Economy of Occupation
Jayyous has three sweatshops that produce clothes for the Israeli market. The largest of the three was founded in 1987, by one of the more well off families in the village. This family also owns a second, slightly smaller sweatshop. All in all, the three factories employ about 50 women. The fabrics and patterns are brought to the West Bank from Israel, and you can see the finished product in the shops in Haifa and Tel Aviv. The women working in the sweatshop are laughing at the prices of the garments, as one single item is sold for three times their daily wage. Until the construction of the wall, the sweatshops were stable and profitable workplaces that helped both women with families to support, and girls who needed money to finance their studies. Now the future is more uncertain.
The smallest factory, owned by an Israeli, has six employees. It has only been open six months, but the production is high, and so is the quality, so the girls hope to have enough to do in the future. In one day they produce between 250 and 500 garments, depending on the difficulty. The clothes they produce are typical Tel Aviv fashion. The girls tell us that they sometimes wear the clothes themselves, at weddings and parties for women.
After the construction of the wall in 2003, when 75% of the village’s agriculture land was isolated on the other side, unemployment rose dramatically. Alternative sources of income have become more important, among these the sweatshops. Huda Bayada, manager of the largest sweatshop, estimates that the factory provides the main source of income for about 50 households in Jayyous. The working hours are from 07.00 to 15.00, six days a week, but many only work part time because they have large families at home, and often there is not enough work for all the employees. The women make 40 Shekel a day, about 10 USD.
Bayada says that with the construction of the wall, transporting the fabrics and clothes between Israel and Palestine has become more difficult. To get the products through all the checkpoints and barriers, they depend on intermediaries, which reduces the profit considerably. The unpredictability created by the wall, curfews and closures makes it harder to observe the time limits of delivery of the clothes.
The family that owns the two biggest sweatshops is one of many who now have their land isolated on the other side of the wall, and because of this they have lost a large part of their income. The economic decline does not only effect the individual families, it changes the whole fabric of society. Because of the big economic problems here, it is hard to continue the traditional solidarity we have observed in this village: “There are simply not enough resources to support the poorest the way we used to,” Bayada says.
