Sweatshop Barbie: exploitation of Third World labor.

My daughter Zsa Zsa, seven years old, stands in front of the toy store and can't make up her mind which Barbie doll she wants. Barbie is her idol and role model. I argue her to pick out another present of her birthday but, if I insist, I'll spoil her day altogether. So Barbie it is: four or five to keep the peace and save her birthday.

There is no way for me to explain to her that there is something fundamentally wrong with Barbie. For as financially successful as the doll has been, the story of Barbie is appalling.

Barbie dolls are manufactured in factories in China, Thailand, and Indonesia, where orking conditions are radically different from what Americans are used to. Factory workers in these Far Eastern countries are underpaid, overworked, and getting sick - even dying.

Just arrived in Bangkok, I see banners that say, "We are not salve labour!" (They were intended to say "slave labour," but the message gets through anyway.) The banners are carried by women and children who work in the Dynamics factory just outside of Bangkok. Only a few men have shown up to support them. I ask these protestors what they want and they answer: to be treated hke human beings. They regard themselves as modern-day slaves of a system that exploits them.

One woman, Karim, tells me that more than half of these women are sick. They make Mattel's Barbie dous in an environment that would probably have been banned as dangerous anywhere in the First World. Many of the workers have respiratory infections, their lungs fifled with dust from fabrics in the factory. And not only dust: others work with lead and other chemicals and suffer from chronic lead poisoning. They can wear masks, of course, but first they have to buy them. And as they make a mere four to five dollars a day - from which they must also buy their uniforms and scissors - most simply can't afford the protection.

Thanks to John Osolnick, an American working in Bangkok, I obtained access to the Dynamics factory (naturall, no tape or video recorders were allowed inside). I saw hundreds of women and children stuffing, cutting, dressing, and assembling Barbie dolls - as weu as the Lion Kings my daughter worships and other Disney properties that dazzle me.

Many of these factory workers suffer from pains in their hands, necks, and shoulders. Others experience nausea and dizziness and suffer from hair and memory loss. They sleep badly. The most common complaints, however, are a shortage of breath and infections in and around the throat. More than 75 percent of the people working here have breathing problems. The air in the factory is so dusty that even the managers don't come in for fear of being contaminated. And of the hundreds of workers I saw, all of them, without exception, have black walls under their eyes.

One woman told me, "It sometimes gets so hot and moist in here that some of us faint." A small number of workers have tried to organize, she said, but there is an overall fear that they will be fired and that "no one will take care of us if we do not work." There is also the fear of physical harm. "Women in Thailand are vulnerable," another worker tells me. "We have to think of our parents in Chiang Mai and our small brothers and sisters who go to school. Who is going to pay for them if we don't?" It is a catch-22 situation: if they don't work, their relatives get nothing, if they do work, they get sick from all the chemicals and dust.

"I am an old woman even before my twentieth birthday," a third woman said to me. "Maybe I should move to Taiwan or Korea." But even if she wanted to, she wouldn't be allowed to emigrate, because she is too young. This job is a nightmare for her and the 4,500 other people who work at the Dynamics factory, and it is almost standard that Asian women and children are exploited this way. It doesn't really matter what industry you work in, as a woman or child you are always on the bottom of the heap - long hours, low wages, and poor health care. I can't help thinking that health organizations in the West should be able to do something more for them.

Pramitwa doesn't exactly know what to say to me when we meet in a Bangkok hospital. At first, she doesn't really understand why I am there. Dr. Orapun has asked her to come down from the outskirts of this hellish city of six million to the inner city, which is filled with exhaust fumes, noise, and poisoned air.

Dr. Orapun knows that Pramitwa has trouble breathing, but the physician thinks it is important that her story be told to the outside world. Otherwise, Pramitwa does not have a voice. Dr. Orapun is a 42-year-old woman who has an energy and power that is the envy of anyone who meets her. Her office is small but very well known among the underprivileged here. She has been investigating the widespread illnesses and even deaths of workers at several different factories and assembly plants in and around Bangkok. She knows her work will stir controversy; Thai society is closed and prefers to settle disputes its own way.

Pramitwa is a shy, 22-year-old woman. She is accompanied by two friends, who are also suffering from diseases related to their work at the Dynamics plant. Eye contact with these women is difficult to make, and they all suffer from hair loss and have trouble breathing. When I ask one of them, Sunanta, how she is, she diverts her eyes to the ground and asks me in a whisper if I want to buy a souvenir.

Sunanta is a little older than the rest. I can hear her breathing is heavy and irregular. Dr. Orapun says that Sunanta is in terrible shape. Indeed, most of the women and children working in these toy factories are in terrible shape: besides the asthma, hair and memory loss, and constant pain in their hands, necks, and shoulders, they have episodes of vomiting and the women have irregular periods. Moreover, and without exception, they sleep badly, resulting in fatigue.

