Sustainable Development Goal 1 is to “end poverty in all its forms everywhere.” It is one of the fundamental goals of the international community and of the entire United Nations (UN) system.
SDG 1 builds upon the UN’s efforts to tackle poverty since the Rio Conference in 1992, which set out Agenda 21 and decided that poverty eradication should be the key focus of sustainable development for the coming years. A few years later this was turned into a formal commitment in the Copenhagen Declaration on Social Development and remained the key focus in several proceeding UN initiatives. In 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by 189 countries and helped to lift over one billion people out of extreme poverty. In 2015, the 2030 Agenda: Sustainable Development Goals was adopted “to build upon the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals and seek to address their unfinished business.”
Low pay is persistent
The global fashion industry is notorious for low pay, which helps perpetuate global poverty. From farmers to garment workers to retail workers, millions of people are struggling to support themselves and their families on what they are paid to produce and sell the textiles and clothing we wear.
The legal minimum wage in most garment-producing countries is rarely enough for a worker to live on. For example, the legal minimum wage for garment workers in Bangladesh is 8,000 taka (equivalent to about £73) per month. However, campaigners say workers need double that amount for a decent standard of living. According to Labour Behind the Label, there is a gap of 2 to 5 times, between minimum or industry-standard wages, and most living wage benchmarks based on a cost of living methodology.
According to the Global Living Wage Coalition, a living wage is defined as:
“The remuneration received for a standard workweek by a worker in a particular place is sufficient to afford a decent standard of living for the worker and her or his family. Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, health care, transportation, clothing, and other essential needs including provision for unexpected events.”
Essentially, being paid a living wage rate would mean workers can buy enough food to feed themselves and their families and live in adequate housing where a whole family isn’t forced to live in only one room. Living wages would ensure workers have enough money for education, for transport, for seeing the doctor and for savings in case of emergency.
Research conducted by Deloitte Access Economics for Oxfam has revealed that just 4% of the price of a piece of clothing is estimated to make it back to the workers. Even if big brands passed the entire cost increase of paying living wages to the workers on to consumers by increasing the price they pay for an item, Deloitte estimates this would increase the price of a piece of clothing sold by just 1%.
Low pay is one important aspect of how global poverty relates to the fashion industry, but there are many others.
The majority of the world’s textile and garment workers live in developing economies where poverty endures due to complex, systemic and geopolitical reasons, which are too vast to cover in this article but worth exploring outside of this course. In 2018, China was the largest clothing exporter in the world whilst Bangladesh is the second-largest, followed by Vietnam, India, Turkey, Indonesia and Cambodia in the top 10. These are countries where significant amounts of the population are still desperately poor.
However, poverty is an issue for textile and garment workers in developed economies too. For example, garment workers in Leicester in England were recently found to be paid as little as £3.50 an hour, which is less than half of the legal minimum wage rate for people over age 21 in the UK
Modern-day slavery is rife
Meanwhile, forms of modern slavery exist within the global fashion industry. In fact, the fashion industry is one of the biggest contributors to modern slavery, according to the Global Slavery Index produced by the Walk Free Foundation.
According to Anti-slavery International, some forms of modern slavery include:
- “Forced labour – any work or services which people are forced to do against their will under the threat of some form of punishment.
- Debt bondage or bonded labour – the world’s most widespread form of slavery, when people borrow money they cannot repay and are required to work to pay off the debt, then lose control over the conditions of both their employment and the debt.
- Human trafficking – involves transporting, recruiting or harbouring people for the purpose of exploitation, using violence, threats or coercion.
- Child slavery – many people often confuse child slavery with child labour, but it is much worse. Whilst child labour is harmful for children and hinders their education and development, child slavery occurs when a child is exploited for someone else’s gain. It can include child trafficking, child soldiers, child marriage and child domestic slavery.”
According to the report produced by the Walk Free Foundation, “our most at-risk garments are imported from China, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Brazil and Argentina.”
Modern slavery can be found in myriad forms in fashion supply chains. For example, around 170,000 people are forced by the government to pick cotton in Uzbekistan each year — cotton that ends up in the clothes we may purchase from major fashion brands
modern slavery;
Women and girls are particularly vulnerable to exploitation
In Tamil Nadu in southern India, former workers have described a system of bonded labour in spinning mills (producing yarn or cloth), where thousands of women and girls are employed under “marriage schemes.” They are offered lump-sum payments at the end of working a three-year period, and this scheme is promoted as a way of helping pay for their expensive wedding dowries. In reality, the workers are often not allowed to leave their hostels, forced to work overtime and sometimes verbally or sexually abused
why Indian farmers kill themselves? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32827047
Recent research from the University of California, Berkley found that women and girls from the most marginalised communities toiled for as little as 15 cents an hour in homes across India. Child labour and forced labour were rife and wages regularly suppressed Homeworking is common across supply chains in the fashion industry. Homeworking entails people often working without formal contracts or insurance and are paid in cash. Because homeworkers tend to be found in the informal economy, they do not have the same legal protections as formal workers. If they face exploitation, it is difficult for them to seek recourse. This is true not just for cheap clothing but also in the luxury fashion sector. An investigation by the New York Times found unregulated homeworkers in parts of Italy getting paid €1.50 to €2.00 per hour and working 16 to 18 hour days to make luxury garments for big-name brands
Poverty persists beyond the garment factory too
Low pay and exploitation of working people happens in other parts of the fashion industry too. According to Trade Union Congress, retail is the worst industry in the UK for pay and progression, with just over half a million workers aged between 18 and 29 stuck in low-paid retail work
At the farm level, hundreds of thousands of farmers have committed suicide across the cotton-growing belt of India since the mid-1990’s. Many farmers incur debt they can’t afford to pay back, especially during periods of failed crops, drought and due to volatile financial markets. Accelerating climate breakdown further threatens to make their problems worse
These are many of the conditions that people face whilst working in the fashion industry and keeps them trapped in poverty.
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