By Steven Greenhouse and Michael Barbaro

Propelled by a free trade agreement with the United States, apparel manufacturing is booming in Jordan, its exports to America soaring twentyfold in the last five years.

But some foreign workers in Jordanian factories that produce garments for Target, Wal-Mart and other American retailers are complaining of dismal conditions - of 20-hour days, of not being paid for months and of being hit by supervisors and jailed when they complain.

Swarovski crystal beads, real and fake, are big business in India. But the children who stitch them into clothing suffer in appalling conditions, writes Dan McDougall

By Dan McDougall

A DECREPIT iron fan creaks in the corner of the windowless room, offering sparse relief from the rising humidity. The air is thick with the foul smell of old cooking oil and burning ghee floating up from the street kitchens and hissing braziers on the south Delhi street below.

The International Labor Rights Fund filed a lawsuit against the Firestone Plantations Company (FPCO) in a Californian court on behalf of the employees alleging conditions of slavery on the plantations. Firestone received the lawsuit with a pinch of salt, contending that the conditions on the plantations were much better than conditions elsewhere in Liberia. But the plaintiffs' counsels remained dogged, arguing that US and international labor standards do view what is obtaining in Liberia as labor violation and they vow to prosecute Firestone.