Conditions
of work and life
Hours
Hours of work in zones vary considerably. In Sri Lanka for example, the Board of Investment specifies a working day for zone enterprises of nine hours, five days a week, with a six-and-a-half hour Saturday, for one-shift operations. There is a one-hour break on all working days. In two-shift operations the working day is eight hours, with five-and-a-half hours on Saturday with a 30-minute break. Many of the plants in other countries visited on missions conducted by ILO officials gathering information for the Action Programme on Social and Labour Issues in Export Processing Zones were working 10- to 12-hour shifts, and up to 16 hours during peak periods. A number of the working practices in EPZs have the effect of prolonging the working shift. Some plants use a quota system which workers have to reach in order to receive their day's pay. In some cases the workers are obliged to work beyond the normal shift in order to fill the quota. Punctuality is often a problem because of the long distances travelled by workers to reach the zone, or unreliable transport services, and so employers often offer a premium to workers who start work early. This may add 30 minutes or even one hour to the shift. One novel approach found by an ILO mission to Sri Lanka concerned a zone enterprise which wanted to encourage punctuality in the mornings and to overcome a steady decline in productivity as the shift progressed, which was attributed to the undernourishment of the young female workers who often left for work without being able to eat breakfast. The management addressed both these problems by offering free breakfast to any employee who came early enough to eat it.
The calculation of overtime pay varies enormously between zones. In some countries zones are granted concessions from the normal provisions in the labour law concerning hours of work, and in others the lack of effective monitoring means that enterprises are able to set their own limits. In Mauritius for example, hours of work in EPZ enterprises are calculated weekly, which means that overtime is paid only if workers work more than 45 hours per week, regardless of how much they work on any particular day. This differs from the provisions applying to non-EPZ enterprises. Frequent extensions of the working day used to be common practice in EPZ enterprises but led to persistent conflict with workers, and so the provisions were amended to require employers to give notice of any anticipated overtime and its duration. In the Philippines an ILO mission visited a plant which had received permission from the Department of Labor to make workers work a 12-hour shift four times a week (calculated at normal rates of pay). This was to reduce the excessive time taken to travel to work due to heavy traffic in the area. In Guatemala most EPZ plants work a 10- to 12-hour day, but this is often extended, generating considerable controversy about how the extra hours should be remunerated.
In interviews conducted with both employers and workers in zone enterprises it emerged that many workers were amenable to working extra hours. This may be in order to attain a reasonable wage, or to enable them to save enough money to be able to leave zone employment altogether. In Nicaragua, for example, women garment workers manage to achieve a take-home pay of US$140 by working 12- to 14-hour days. Migrant workers in particular often have no family near their place of work and prefer to earn the maximum in order to return to their home district as soon as possible. In Honduras, for example, a study conducted by the CGT indicated that 85 per cent of migrant female workers work overtime. In 57 per cent of the cases the extra hours were compulsory.