香港利丰，全球“血汗工厂定位器”

Linking Factories to the Malls, Middleman Pushes Low Costs
By IAN URBINA and KEITH BRADSHER August 10, 2013

香港利丰，全球“血汗工厂定位器”
IAN URBINA, KEITH BRADSHER 2013年08月10日
Li & Fung — the most important company that most American shoppers have never heard of — has long been on the cutting edge of globalization, chasing cheap labor to garment factories first in China, then elsewhere in Asia, including [要查看本链接请先注册并登录].
利丰(Li & Fung)是大部分美国购物者从未听说过的最重要的公司，该公司长期位于全球化的前沿，追逐廉价劳动力，先是推动中国制衣厂的发展，后来转向亚洲其他国家，包括孟加拉国。
Now, with sweatshop disasters there drawing international scrutiny, the business is looking for the next best place — perhaps South America or sub-Saharan Africa — where it can steer apparel buyers seeking workers to stitch clothing together for a few dollars a day.
如今，随着孟加拉国血汗工厂发生的灾难引起国际社会的密切关注，该公司正在物色下一个最佳地区，或许是南美洲或撒哈拉以南的非洲，在这些地方，该公司将指引服装买家找到那些愿意每天为了几美元而缝制衣服的工人们。
As the world’s largest sourcing and logistics company, Li & Fung plays matchmaker between poor countries’ factories and affluent countries’ vendors, finding the lowest-cost workers, haggling over prices and handling the logistics for roughly a third of the retailers found in the typical American shopping mall, including Sears, Macy’s, JCPenney and Kohl’s.
作为全球最大的采购和物流公司，利丰在穷国的工厂和富国的卖家之间扮演着牵线搭桥的角色，在希尔斯(Sears)、梅西百货公司(Macy's)、彭尼百货(J. C. Penney)和科尔士(Kohl’s)等美国典型商场常见的零售商中，该公司为其中近三分之一的零售商寻找廉价工人、讨价还价、并负责物流事务。
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Antony Dickson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
去年，示威者在利丰位于香港的办公楼外抗议公司拖欠土耳其纺织业工人工资。
Based in [要查看本链接请先注册并登录], the merchandiser owns no clothing factories, no sewing machines and no fabric mills. Its chief asset is the 15,000 suppliers in over 60 countries that make up a network so sprawling that an order for 500,000 bubble skirts that once took six months from drawing board to store shelf now takes six weeks at a sliver of the price.
总部位于香港的这家公司自己没有服装厂、缝纫机或布料厂。它的主要资产是遍布全球60多个国家的1.5万家供应商，这些供应商形成的网络非常庞大，以至于过去一份从设计到上架需要六个月时间的50万件泡泡裙的订单，现在只需六周时间，而且价钱也比以前便宜很多。
That scale gives Li & Fung tremendous clout. “They are considered the Walmart of purchasing,” said Edward Hertzman, publisher of Sourcing Journal.
这种规模让利丰具有极大的影响力。“他们被认为是采购行业的沃尔玛(Walmart)，”《采购期刊》(Sourcing Journal)的出版人爱德华·赫茨曼(Edward Hertzman)说。
But in pioneering and perfecting the global hunt for ways to produce clothing more quickly and cheaply, Li & Fung, which had $20 billion in revenue last year, has been described by critics as the garment industry’s “sweatshop locator.”
但在全球范围开拓并完善对更快、更便宜的制衣方式的寻找的同时，去年收入达到200亿美元（约合1200亿元人民币）的利丰被批评者说成是服装行业的“血汗工厂定位器”。
“If globalization is a race to the bottom, where lowest wages win,” said Cathy Feingold, director of international affairs for the A.F.L.-C.I.O., “Li & Fung is the sherpa showing companies the fastest route down that slope.”
“如果全球化是一场工资最低才是赢家的‘向下竞争’，”美国劳工联合会-产业工会联合会（American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations，简称AFL-CIO）国际事务总监凯茜·法因戈尔德(Cathy Feingold)说，“利丰就是那个引导企业以最快捷径沿着那个斜坡下滑的带路人。”
The business has been tied to labor violations and deadly accidents in several countries. It has also been faulted as failing to properly investigate complaints about conditions at factories, including one in Cambodia where hundreds of workers were sickened, and accused of cheating laborers of wages in Turkey.
