Garment Worker Exploitation/Fast

Fashion

History

Slavery/Cotton Picking in USA

❖ From 1801-1862, the amount of cotton picked daily through the practice
of slavery was skyrocketing by 400 percent. (Vox)
❖ The profits from cotton propelled the US into a position as one of the
leading economies in the world, and made the South its most
prosperous region. (Vox)
❖ The ownership of enslaved people increased wealth for Southern
planters so much that by the dawn of the Civil War, the Mississippi River
Valley had more millionaires per capita than any other region (Vox)
❖ During the times of slavery, the southern states would employ the
forced labor of black slaves to produce and harvest cotton.

Textile Mills
❖ The first main feature of industrial workplaces was the long hours of
work. It was not uncommon for workers to be expected to work shifts
of 16 hours per day in grueling conditions. The work was labor
intensive and required the workers to complete repetitive and tiring
actions. As such, many of the workers were physically ‘burned out’
after a day of work. Often workers were denied their breaks or were
deducted pay for taking a break. As well, they were also sometimes
required to clean the machines during their meals.
❖ The first main feature of industrial workplaces was the long hours of
work. It was not uncommon for workers to be expected to work shifts
of 16 hours per day in grueling conditions. The work was labor
intensive and required the workers to complete repetitive and tiring
 actions. As such, many of the workers were physically ‘burned out’
after a day of work. What made the situation worse was the lack of
breaks during the long shifts. Often workers were denied their breaks
or were deducted pay for taking a break. As well, they were also
sometimes required to clean the machines during their meals.
❖ The third feature of workplaces in the Industrial Revolution was the
dirty and dangerous conditions that workers were expected to endure
during their shifts. For example factories of the Industrial Revolution
were notorious for being dangerous, especially textile mills. Spinning
machines in textile mills were often left unguarded and posed a
serious risk. For instance, a report from the British House of
Commons in 1832 commented that “There are factories, no means
few in number, nor confined to the smaller mills, in which serious
accidents are continually occurring, and in which, notwithstanding,
dangerous parts of the machinery are allowed to remain unfenced.”
This situation caused industrial workers to become injured, as they
were working dangerously close to spinning belts and shafts that
powered the machines. Any loose fitting clothing could easily
become clogged and pull the worker violently into the workings of the
machine. Furthermore, the factories of the Industrial Revolution were
known for the excruciating heat. Factories in the Industrial Revolution
were cramped and contained spaces. Often times, they were built
without windows or proper ventilation and as a result the machines
would quickly cause the inside temperature of the factory to increase
dramatically.

Garment Worker Exploitation

Sexual Harrassment
❖ Of the 763 women interviewed in factories, in three Vietnamese provinces, 43.1%

said they had suffered at least one form of violence and/or harassment in the
previous year. A large majority of those interviewed said they had experienced
 unwelcome verbal abuse and harassment in the past year. A third had experienced
physical harassment such as kissing, touching, hitting, punching, or leaning. (Global
Citizen)
❖ Women detailed surviving abuse that ranged from groping and slapping to rape and

threats of contract termination. Younger, better-educated women and migrant

workers endured the most abuse and harassment. (Global Citizen)
❖ The abuse occurred in factories with as many as 20,000 employees, according to

the report. The names of the companies that manufacture their products at these
factories remain confidential, but it is likely that they are connected to many major
US and European brands. (Global Citizen)
❖ On top of working in unsafe environments, the women reported putting in more than