Sunanta is a bit more outspoken than the rest and bluntly states that the factory is exploiting them. Most of the Dynamics plant's 4,500 workers come from northeastern Thailand, where the poverty is abject and appalling. It is a frequent practice for parents there to sell their daughters - often not more than 11 or 12 years old - into sex slavery or as cheap labor to Thai gangsters or mafiosi from neighboring countries. The parents generate some income from that@a one,time flat fee of a couple of hundred dollars.

Those who aren't sold outright into slavery at an early age often are sent to the bigger cities like Bangkok, where they generate an even more stable income working in factories. They send the money back home to their parents and very often help pay for their little brothers and sisters to go to school.

Sunanta describes how she has to get up every morning at five oclock to cook a meal and get ready for work. She also takes care of her neighbor's two children and gets them ready for kindergarten. Then, after a shower from a bucket outside the hut, Sunanta gets dressed and waits for the motorcycle that will pick up both her and the woman she shares the hut with and take them to the factory. She does this six days a week.

Dr. Orapun translates her words to me: "I have been working there for over six years now. After one year, I already started to have these problems." Sunanta's eyes still don't make contact with mine, and her voice is so low that the doctor has to ask her to repeat what she's saying.

I understand that working conditions, not just at the Dynamics plant but in all factories throughout Thailand and Southeast Asia, are appalling: long hours, hard work, low pay, no vacations, no sick days, no rights. No union and thus no volce.

"When we get sick, they throw us out," Sunanta tells me. "It isn't even the factory itself. The factory knows the standards set by the U.S. mother companies. But as the workers are hired by someone else for a period of 120 days, it is easy to fire us after 118 days of work. Very often we are hired again the very same day we are fired for another period of 120 days."

She says that complaining is of no use and that she wants to start a movement. She would like to get in contact with women from overseas, from countries where rights are guaranteed and a part of daily life. Eventually, the souvenir she wanted to sell me becomes a present simply for listening to her.

Sunanta gets up to go to the bathroom and, when she comes back, I notice that she has put some lipstick on. Her eyes are hollow, but they are making contact now with mine. I discover a proud woman who has redefined her identity.

Dr. Orapun started investigating sweatshops in 1991 as the director of Thailand's National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. At that time, she was looking into the deaths of several factory workers at Seagate Technology, the subsidiary of a computer company located in Silicon Valley. Seagate was, at that time, one of the world's largest independent computer hardisk producers. It had to opened two assembly plants in Thailand and was said to be one of the country's largest employers, with some 21,000 workers.

Seagate was profitable for a long time because it had based its operations in a low-wage country. Seagate's chief executive officer, Alan Shugart, even stated in a 1991 interview with Electronic Business magazine that his company was not very employee-oriented. And when Seagate's profits finally started to fall in the fluid and everchanging computer market, the last thing the company wanted was to allow its employees to form a union to demand higher wages and better working conditions.

It was in this atmosphere that Dr. Orapun started her investigation. One day, while she was walking the factory assembly line, she was summoned to the company boardroom. There she was confronted by Stapron Kavitanon, the first secretary of the then-prime minister of Thailand and the director-general of the Thai Board of Investment. That meeting confirmed an of Dr. Orapun's misgivings about the goals of Thailand's foreign investors. "I am still furious," she tells me now, "because it was then I began to understand how these companies work. If they think Thailand is becoming too expensive or the workers too difficult, they simply move to cheaper labor countries like Indonesia or China."

Dr. Orapun recalls what Stapron said to her: "What you are doing is hurting your country. You cannot continue to investigate Seagate or any other foreign investor. You are a threat to the workers of this country."

Dr. Orapun refused to be intimidated and continued her investigations. Within a few weeks, she was removed as head of the National Institute of Occupational and Environmental Medicine. But that didn't stop her. She began analyzing blood samples from more than 2,000 workers at several factories (including the Dynamics plant where the Barbie dolls are made in order to discover what was causing the worker illnesses and deaths.

At this point in the interview, Sunanta again makes eye contact with me and says that, at the Dynamics plant, at least four of her friends have died. I look at her and her almost bald head and listen to her heavy breathing, and I cannot help thinking that she may be dead soon, too.

"I think of quitting work, because it is very difficult for me," she says, gasping for air. "I have to rest. I am very tired." Her eyes turn away again, tiny tears in the corners and her cheeks gaunt.

Days before this interview, Sunanta was at the rally I witnessed upon my arrival in Bangkok. She believes that, if she doesn't help the other workers, her life will have had no meaning. Before she dies she wants to do something to help her friends and colleagues keep alive the dream of a better life.

Dr. Orapun takes Sunanta's hands and holds them. She says that the blood samples she analyzed from the Seagate workers had levels of lead greater than 20 micrograms per 100 milliliters. "The fatalities, at Seagate may have been caused by chronic poisoning," she tells me. "The main source of lead in electronics factories is the solder that is used to attach components to the circuit boards."