该公司与多个国家的违反劳动法规的行为，以及涉及人员伤亡的事故有牵连。它还被指未能妥善调查有关工厂条件的投诉（其中包括柬埔寨的一家工厂，那里有数百名工人患病），并在土耳其拖欠工人工资。
In Bangladesh, Li & Fung has been tied to several calamities. It arranged the production of clothing for Kohl’s at one factory where 29 workers died in a fire in 2010. It brokered some work at another in 2011 where more than 50 workers who made Tommy Hilfiger clothing were injured and at least 2 died in an explosion and a stampede.
在孟加拉国，利丰与好几起灾难有关联。2010年，利丰安排为科尔士生产服装的一家工厂发生火灾，导致29名工人死亡。2011年，利丰为另一家工厂安排了部分业务，在该工厂发生爆炸和工人匆忙逃生引发的踩踏事件中，50多名为汤米·希尔费格(Tommy Hilfiger)生产服装的工人受伤，至少两人死亡。
And last year, Li & Fung was responsible for some garments produced at the Tazreen Fashions factory, when 112 workers died in November in a fire after many of them were ordered to continue working even though alarms had sounded.
去年11月，塔兹雷恩制衣厂(Tazreen Fashions)发生的火灾导致112名工人死亡，其中许多人在警报响后仍被勒令坚持工作。该制衣厂的部分服装就是为利丰生产的。
Such episodes highlight the often hidden role played by sourcing companies in trying to feed the West’s seemingly insatiable demands for ever cheaper merchandise. Worker advocates say that Li & Fung and others make accountability more difficult by adding a layer of insulation between reputation-conscious retailers and often poorly treated workers, allowing businesses to avoid bad publicity and legal liability when things go wrong.
此类事件突显了采购公司在努力满足西方对更廉价商品貌似永不满足的需求时常常扮演的幕后角色。工人权益倡导人士称，利丰及其他采购公司在看重声誉的零售商和往往遭受不良待遇的劳动者之间添加了一个隔离层，从而让追责变得更困难，并在发生问题时，使企业得以规避负面报道和法律赔偿责任。
Sourcing companies face an inherent conflict: they are expected to find low-cost factories for clients, but also to blow the whistle if the factories violate safety standards. Some critics say that the scale of Li & Fung’s operations and the speed at which it shifts production from one site to another give owners less incentive to improve their factories and make it difficult for Li & Fung to deliver on its pledges of carefully vetting its suppliers.
采购公司面临着一个内在的冲突：客户期待它们找到成本低廉的工厂，同时在相关工厂违反安全标准时如实报告。一些批评人士表示，利丰的业务规模，以及它将产品生产从一个地方转移到另一个地方的速度，让工厂所有者缺乏改善工厂条件的动力，也让利丰难以履行其仔细审核供货商的承诺。
“We make our best effort to weed out bad factories,” said Bruce Rockowitz, chief executive of Li & Fung. “But we don’t always succeed.”
“我们尽全力把不好的工厂清除出去，”利丰首席执行官乐裕民(Bruce Rockowitz)说，“但我们并非总能成功。”
Mr. Rockowitz added that Li & Fung employees conduct rigorous on-site audits — unlike many competitors — to ensure that the company does business only with factories that adhere to safety regulations. In the case of Tazreen, Li & Fung had acquired a new subsidiary that placed orders at the factory, but the changes sought by Li & Fung had not been made 11 weeks later when the fatal fire occurred, a company spokesman said.
乐裕民补充说，利丰的雇员进行严谨的现场审计（相比之下许多竞争对手并不这么做），以确保公司只与坚守安全法规的工厂合作。该公司的发言人称，关于塔兹雷恩制衣厂，在该工厂下单的是利丰收购的一家新的子公司，但直到11周后发生那场致命的大火灾时，利丰要求作出的改变仍未落实。
By usually relying on long-term relationships with best-in-class suppliers, Mr. Rockowitz said, the company avoids dangerous work sites. Industry consultants agree that the long experience of Li & Fung — it was founded in 1906 during China’s Qing dynasty — helps it ensure compliance with varying local labor standards and say that it tries to be conscientious in its oversight, especially when compared with newer and smaller rivals.