60 hours of overtime per month and sometimes weren’t paid for it. Some women
described fearing management and sometimes not using the bathroom to avoid
being scolded. (Global Citizen)
❖ The actual rate of abuse and harassment is likely higher than was reported in the

study, Dr. Jane Pillinger, a gender-based violence expert who wrote the study, told
the Guardian. Many women didn’t provide honest answers for the report because
they feared their employer or husband might find out. (Global Citizen)
❖ An ActionAid report in 2019 estimated that 80% of all Bangladeshi garment workers had
faced sexual violence in the workplace. (Guardian)
❖ Last year, a report by an NGO, the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), revealed a
widespread incidence of rape, sexual assault and harassment at multiple garment
factories in Maseru. More than 120 women from three different factories testified that
they had been forced to have sex with male supervisors in order to keep their jobs. Some
alleged that they had been raped on the factory premises. Some said they had contracted
HIV from supervisors who withheld their salaries until they agreed to have unprotected
sex. Those who complained were sacked. (Guardian)
❖ The knock-on effect has been swift and brutal: more than 1 million workers have already
lost their jobs in Bangladesh. Many are already facing destitution. As wages are slashed
and factories close, there has been a wave of attacks on labor rights campaigners and
vulnerable workers, including pregnant women in Bangladesh, Cambodia and Myanmar.
Already, the sexual abuse of women garment workers who desperately need jobs is on
the rise. //Because of COVID (Guardian)
Child Labor
❖ Of the 11% of children that are accounted as being illegally forced to work, many
are employed by the fashion sector (The Guardian, 2017). Indeed, because of
their smaller hands, children are particularly suited for tasks requiring precision
and delicacy, such as cotton picking or sewing, making them even more
vulnerable to being exploited in the apparel industry. (Humanium)
❖ Moreover, in the developing countries where most products of fast-fashion are
produced, children represent a ‘business opportunity’ for contractors in search for
low-skilled workers who can be paid way below the minimum wage and easily
forced to work due to the vulnerability that comes with their young age.
(Humanium)
❖ Because of a lack of controls, including workers unions, and because of the
complexity of the fast-fashion supply chain, employers often get away with
engaging in such practice, and companies as well as consumers are hardly able
to track where and how the final product has been made. (Humanium)
❖ Child labor is a direct consequence of extreme poverty. Families living way below
the poverty line are often forced to rely on their children to survive, putting them
to work as young as five years old (UN News, 2021). (Humanium)
❖ The lack of education and proper care that these kids suffer fuels, in turn, the so-
called ‘poverty trap’ (Borgen Magazine, 2020). That is, a vicious cycle where
children are not provided with the means and opportunities to escape poverty,
causing their offspring to remain in the sector and face once again its hazardous
effects. (Humanium)
❖ In the cotton industry, children have historically been used to cross-
pollinate the cotton plants, to harvest the crop, and in spinning, weaving,
and dyeing mills. (good on you)
❖ This has been particularly evident in Uzbekistan, where government
workers reportedly forced children to spend the summer months picking
cotton and even threatened them with expulsion from school if they did
not comply. However, after the campaigning and backlash from
international activist organisations in the past few years, the ILO has
reported “a huge drop in the number of school children being used in
the cotton harvest.” (good on you)
❖ In cotton mills in Southern India in the past, poor girls were often enticed
to work in circumstances that are virtually bonded labour. Factory
managers may even have had hormones put in their food to stop them
 from menstruating, as women are seen to be less productive during
their menstrual period. (good on you)
❖ Although it can sound very bleak, things have been improving. The
number of children in child labour has declined by one-third since 2000,
from 246 million to 160 million children. Around half of them (79 million)
are in hazardous work (down from 170 million in 2000). This was
particularly the case for girls engaged in child labour, the rate of which
fell by 40% since 2000, compared to 25% for boys. Despite this, the ILO
reports that “Global progress against child labour has stalled since
2016”, as seen in the numbers, which have unfortunately held steady.
(good on you)

