Online tool tracks industry exploitation
NInety three per cent of brands surveyed are not paying garment workers a living wage. Picture: Clean Clothes Campaign.
Hot on the heels of a social media campaign that ruthlessly calls brands out on their failure to compensate workers, The Clean Clothes Campaign launches fashionchecker.org, a new website for consumers to get a better idea of where their clothing was made and the working conditions in which it was produced and for garment workers and labour rights activists to get an idea of which brands are doing what. By shining the spotlight on the fashion industry’s wage structures, Fashion Checker, part of the Campaign’s aims to up the pace on making sure workers get paid living wage.
The site gives access to data from the supply chains of the world’s biggest fashion brands including Primark, Bestseller and Arcadia. It can be illuminating. Type in Adidas, for example, and you get the brand’s owners (Adidas, TaylorMade and Reebok), its revenue (EUR 21,915,000, 000), its profits (EUR 1,709,000,000), its production centres (Cambodia, Vietnam and China) and whether it is paying its workers a living wage. Adidas makes no claim that it is doing so. Given its profits, that’s pretty shocking. Its supply chain transparency is crystal clear, however. All the brand’s known factories are listed, with what information is available, from proportion of male to female employees to pregnancy leave, and details about workers’ wages, including how gender and migration status intersect with pay levels and working conditions. A handy tweet link allows you to express your pleasure/displeasure at the click of a button.
Keeping track
To date, the website includes data from 108 brands and direct (but by necessity anonymous) interviews with workers in five garment-producing countries. NInety three per cent of brands surveyed are not paying garment workers a living wage. And what this means for workers is made clear in infographics, articles and interviews. As the world rocks to concurrent societal shocks, some brands have been quick off-the-mark to respond with glossy campaigns - whilst continuing to seek lower prices and squeezing the wages of workers who already live with nothing. Deep, complex supply chains allow brands to distance themselves from workers and dodge the responsibility of addressing exploitation; lack of transparency also impedes workers’ ability to organise and demand fair pay for their labour.
Image: Remake.
COVID-19 has laid bare inequalities in the garment sector as brands cancel orders and impose discounts on suppliers, forcing more workers into destitution. But those carefully crafted illusions of sustainable consumption are being shattered. Consumers are waking up to the power imbalances in supply chains. As workers with no life savings are hit by factory closures and mass lay-offs, the argument for a living wage has never been more urgent.
‘Dance like puppets’
fashionchecker.org shines a light on the exploitation endemic in the sector. Approximately 60 to 75 million garment workers are employed in the industry; around 80% are women. This is not a coincidence. The workers earning poverty wages have little to no ability to fight for their rights which is why they remain earning so little in exploitative jobs. This is a systematic power imbalance built into the industry. “Women can be made to dance like puppets but men cannot be abused in the same way,” said one worker from Bangladesh. “The owners do not care if we ask for something, but demands raised by the men must be given consideration. So they don’t employ men.”
Despite efforts in transparency in recent years, much more needs to be done. In 2019, only 35% of 200 brands surveyed in the Fashion Transparency Index had disclosed the Tier 1 factories and workshops in their supply chains. The aim of Fashion Checker is to use the data to put pressure on brands and policymakers to make sure that living wages for all garment workers in the industry are implemented by end of year 2022. Under the UN guiding principles on Business and Human Rights, brands are obligated to run their businesses responsibly but garment workers are still fighting for basic human rights.
“We believe all workers in a supply chain have a right to fair pay,” says the Clean Clothes Campaign. “Workers making the products for the garment and sportswear market have been earning poverty wages since the birth of the industry. Our research shows no major clothing brand is able to prove that workers making their clothing in Asia, Africa, Central America or Eastern Europe are paid enough to live on.”
“Companies refuse to disclose information on their supply-chain because that would mean associating themselves with the poverty wages that the workers who make their branded projects receive,” adds Muriel Treibich, Lobby & Advocacy Coordinator. “This lack of accountability needs to change and this is why we urgently need accurate and up-to-date data on factories and wages paid across the supply-chain.”
Meet the people changing fashion for good
In their own words
"Trucks are constantly leaving, all the products are sold, and there is a lot of work, but they keep saying that there is no money. My contract is only prolonged every 3 months. I have no security.” Worker in Croatia
“We are never allowed to go home before the target is met.” Worker from Indonesia
“My factory doesn’t give me a pay slip. We work hard to make this dress. We work for minimum 12 hrs which may extend to 24hrs a day during peak time.” Worker from India
“The workers’ wages have been regularly delayed for a month or two since the beginning of 2019. We complained and they paid, but not this month. The factory director says it is because a firm didn’t pay. But we did our job.”
Worker from Ukraine
“Trade unions worry that the Covid-19 crisis will lead to a spike in child labour, bonded labour and human trafficking, with garment workers moving to other occupations including sex work.” The Emperor has no clothes: Garment supply chains in the time of pandemic by Asia Floor Wage Alliance.