乐裕民称，利丰通常依赖与业内顶级供应商的长期合作关系，藉此避开危险的工作场所。行业顾问承认，成立于1906年中国清代的利丰，拥有长期经验，这有助于它确保各地工厂遵守当地劳动标准，他们还表示，利丰在监督过程中试图做到认真，特别是同成立时间更短、规模更小的竞争对手相比。
Industry insiders also emphasized its ability to provide savings for consumers. Fred Gehring, the chief executive of Tommy Hilfiger, a client, said Li & Fung has so much buying power that it extracts better deals from factories than his company could if it dealt with them directly.
业内人士也强调了利丰为消费者省钱的能力。汤米·希尔费格首席执行官弗雷德·格林(Fred Gehring)说，利丰的购买力非常强，能做成比他的公司与工厂直接交涉更好的生意。汤米·希尔费格是利丰的客户之一。
Asked about his company’s role in depressing wages, Mr. Rockowitz said that the business simply responds to consumer demand for bargains. “We definitely are a part of bringing the prices down, there’s no question about that, because we are arbitraging factories and countries all the time,” he said. “But it has to be a safe factory.”
在被问及他的公司在压低工资方面起到的作用时，乐裕民表示，企业只是在响应消费者对价廉物美商品的需求。“我们肯定在压低价格方面起了作用，这一点毫无疑问，因为我们无时无刻不在从各个工厂和国家之间套利，”他说，“但前提是安全的工厂。”
Retailers turn to Li & Fung because its resources make it uniquely equipped to find the Mexican port that can accept a shipment sooner, to persuade a Chinese fabric maker to cut an extra thousand square feet of silk faster, and to coax a factory in Bangladesh to fill an order more cheaply.
零售商来找利丰，是因为后者的资源令其具有独特的能力，能找到可以更快接受货物的墨西哥港口、说服某家中国布料制造商更快地提供额外的1000平方英尺丝绸，或者劝说孟加拉国的某家工厂以更低廉的价格执行一份订单。
“Little John Waynes,” Li & Fung calls its in-country hagglers, for their cowboy-like independence. Factory owners, though, said the nickname referred more to the company’s take-it-or-leave-it style at the bargaining table.
利丰称其在各国的讨价还价者为“小约翰·韦恩”(John Wayne)，因为他们有着牛仔一样的独立性。然而工厂主说，这个外号在更大程度上体现了该公司在谈判桌上“要么接受要么放弃”的风格。
“They usually get what they ask for,” said Tipu Munshi, the Bangladeshi factory owner of the Sepal Group, which makes jeans and other clothing for Target, Walmart and Kmart.
“他们通常会得到自己想要的东西，”塞帕尔集团(Sepal Group)的孟加拉国工厂老板蒂普·孟希(Tipu Munshi)说。这家工厂为塔吉特(Target)、沃尔玛和凯马特(Kmart)生产牛仔裤及其他服装。
Li & Fung’s ability to exert pressure on factories can have unfortunate consequences, said Guadalupe Palma, director of Warehouse Workers United, a labor advocacy group. “Every extra penny you squeeze from a factory,” she said, “is a step closer to that factory cutting the kind of corners that lead to deadly disasters.”
劳工权益倡导组织“仓库工人联合”(Warehouse Workers United)的负责人瓜达卢佩·帕尔马(Guadalupe Palma)说，利丰对工厂施压的能力可能会带来一些不幸的后果。“你从工厂压榨而来的每一分钱，”她说，“都向工厂做事不到位、最终酿成致命灾难走近了一步。”
Business Challenges
商业挑战

While it has some of the lowest labor costs in the developing world, Bangladesh, with rampant corruption, congested roads and frequent unrest, is a tough place to do business.
虽然孟加拉国的劳动力成本在发展中国家中基本处于最低水平，但是这里***猖獗、交通拥堵、动乱频发，是难做生意的地方。
Making clothes is also different from mass-producing other goods, like filing cabinets or batteries. Styles change fast. Fabrics react differently when cut in a high-humidity country but worn by customers in an arid one. Factories, which often consist of just sewing machines on tables, can appear and disappear overnight.
生产服装也与量产其他商品（比如档案柜或电池）不同。款式的变化很快。布料在湿度很高的国家被剪裁时和在干旱国家被顾客穿在身上时的反应是不同的。那些往往只有桌子和缝纫机的工厂，可能在一夜之间出现或消失。
“Li & Fung is your insurance policy for when logistics go wrong,” said Mr. Hertzman, of Sourcing Journal.
