A lot of the problems in the garment industry are endemic you see them roughly in every factory. These range from very unsafe working conditions, to low wages, long working hours, not necessarily being at freedom to decide if you're going to perform overtime or if you want to join a union you get resistance to that, you get fired, you get beaten, you get threatened. There's a lot of problems coming together in the garment industry. With globalization brands, international brands, and retailers went to the most cheap place to produce at reasonable quality, and at the delivery times that they wanted, and brands and retailers tend to always want the same quality, good lead times, at a lower price, so they go to the supplier, the factory, who is able to perform that specific operation at the lowest price possible. Those factory owners also need to then cut costs. You can't cut costs on your raw materials, the cloths, the tissues and so forth. So the thing that is most squeezable are then the labor rights conditions. If you have less and less and less money somebody has to give that and that then translates in low wages, poor working conditions. You don't want to have any unions in factories that ask for a pay rise or humane working conditions. Factories don't necessarily have the money to invest into factory repairs making them safer places, making them more hygienic places, so the labour component of production is the part that is the most easily squeezed, in, in this very competitive market. The wage problem is particularly visible in this industry because you have everywhere low wages. It's again on the one hand brands wanting to produce the same type of clothes at the lowest price possible. then you need to reduce costs wherever you can and wages are the most easy place to a certain extent to to squeeze costs.
At the same time the governments of countries that have a lot of garment production also want to attract order so they also have an incentive to keep wage levels as low as possible in order to remain competitive in a very difficult market. In the sense that if governments raise minimum wages into the range of the living wage then brands will automatically shift orders quite quickly to competing countries, neighboring countries, other countries. So everybody fits in looking at each other in order how to improve wages.
Labor rights in the garment industry : Garment workers are often forced to work 14 to 16 hours a day, 7 days a week. During peak season, they may work until 2 or 3 am to meet the fashion brand's deadline. Their basic wages are so low that they cannot refuse overtime - aside from the fact that many would be fired if they refused to work overtime.
Clean Clothes Campaign believe that a living wage this is a basic human right for garment workers, they believe at minimum it should cover for an average normal family, basically every basic cost, decent housing, food, healthcare, all costs that are socially necessary and then also a bit of margin and discretionary income. So it needs to cover at least basic needs. The actual wage level depends worker to worker and country to country but then average workers are currently earning between a quarter and a third of what they at least minimum need should be earning. Paying garment workers a living wage in isn't in itself very complicated, because the price, the price of wages in a final t-shirt range around half a percentage point, one percentage point - relatively small numbers. If you look at it from the price and the cost of t-shirts in the shop. it is doable, but the problem is that it's about redistribution amongst the supply chain. So it's about power and it's about politics.
The garment industry is the industry in the world where the most people work but the majority of the people who are working in the industry are women. And wherever we see women, we also often see them at the lowest least interesting positions the positions in a factory where wages are the lowest, positions in the factory where you see the most pressure. about 70/80 percent of workers are women, and as a result of that you see specific issues that have the gender dimension.
For example, factory owners in order to speed up production, or even there is a late order want to pressurise their workers to perform quickly, lots of hours at at short notice. So there is a lot of sexual harassment and gender based violence in order to make those workers perform what the order really takes. The garment industry is characterized by a very low rate unionization. between 2 and 5 percent depending on who you talk to.
Factory managers want to avoid unions at all costs because the moment you do have workers join or form a union of their own choosing or basically seeking support with each other and building power together, that's the moment that workers are also going to ask for, for example, clean toilets, or higher wages or safer buildings or less long working hours and so forth. All things that cost money and that are eating away the profit margin of either the factory or the brand. But given that it's the brand who has the power in the relationship it's basically going to eat away in the profits of the factory. Whenever you have an independent and democratic and functioning union in a factory, that union will try to work with management to for example improve working time, reduce working time, bargaining with management to maybe get additional money to get higher wages, get maybe a bonus. Unions if they seek to bargain with management can also deal with very concrete and practical issues. [toilets being clean, enough toilets, the quality of food in the canteen. All kinds of issues ranging from is the chair comfortable, is the temperature not too hot, is it a decent and basic minimum living wage]
Unions do that by changing the balance of power between the factory owner, factory management on the one hand, and workers individually on the other hand, by grouping workers all together they're much stronger in their discussion with factory management than each of them independently. So workers sort of build power by putting people together and puts a lot of people in the same strategy.
So the Clean Clothes Campaign is a global international network of around 250 organizations, trade unions, NGO's, Women groups, church groups, consumer groups, who want to work together to improve labor rights conditions in the supply chain of clothing and garment brands. the Clean Clothes Campaign work with organizations andworkers in specific situations, on specific cases factory cases where there is a specific labor rights violation. Women are not getting paid, a union getting busted. Physical violence, sexual harassment. Each time that there is an issue that the workers and managements counsel locally they escalate it and we, as a network, they follow the needs of what is needed locally in order to increase their power and increase their leverage by campaigning to the brands we're producing in that specific factory. But given that the problems in this sector are so endemic, you see low wages, you see unsafe factories, you see long working hours virtually everywhere. they need to campaign more proactively, they campaign on very strategic issues still where some of the more bigger retailers to take up their responsibility and prevent issues from happening before they happen.
the global garment industry is characterized by its it's very opaque nature. Historically brands don't want to know or don't want to show the public in which factories they're producing. we need to ask companies to disclose the full list of where they're producing. This way we can establish on the one hand who are the brands and on the other hand which factories are producing for those specific brands. This will actually allow and push brands to have a much more meaningful and concrete discussion about what are they doing to improve the lives of workers in the factories where they're producing their goods. what's happening in terms of wages, labor rights, working conditions for the workers who producing the goods of brands. then have a discussion about is what they are doing enough. Is it working. Is it delivering impact. We can we can start tracking that, we can start measuring that, because what's in the end is important is that there is a result, that workers salaries are decent, that factory conditions are safe, that overtime is voluntary, and within limits. by linking brands to factories we can actually see if the efforts that brands are putting into it are either a mere PR stunt or actually delivering concrete and tangible improvements of the workers were actually producing groups that they're selling.
So it is forcible for the garment industry to reach the SDG goals and then specific SDG goal 8, decent work for all, but the crucial element for achieving this is the political commitments of the brands who hold the power in the supply chain, take up their responsibility, to go to the factories where they're producing, to check out what's happening , are there any labor rights violations and if there are risks or actual violations, stop, prevent or mitigate them.to fix whatever is going wrong. But that doesn't need a big and serious political commitment and engagement of those brands and the political will, to obtain and achieve very concrete and specific results at factory level.
Currently, brands have as a main motive to make as much money as possible, in order to make as much money as possible you need to have the biggest difference possible between what price are you buying your your clothes and at what price are you selling your clothes. In this sense better labor rights conditions, higher wages for workers, safer for factories are driving up costs and therefore reducing the margin of brands. So next to the profit motive there needs to be a very strong incentive for these brands to actually perform and to take up the political role that they should take up.
That's why we also need engagement of governments and consumers, to tell brands we expect you to take of this role and to go to the factories very producing to check out what's happening and to fix it. Brands won't listen out of their own volition to workers in their supply chain, but brands do listen to what the consumer want, and they also do listen to what governments want. So consumers who stand up and tell brands 'hey brands. I really like the clothes that you're making, you're really my favorite brand I love the clothes you are making, I wear them every day. But what can you tell me about who is making my clothes. What can you tell me about the conditions there and what can you tell me about what you have been doing in order to improve the conditions of that person and is that delivering results?' The more people that ask these sort of difficult questions. The more brands will take them into account.
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