Worker Strikes
❖ Workers who strike are often subjected to police brutality, cut pay,
suspended commute, or even getting sacked.
❖ For nearly two weeks in January 2019, 50,000 women garment workers in
and around Dhaka, Bangladesh, engaged in a series of militant work
stoppages, protests, and strikes to demand higher wages, facing down
police and causing over 50 factories to shut down. It was essentially a
general strike, a show of force from a long-undervalued workforce.
❖ The minimum wage for a Bangladeshi garment worker had recently been
raised 50 percent but still only reached the equivalent of $95 per month,
which workers say isn’t enough to cover even basic necessities. According
to a recent Centre for Policy Dialogue report, a Bangladeshi garment
worker’s average salary covers just 49.9% of living costs, and finding
affordable housing is a struggle.
❖ The low pay has a much bigger impact on women across the region, as
they form the bulk of many garment workforces. In Bangladesh and
Vietnam, 80% of garment workers are women; in Sri Lanka, it’s 71%; in
Cambodia, that number stretches to 90%.
❖ During clashes between police and strikers, one person was killed and
dozens were injured by police firing rubber bullets and water cannons.
Since the strike, 5,000 participants have been fired.
❖ Meanwhile, the Bangladesh Supreme Court tried to stymie a renewal of
the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, a legal agreement
the IndustriALL Global Union, UNI Global Union, and eight affiliated
Bangladeshi unions have with over 200 global brands and fashion retailers
that seeks to regulate workplace health and safety across the nation’s
garment and textile industry.
❖ Back in 2010, workers’ unions reported that over 60,000 women textile-
factory workers walked off the job to protest low wages in Cambodia. Four
 years later, three Cambodian textile workers were killed by police during a
protest over the minimum wage. In Sri Lanka, where labor’s power is
precarious, members of IndustriALL’s Sri Lanka affiliate CIWU still staged
a protest outside their place of employment, Tri Star Apparel Exports (Pvt)
Ltd., over unpaid wages and benefits in 2016. In 2017, 6,000 garment
workers in north Vietnam went on strike to protest company policies and
low wages; a similar large-scale strike was called in southern Vietnam in
2015, and wildcat strikes are common across the country’s workforce.

Working Conditions
❖ 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. In some cases, overtime is
not even paid at all. (Sustain Your style)
❖ The collapse of the Rana Plaza in 2013, killing 1134 garment
workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, has revealed the
unacceptable working conditions of the whole fashion
industry to the world.
❖ Employees usually work with no ventilation, breathing in
toxic substances, inhaling fiber dust or blasted sand in
unsafe buildings. Accidents, fires, injuries, and disease are
very frequent occurrences on textile production sites.
❖ On top of that, clothing workers regularly face verbal and
physical abuse. In some cases, when they fail to meet their
(unreachable) daily target, they are insulted, denied breaks,
or not allowed to drink water.
❖ In South India, for example, 100,000 girls work under the
Sumangali scheme, a practice which involves sending
young girls from poor families to work in a textile factory
for three or five years in exchange for a basic wage and a
lump sum payment at the end to pay for their dowry.
❖ Girls are overworked and live in appalling conditions that
can be classified as modern slavery.
 ❖ Many cases of forced labor have also been reported along
the supply chain of the fashion industry.
❖ The most infamous example was taking place until
recently in Uzbekistan, one of the world’s largest cotton
exporters. Every autumn, the government was forcing over
one million people to leave their regular jobs and go pick
cotton. Children were also mobilized and taken out of
school to harvest cotton. Uzbekistan managed to
accelerate the fight against child and forced labour in 2020
and has now almost eliminated it.
❖ In most of these factories, garment workers are not
allowed to form unions to defend their rights collectively.
❖ Governments’ laws and specific regulations in export zones
where factories are established often restrict the creation
of unions, like in Bangladesh, where only 10% of the 4,500
garment factories have a registered union.
❖ Some factories owners also threaten or physically attack
unions members or fire them with total impunity, which
does not encourage employees to form unions.

Bangladesh Fire 2012

Fast Fashion (Process-based)

Agricultural
❖ Most t-shirts are made from cotton, which is grown in 80 countries by
25 million farmers who produced a total of 25.9 million tonnes of fibre
between 2018 and 2019. Conventional cotton farming consumes 6% of
the world’s pesticides, even though it only uses 2.4% of the world’s land.
These chemicals control pests like the pink boll worm, but they can also
poison other wildlife and people. Farmers tend to use large amounts of
synthetic fertiliser to maximise the amount of cotton they grow, which
can degrade soil and pollute rivers.
 ❖ More than 70% of global cotton production comes from irrigated farms
and it takes one-and-a-half Olympic swimming pools of water to grow
one tonne of cotton. Your t-shirt could have used 7,000 litres of water
just to grow the cotton it’s made from. That’s a lot of water for one t-
shirt, especially when you consider that cotton is a crop that tends to be
grown in regions plagued by drought. The farmer may have only 10l to
20l of water a day for washing, cleaning and cooking.