Seagate maintains that the high levels of lead in their workers are more hkely the result of their living in a dangerously polluted part of the city. But Dr. Orapun says that this isn't true, because another study indicates that only 4 percent of the traffic police in Bangkok - many of whom are continually exposed to the air pollution caused by the city's traffic - had more lead in their blood than the workers at Seagate. Only 4 percent. So what's going on here?

In other factories, like the Dynamics plant where Sunanta and Pramitwa work, illness is more likely caused by the inhalation of dust and solvents. Sunanta says that, for her, becoming ill without health insurance would be possibly the most humiliating thing of all, because she would have to go back home. She does not want to face her relatives again and spend her remaining days dependent upon their benevolence. She is afraid that, if she loses her job - even a job that has caused her to get sick in the first place - she may end up losing her integrity, her self-esteem, and even her identity. And so she doesn't want to complain much about being paid six or seven dollars for a 12-hour workday. Indeed, by Bangkok standards, she is considered lucky to have found such a good job.

Sunanta herself has never played with a Barbie doll. The Dynamics workers are not allowed to buy them - not at the regular price and certainly not at a discount. She is astonished when I tell her that there are two Barbie dolls sold somewhere in the world every second, and that Mattel made more than $3.2 billion in 1994. Nor does she know that more than a billion pairs of shoes have been made for Barbie, many of them here in Bangkok, or that Barble has 35 dogs, 10 horses scores of cats, a panda, a chimpanzee, lion clubs, a giraffe, and a zebra. Sunanta cannot grasp the luxury of Barbie's world, but she certainly is not jealous. She just wishes what she could breathe more easily and that she wouldn't be so tired and that her hair would grow back again. She tells me how pretty she used to be when she was still living at home and even during the years when she had first come to Bangkok. But after working at the Dynamics plant for only a year, she started to develop problems: first, with her period, then headaches, memory loss, and now hair loss. Her health problems have left her depressed and embarrased, shy and ashamed.

The local press eventually picked up on Dr. Orapun's research but concluded that she never proved her case. John Osolnick, an American researcher working in Bangkok, says that this is par for the course. HE is furious over the way factory workers are being treated in Thailand: "They try to raise their voices, and they're fired without any benefit whatsoever. The companies know that, if they support the workers' demands, the American mother companies can easily move to even lower-wage countries. So the pressure from lobbyists is enormous." In Osolnick's office, the very air seems to be filled with his disappointment, anger, and frustration. He is particularly incensed by the way Dr. Orapun was treated. Six weeks after she filed her report, her medical institute was closed. "One day," he recalls, "a bunch of people arrived at her office only to remove the name board."

Dr. Orapun confirms the story and adds that she was informed by the director of the hospital that she no longer had a job there and should start looking elsewhere. Not surprisingly, both the Seagate and Dynamics plants have been officially cleared of any wrongdoing in the Kingdom of Thailand. Osolnick also informs me that another Dynamics employee, Metha, is hospitalized just outside of Bangkok and suggests that I speak with her myself.

The hospital is neat and clean. As it is a national holiday, the Dynamics plant is closed, so two friends are visiting Metha to cheer her up and tell her the latest gossip. Metha is a militant woman in her early twenties, who also came to Bangkok to improve the quality of her life. But she is afraid to talk to me. "Barbie is powerful," she says. "Three friends have already died. If they kill me, who will ever know I lived?"

Metha tried to start a union at the Dynamics plant. She claims that the company not only fired her but threatened to shut her up forever. Then she developed respiratory problems and was transferred to this hospital. It remains unclear who is going to pay the bill: Metha has no money and no insurance, and the company refuses to recognize her illness as work-related. Her illness has left her worn out, weak, and thin.

Metha says that she began to feel sick early in 1995, after having worked at the Dynamics plant since 1992 sorting parts for Barbie dolls. She reports, "When my head and body started to ache, I'd go to the factory doctor, but he would take me seriously. He said it would go away with time. But then my periods stopped, too, and I really started to worry. I told the manager at the factory, but he laughed at me. The doctor then withdrew the diagnosis of my sickness after he was called by the factory. That set me thinking about the rights and responsibilities we have."

Like the other Dynamics workers I have met, Metha avoids eye contact and speaks in a monotone. The only time she ever shows emotion is when she begins to cry and wonders aloud when it is all going to end.

I cannot help thinking of Cindy Jackson, an American photographer in London who has had 19 cosmetic-surgery operations to make herself look like Barbie - at a cost of some $165,000. I wonder what Jackson would say if she could see these sick and dying women and know how brutally they have been exploited in order to make dolls for First World children. Pramitwa, Sunanta, and Metha have never heard of Cindy Jackson, but my guess is they are glad not to be in her shoes. For them, it would be unbearable to live a life looking like Barbie.