So what kinds of labour abuses are there? Problems are wide-ranging and include poor health and safety, human rights abuses, lack of freedom of association, and forced and child labour (Winter and Lasch 2016; Larsson et al. 2013; Sethi 2003). Click through the issues below to learn more.
While fast fashion’s business model - bringing cheap, fashionable clothing to market quickly - has intensified risks for workers, recent investigations show that luxury fashion is also implicated. Examples include:
Giorgio Armani Group - Fined $4 million (€3.5 million) by Italy’s Competition Authority for making “untruthful” and misleading ethical claims about its commitment to worker welfare and safety. The ruling followed a previous Milan court case in which Armani’s manufacturing arm was placed under judicial administration over allegations of unsafe working conditions, including the removal of safety devices from machinery and failure to meet hygiene standards.
Dior - Investigated by Italy’s Competition Authority over potentially misleading claims about its supply chain. Although no legal infringement was found, Dior agreed to a settlement: paying €2 million over five years to support victim-assistance programs, revising its corporate ethics messaging, and tightening supplier monitoring protocols
Loro Piana - a brand synonymous with “quiet luxury”, was placed under judicial administration by a Milan court after authorities uncovered subcontracted workshops where migrant workers, some undocumented, laboured up to 90 hours a week for as little as €4 per hour, often living inside the factories.
Valentino - Valentino Bags Lab Srl, a unit producing Valentino-branded handbags, was placed under judicial administration after a Milan court found it “culpably failed” to oversee suppliers. Investigators uncovered Chinese-owned workshops where workers, some undocumented, were made to sleep on site to enable round-the-clock production, with safety devices removed from machinery. Bags costing €35-75 to produce were sold for €1,900-2,200 at retail. The court ruled that Valentino was aware of subcontracting breaches but “turned a blind eye” given production demands.
It is important to recognise that labour exploitation occurs across all market segments, from low-cost to high-end. Critiques such as The Myth of Ethical Luxury and The Brutal Cost of Quiet Luxury challenge the perception that high-end goods are produced under fair conditions. We will examine fast fashion further in the Fashion and Speed module.
Safety and building integrity is a major concern in a number of countries. For example, Better Work’s factory audits in Indonesia revealed that 47% of garment factories were not equipped with adequate fire detection systems and 44% were non-compliant with requirements regarding clearly marked emergency exits (Better Work 2018). The Fair Wear Foundation has also reported the absence of fire alarms and sprinklers as common issues in factories (Fair Wear Foundation 2018c).
In terms of health, workers may be exposed to high temperatures in garment factories, resulting in poor health outcomes such as dehydration, headaches and fatigue. Workers also report issues regarding lack of access to free, clean drinking water.
Garment workers are often denied labour rights such as the freedom of association, collective bargaining and formal employment protections. Barriers to labour rights in the garment industry include denying rights to a collective or specific subset of workers (such as migrants), setting mandatory participation rates in strike ballots and physically preventing union formation.
Pressure to keep the work flowing means some governments have legalised unacceptably long working hours:
·Bangladesh legalised 72 hr working week
·Philippines it is common for workers to do unpaid overtime.
·Bangladeshi textile workers regularly complete an 80 hour week for UK retailers for 5p an hour (War on Want’s “Fashion Victims” report).
Forced labour, or modern slavery, is brought about by physical, psychological or economic coercion (Mezzadri 2015; Clean Clothes Campaign 2015e). Forced labour has been well-documented in garment production supply chains, including unregistered factories, home workers, contract and agency workers among various national contexts (Andrees 2008; Centre for Sustainable Work and Employment Futures 2015).
Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to forced labour. Managers may have a hold over them through a threat of deportation or may withhold their passports so they cannot leave (Kate and Theuws 2016).
Australia and the UK now have Modern Slavery Acts that expect companies to take steps to eliminate forced labour in their supply chains. Read more about Australia's Modern Slavery Act here.
Garment and textile workers are often paid extremely low wages (Clean Clothes Campaign 2015e) and can be characterised within the definition of the ‘working poor’, described as employed persons whose job does not earn them a sufficient income to lift them or their families out of poverty (ILO 2017c).
Even with formal contracts, the time and pay crush from buyers, lack of transparent and legitimate governance, and systemic issues within the industry, have rarely afforded workers a living wage.
The World Economic Forum defines a living wage as allowing workers and their families to afford basic needs like food, housing, healthcare and education. In contrast, a minimum wage is the lowest legal pay employers can offer, which often doesn't cover basic living costs and can be outdated.
However, many workers are paid below their country’s legal minimum wage. Bangladesh may be 21 cents per hour, but some Bangladeshi factories pay just 11c, as this quote describes:
“We had the chance to meet with some of the young women in Bangladesh who sew Wal-Mart’s women’s organic jeans at the Anowara Apparels factory in Chittagong. Wal-Mart accounts for nearly 100 percent of the production at Anowara Apparels, where 90 percent of the 2,500 workers are young women struggling to survive… Each assembly line of 25 sewers is given a mandatory production goal of completing 250 pairs of Faded Glory jeans per hour, or ten pairs per worker. This means the women are allowed just six minutes to sew each pair of jeans.
The minimum wage in the factory is 11 ½ cents an hour for new workers, while senior sewing operators can earn 17 cents. It is now becoming clearer how Wal-Mart can sell a pair of “organic” blue jeans for only $8.00 --The young workers in Bangladesh are paid less than two cents for each pair of jeans they sew.” (http://www.globallabourrights.org/alerts?id=0176)
Living wage remains a critical issue in the industry (Clean Clothes Campaign 2019a).
The majority of workers in garment production are women. Women workers are also disproportionately targeted with physical and verbal abuse in the textile supply chain (Human Rights Watch 2019b).
There are widespread reports of female garment workers being asked for sexual favours in exchange for lighter workloads or leave (Human Rights Watch 2019b). Often women do not feel safe enough to report such harassment and discrimination in the workplace.
Child labour remains a pervasive issue throughout the industry. Children of refugees are particularly vulnerable. For example, children have been identified in Turkey as preferred labourers due to their cost advantages (Korkmaz 2019). While intense work focusing on the textile industry’s use of child labour has reduced this issue over the last 10 years, some cotton producing-countries continue to use child labour.
Brands and retailers look for low-cost production, and often this means sourcing garment production in regions that have weak, corrupt or inefficient governments. Brands and retailers exploit this low-regulation environment to keep prices down - and if the situation changes they can easily move production to another country.
Governments have struggled to challenge these corporations, as they fear losing the economic advantages that the garment industry brings (Haque and Azmat 2015). This means governments are incentivised to limit worker rights, allow violations of the law, and exercise weak regulatory quality and effectiveness in order to ensure the textile and garment industry remains in the country.
The price pressure that brands exert on their suppliers is another barrier to improving working conditions, as the prices brands pay are insufficient to support adequate wages, let alone the cost of improving working conditions (Miller and Hohenegger 2017; Starmanns 2017).