Manufacturial
❖ The cotton has to be spun into yarn, which uses lots of energy and is the
second-highest source of carbon pollution across the t-shirt’s lifecyle,
after the dyeing process.
❖ The cotton yarn is then knitted into the fabric that makes the t-shirt.
Globally, this process generates an estimated 394 million tonnes of CO₂
per year.
❖ Next, colour is added to the fabric. This can be done in many different
ways, but all rely on fresh water, which may become contaminated with
tiny fibres or chemicals harmful to animals and plants. In some cases,
this water is discharged directly into the environment without
treatment. In Cambodia for example, where clothing comprises 88% of
industrial manufacturing, the fashion industry is responsible for 60% of
water pollution.
❖ The dyeing process uses lots of energy to heat the water, as most dye
reactions occur at 60°C or higher. The coloured fabric then has to be
washed and dried to prepare it for the final stage: garment making.
Overall, it takes about 2.6kg of CO₂ to produce a t-shirt – the equivalent
of driving 14 km in a standard passenger car.
❖ A polyester shirt has a greater carbon footprint than a cotton shirt (5.5
kg vs. 4.3 kg, or 12.1 pounds vs 9.5 pounds). Polyester production for
textiles released about 706 billion kg (1.5 trillion pounds) of
greenhouse gases in 2015, the equivalent of 185 coal-fired power
plants' annual emissions.

Usage
❖ Sadly, the average number of times a garment is worn before being
thrown away is falling. In the UK, more than £40 billion (US$53 billion)
 worth of clothing sits at the back of wardrobes. When emptied, 350,000
tonnes of clothing ends up in landfill each year. Often these garments
still have plenty of life in them if they are given the chance – 90% of
donated clothes are suitable for racks in UK charity shops.
❖ When manufactured, washed, and worn, clothes made out of synthetic
materials lose tiny plastic fibers that end up in the environment. Plastic that
ends up in the environment does not biodegrade, it fragmentizes into
smaller pieces. These tiny pieces, called microfibers, are smaller than 5
mm and are known as primary microplastics, which are usually not visible
to the naked eye. Primary microplastics are directly released into the
environment as such, contrary to secondary microplastics which mostly
come from the degradation of large plastic.
❖ Plastic particles washed off from products such as synthetic clothes
contribute up to 35% of the primary plastic that is polluting our oceans.
Every time we do our laundry an average of 9 million microfibers are
released into wastewater treatment plants that cannot filter them. Because
of that, these fibers end up in the ocean. Also, just by wearing synthetic
clothes, plastic fibers are constantly being released in the air.
❖ Recent research proves that we are eating and drinking plastic and that
plastic fibers are literally raining down from the sky. We breathe in plastic
microfibers from our clothing, carpets, curtains & other textiles.

End of life
❖ In America alone, an estimated 11.3 million tons of textile waste – equivalent to
85% of all textiles – end up in landfills on a yearly basis. That's equivalent to
approximately 81.5 pounds (37 kilograms) per person per year and around 2,150
pieces per second countrywide.
❖ Most of the items returned to retailers from consumers end up in landfill.
This is mainly because it costs more to the company to put them back in
circulation than to get rid of them. Reverse logistics company Optoro also
estimates that in the same year, 16 million tonnes of CO2 emissions were
created by online returns in the US in 2020 – the equivalent to the
emissions of 3.5 million cars on the road for a year.
❖ Of the 100 billion garments produced each year, 92 million tonnes end up
in landfills. To put things in perspective, this means that the equivalent of
a rubbish truck full of clothes ends up on landfill sites every second. If the
 trend continues, the number of fast fashion waste is expected to soar up to
134 million tonnes a year by the end of the decade.

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