《采购期刊》的赫茨曼说，“当物流出现问题时，利丰就是你的保单。”
When a container ship arrives in the United States with a half-million Tweety-Bird shirts for Disney that look like cheap knockoffs because they are the wrong shade of yellow, it is the sourcing company, not the factory, that will get the unhappy call, he said. When street protests delay a shipment of khakis bound for Gap and the factory says it cannot afford to move the items by air, it is companies like Li & Fung that will have to cover the cost of the plane, he said.
他说，当集装箱船抵达美国，却发现上面给迪士尼(Disney)的50万件翠迪鸟(Tweety-Bird)衬衣因为使用的黄色不对而看起来像是廉价仿制品一样时，接到抱怨电话的将是这家采购公司，而非工厂。他还说，当盖普(Gap)的卡其裤因为街头抗议而延期，而工厂表示无力承担空运费用时，为空运买单的将是利丰这样的公司。
Citing privacy concerns, Li & Fung officials declined to discuss specific clients or details about services. But industry consultants and former employees or partners offered some insight.
利丰管理人员以隐私方面的考虑为由，拒绝谈论具体客户或服务细节。但是，行业顾问以及公司的前雇员或合作伙伴介绍了一些内情。
Li & Fung and other sourcing companies track harvesting schedules because many factories rely on migrant workers. They watch weather reports to advise drivers which trucks should be outfitted with roof-mounted dinghies for use when roads wash out. In Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital, sourcing agents check in daily with political and labor officials who can offer warnings about demonstrations that could shut down production.
由于很多工厂都依赖流动工人，利丰和其他采购公司会跟踪交付进度。他们会密切关注天气预报，以便为司机提供建议，告诉他们哪些卡车应该配备安装在顶部的筏子，以供道路被冲垮时使用。在孟加拉国首都达卡，采购代理每天会与政治和劳工事务官员沟通，因为这些人可以提供可能导致工厂停工的示威预警。
They also try to guard against abuses. They send undercover informants into factories to check for blocked fire exits, for example, or arrive early for scheduled factory inspections to check for [要查看本链接请先注册并登录] violations. When retailers are alerted to worker complaints in factories, they often turn to their sourcing companies to investigate. But sourcing companies can have little incentive to highlight problems at plants that they introduced into the supply chain.
他们还试图防止违规现象。例如，他们会派便衣调查者进入工厂，检查消防安全出口是否被堵，或者在工厂例行检查时提前到达，看看是否存在雇佣童工的情况。当工厂工人的抱怨引起零售商注意时，后者往往会请自己的采购公司展开调查。但是，对于自己引入供应链的工厂，采购公司可能没有什么动力指出工厂存在的问题。
In June 2011, for example, more than 280 workers vomited and fainted in a three-day period at the King Fashion Garment Company factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which made dresses and knitted tops for brands including H&M, a former Li & Fung client. The sourcing company investigated and cited a “bad smell” at the factory and malnourishment as likely causes. A Li & Fung spokeswoman added that the business encouraged the plant to upgrade its ventilation and improve wastewater drainage.
举个例子，2011年6月，柬埔寨金边市国王时尚服装公司(King Fashion Garment Company)的工厂三天内共有280多名工人出现呕吐和晕倒现象。该厂为H&M（曾是利丰的客户）等品牌制作裙子和针织衫。这家采购公司在调查后表示，最有可能的起因是工厂里一种“难闻的气味”和工人营养不良。利丰的一名女发言人还说，公司建议工厂升级通风系统，并改进下水道。
Police and medical officials, though, said that exhaustion from overwork was probably to blame, while a United Nations labor agency pointed to the possibility that chemicals used to treat fabrics could be responsible. Li & Fung has continued to do business with the factory.
然而警察和医疗官员却说，真正原因或许是过度劳累，而联合国(United Nations)的一个劳工机构说，问题或许在于用来处理布料的化学品。利丰继续与这家工厂保持着业务往来。
In 2007, more than a dozen garment workers at the PT. Mulia Knitting Factory in Jakarta, Indonesia, who were *** clothes for Polo Ralph Lauren and Tommy Hilfiger were fired, allegedly for trying to form a union — the kind of dismissal that violates Indonesian law. Li & Fung investigated and did not find any violations of workers’ rights, a spokeswoman said.
