Making Fashion More Just: Why Isolating Labor Costs is Not the Key to Higher Wages
Factory costs are driven by deviations from forecast. And it’s the fact that suppliers disproportionately bear the financial risk for these deviations that leads to workers being squeezed.
Explanations for low wages and precarious livelihoods within the fashion supply chain usually go something like this: factory managers must squeeze every last drop of time out of their workers to hit the low costs and price targets the industry demands. Cue the calls for isolating labor costs from labor rights activists, sustainability executives, and the press alike. The thinking is: if labor costs are ringfenced, we can make sure worker wages are protected during price negotiations between brands and suppliers.
Intuitive? Yes. But an effective route to securing better wages for workers? I’m not so sure. As a former garment factory manager, it’s my view that solutions based on isolating labor costs are based on an incomplete understanding of what drives factory costs, and therefore worker exploitation.
