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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.

Kim van der Weerd
JUST FASHION
5 min readDec 17, 2020

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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.

What drives factory costs?

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JUST FASHION
JUST FASHION

Published in JUST FASHION

Radically reimagining the fashion industry with equity and justice for all. We are writers and industry professionals discussing not only why the fashion industry needs to change, but how to do it.

Kim van der Weerd
Kim van der Weerd

Written by Kim van der Weerd

Co-host of Manufactured podcast, sustainable fashion advocate, former garment factory manager.

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