Muristek
Among the manifold complexities of the global supply chain, a simple principle holds: corporations will always go where their costs – and their responsibilities – can be kept to an absolute minimum
‘It’s like a little Puerto Rico – we’re basically run by the US,” said Allan, as we drove around San Pedro Sula, the second largest city in Honduras and the country’s largest manufacturing centre one day. “Here there is more ‘freedom’,” he added, doing air quotes. Allan had spent most of his adult life working as a production manager for companies such as Gildan and Hanes, making socks and underwear for American bargain shoppers. All of this garment manufacture now takes place behind the gates of Honduras’s export processing zones.
When export processing zones (EPZs) proliferated in the 1980s and 90s, their boosters claimed that the employment opportunities inside them would lift up local economies. Allan’s story showed the holes in that argument. After all, he wasn’t just a low-paid garment worker: he was management. He had done everything right. And now, he said, he was moving to Canada.
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