2007年，印度尼西亚雅加达为拉尔夫·劳伦马球男装(Polo Ralph Lauren)和汤米·希尔费格缝制服装的PT穆利亚针织厂(PT. Mulia Knitting Factory)有10多名制衣工人被解雇，据称是因为这些工人想成立一个工会——这种解雇违反了印尼法律。利丰的一名女发言人说，经过调查，利丰没有发现任何侵犯劳工权利的行为。
But labor advocates found that Li & Fung did not interview any of the dismissed workers and conducted all employee interviews in the factory, often with managers present. In explaining why it would not sever ties to the factory or push for reforms, Tommy Hilfiger cited the Li & Fung findings.
但是劳工权益倡导者发现，利丰根本没有采访任何被解雇的工人，他们对雇员的所有面谈都是在工厂里进行的，往往有经理在场。汤米·希尔费格在解释为何不与这家工厂断绝业务关系或推动其改革时，将利丰的调查结果列为理由。
“Li & Fung claims to be monitoring factory conditions, but they don’t publicly release their investigation reports or even the full list of the factories they use, so it’s impossible for independent organizations to assess the effectiveness of their monitoring,” said Tim Connor, a former labor rights advocacy coordinator for Oxfam.
曾担任乐施会(Oxfam)劳工权利倡导协调人的蒂姆·康纳(Tim Connor)说，“利丰声称其对工厂条件进行监督，但是他们并不公开发表调查报告，甚至连他们所使用的工厂的完整名单都没有提供。所以，独立机构根本不可能评估这种监督的有效性。”
Balking at an Accord
回避协议
To help prevent future catastrophes, worker advocates have recently promoted an international accord that sets mandatory safety standards for garment factories. Most American retailers have not signed the agreement, citing liability concerns, especially since they cannot guarantee that their subcontractors or sourcing companies will follow the rules.
为了防止将来再次发生灾难，劳工权益倡导者最近在宣传一个国际协议，该协议为服装厂设定了强制性的安全标准。目前，多数美国零售商以赔偿责任方面的担忧为由，没有签署该协议，尤其是因为他们无法保证自己的分包商或采购公司会遵守这些规则。
Li & Fung and other sourcing companies have also balked, saying they cannot make that decision on behalf of their clients, the retailers.
利丰和其他采购公司也拒绝签署该协议，声称自己无法代表客户——也就是那些零售商——作出这样的决定。
In April, a dozen retailers gathered in Geneva to discuss how much to pay into a fund for families of the dead Tazreen workers. Though there was evidence that some of the clothing made at the factory was destined for Walmart, Sears and Disney, the three companies refused to pay into the fund. But Li & Fung, which had played a role in brokering some of the contracts for work at Tazreen, agreed to pay injured workers and the families of those killed roughly $1,200 each.
今年4月，十几家零售商在日内瓦开会，探讨各自应当为补偿塔兹雷恩遇难工人家属的基金贡献多少钱。尽管有证据表明，该工厂制成的一些衣服的目的地是沃尔玛、西尔斯和迪士尼，但这三家公司却拒绝向该基金付款。不过，曾安排塔兹雷恩制衣厂承接部分业务的利丰，同意支付给每名受伤工人和每名遇害工人的家庭各约1200美元。
“Part of what Li & Fung sells” to retailers “is the right not to attend these meetings or pay into these compensation funds when people die,” said Suri Gurumurthi, a business school professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
“利丰出售（给零售商）的服务中，包含了不参加这类会议或在有人死亡后不支付补偿金的权利，”北卡罗莱纳大学教堂山分校(University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)商学院教授苏里·古鲁穆尔蒂(Suri Gurumurthi)说。
In the meantime, Mr. Rockowitz said his company was considering South America and sub-Saharan Africa as possible places for growth.
与此同时，乐裕民表示，他的公司正考虑把南美洲和撒哈拉以南的非洲作为可能实现增长的地区。
“But I wouldn’t write Bangladesh off” because of the recent factory disasters, he said. It still has some of the cheapest labor in the world, he pointed out. For factories to get safer, clothing prices would have to go up, he said.
但他说，他不会因为近期发生的工厂灾难而“把孟加拉国一笔勾销”。他指出，孟加拉国仍有世界上最廉价的劳动力。他说，要让工厂更安全，服装价格将必须走高。
“So far,” he added, “consumers have just not been willing to accept higher costs.”
“迄今，”他还说，“消费者还不愿意接受更高的价格。”