Cheap for whom?
Most of our clothes are made in countries where workers rights are limited and close to non-existent. They reflect right from poor wages, to factory owners denying paid maternity benefits or even firing pregnant workers to harassment of union leaders to forced overtime work to workplace sexual harassment. It’s exactly as bad as it sounds. The collapse of the Rana Plaza in 2013, killed 1134 garment workers in sweatshops, located in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It brought to light the dark secrets of the appalling working conditions in the fashion industry to the whole world. It was discovered that employees usually work with no ventilation, breathing in toxic substances, inhaling fiber dust while being forced to work in unsafe buildings.
The most common explanation is that “for these workers, it is better than nothing”, “at least we give them a job”. But at what cost? That they are exploiting the grief and taking complete advantage of these poverty struck populations who face serious economic hardships and don’t believe that they deserve better. Even the European Parliament is using the term “slave labour” to describe the current working conditions of garment workers in Asia. Some brands even assure their customers that they pay their workers “at least the minimum legal wage”. Which is often times even lesser than bare minimum that a family requires to fulfill its basic needs.
In 2016, Human Rights Watch joined 8 international labor rights groups and global unions advocating for a basic level of transparency in the garment industry. The coalition developed a “Transparency Pledge”. The objective was to help the garment industry reach a common minimum standard for supply chain disclosures by getting companies to publish standardized, meaningful information on all factories in the manufacturing phase of their supply chains. At Least 17 leading companies, including Adidas, ASOS, Benetton, C&A, Esprit, Gap Inc., H&M, Hugo Boss, Levi’s, Marks and Spencer, New Balance, Nike, Patagonia, Primark, and Puma, disclosed at least the names and addresses of their supplier factories.
It was a good first step, but evidently not enough. It’s hard to care when all of this happens thousands of miles away. But thank God for social media, that has made the world smaller than ever. Digital networks give us the ability to be omnipresent, at almost any location that the internet can reach. It is a resource that keeps giving, if tapped into correctly.
Fashion Revolution is a global movement calling for greater transparency, sustainability and ethics in the fashion industry. Fashion Revolution Week occurs each April at the time of the Rana Plaza factory collapse. Consumers can get involved in Fashion Revolution Week by asking the brands they love, #whomademyclothes and demanding greater transparency in the fashion supply chain through advocacy and purchasing habits. The movement has been spreading like wildfire and has reached over 96 countries. As brands move towards being agile and more interactive with their customers through social media, this movement is building a direct and transparent system of accountability between consumers and brands.
Fast fashion brands can provide cheap alternatives to everything, because someone else pays the price. Can we imagine a future, where the fashion industry establishes universal standards for working conditions and wages for all workers? As more brands become increasingly global by the day, it’s only fair to expect that they take responsibility of those increasingly high measures as well.
