been disquiet over the sustainability of the industry and the benefits of garment factory employment for employees, especially women. While the garment sector has proved to be a critical source of livelihood for low-income earners it has come in for sustained criticism over the years regarding poor labour conditions, low wages and exploitation of female labour (Harrington 2004: 496). Arguably these conditions have been accentuated by regional and global trade agreements, which essentially consign the garment sector in Fiji to a low-wage and low-skill role, thus perpetuating industry dependence and its workforce to ‘working poverty’. The industry’s economic bases have remained fragile and dependent on markets and buyers over which it has little control. Consequently the sector has struggled to mature in terms of becoming an efficient and sustainable industry. Reliance on preferential trade agreements, which gave rise to its rapid growth, has masked the garment sector’s inability to add value to products and develop key markets outside the region. Some of these vulnerabilities have been exposed by the loss of quota access to the USA as a result of the expiry of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement (MFA) on January 1, 2005. Even government and some owners appear to be going cold on the sustainability of the industry, considering garments to be a ‘stagnating’ or even a ‘dying’ sector.
The garment industry’s rise, particularly in the 1990s, was in many ways a case of ‘dependent development’ evolving on the back of preferential trading agreements, notably the South Pacific Regional Trade and Economic Cooperation Agreement (SPARTECA, 1980), the Import Credit Scheme (ICS) and the MFA. As a result, manufacturers have relied on a few key markets (notably Australia) for continued purchasing support and as a source of raw materials. Today this initially dominant role as a cut, make and trim industry has been all but eliminated by cheaper production sources in China and South-East Asia. As a result of the failure to move beyond this dependence on expiring trade agreements a number of factories closed during 2004–05. Recent estimates are that employment has dropped below 12,000, with an estimated 6,000–8,000 jobs lost in 2005 alone. In terms of economic impact, in the first few months of 2005 garments earnings were $A80.9 million below the 2004 figure, leading the ADB to forecast diminishing growth rates for the country as a whole (Radio New Zealand International, April 28, 2005). Production in the Fiji garment and footwear industry, measured in physical output, fell 55% between 2004 and 2005 (Fiji Times 2006).
Notwithstanding these challenges and criticisms, the garment industry has survived and continues to be critical for Fiji in economic growth, employment creation, foreign investment and skill development. While critics of the industry remain, particularly of its record on labour issues, no one would wish to see the sector disappear altogether. There are fewer than 12,000 people, mostly women, still employed in the garment industry and their incomes are critical for many urban poor households for which few fall-back positions exist (see Harrington 2004).
Regionalism and globalisation have played a significant role in shaping the Fijian garment industry. This chapter begins by examining the origins of the industry in terms of regional trade agreements, which have had a profound impact on the evolution of the sector and have, arguably, created an industry in Fiji without the skills and linkages that it needs to survive outside of those agreements. This chapter further depicts regional and global trade agreements as a response to global capitalism and a rapidly changing political economy of trade, which is neither predictable nor fixed. Nor is it always logical, often reflecting complex local responses to the flow of trade and its impact on domestic markets and labour, which are mediated and negotiated by states. Ironically, the challenge facing countries such as Fiji is not necessarily the inability to compete globally or regionally but their lack of power in renegotiating the trade agreements made by larger powers which seek to curtail and regulate the competitive impact of less-developed countries and their labour in the global marketplace. A problem which is then faced by states such as Fiji is how to have a greater impact on the governance of global capitalism and globalisation, which will lead to more opportunities for industries such as the garment industry (WCSDG 2005). However, the ability of Fiji to influence decisions made at a regional/global level is constrained by its small-state status as well as the small size and role of its factories in textile and garment production.
Nevertheless, players in the garment industry in Fiji are neither passive nor static in the face of these shifts and the debates that surround them. In the past five difficult years a number of factories have demonstrated an awareness of the changing nature of the trade and a degree of autonomy and agency in terms of repositioning themselves. Consequently an important aim of this paper is to trace these responses in order to demonstrate the range of strategies and decisions being made, the opportunities (or otherwise) for adaptation or regeneration, and what this tells us about globalisation (and more specifically global capitalism) in the region. Such an actor-network approach has been utilised to great effect in analysing the garment industry and globalisation in Turkey (Tokatli 2003) and Asia (Yeung 2000).