Garment Workers news and archive

More than 1,000 euros: Clean Clothes Campaign calculates living wage for Eastern Europe

Every fourth garment sold in a major European market like Germany comes from a textile factory in Eastern or Southeastern Europe. But there, the seamstresses who make clothes for the big fashion brands only get poverty wages - sometimes less than their colleagues in the Far East. Together with local textile workers, the Clean Clothes Campaign...

Featured

Fashion

Garment workers from nine countries call for better terms from retailers

Garment makers from nine countries have come together to demand better contracts from global fashion retailers after billions of dollars worth of orders were cancelled or paused last year amid the pandemic. Thirteen garment suppliers associations in China, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco and Indonesia have...

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Business|INTERVIEW

Social compliance: “When workers are more comfortable, it makes them more productive”

Professor Drusilla Brown has led a research team at Tufts University in Massachusetts, USA in the past 20 year that conducts randomized controlled field experiments on various interventions. They are designed to improve conditions of work in global supply chains, particularly in industries such as garment manufacturing dominated by women. Tufts’...

Business

Made in Myanmar: What can brands and retailers do?

Following the military coup in Myanmar on 1st February 2021, a state of emergency has been declared in the Southeast Asian country, which is an attractive sourcing location for the textile and garment industry. Tens of thousands of people are taking to the streets every day, demanding the release and reinstatement of head of government Aung San...

Fashion

MPs call for adjudicator to tackle UK garment supply chain abuses

MPs have called for the introduction of a garment trade adjudicator to help eradicate non-compliance with labour market regulation in the UK’s garment industry. It comes as the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) said it has seen evidence of “ongoing labour abuses in the domestic and international supply chains supplying UK fashion retailers”....

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Business

One year later: How are garment workers and suppliers faring since the Covid-19 pandemic started?

A recent panel to assess the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on garment workers and suppliers revealed that one year later, not all is well in the world of fashion. In fact, research shows that garment workers are going hungry, brands are asking for steep discounts on new orders, and wages to factory workers are going down; all of this is...

Featured

Fashion

The impact of Covid-19 on Asian garment workers

All sectors of the fashion industry have been hit by the coronavirus pandemic, but on a global scale none has felt the impact as hard as garment workers in Asia. New research from the International Labour Organization (ILO) assessed the impact of the crisis on supply chains, factories and workers in 10 major garment-producing countries in Asia,...

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Culture

New short film highlights plight of garments “Made in America”

Is apparel manufacturing close to home the better, safer and fairer option? Not necessarily as various exposés regarding “Made in Europe” have shown and across the pond, “Made in America” does not fare any better. In a just released short film with the same title, US-based NGO Remake gives viewers a look into multiple Los Angeles clothing...

BusinessPress Release

Support garment workers affected by Covid-19

The ready-made garment sector in Bangladesh has been particularly hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. USD 1.5 billion of business has already been lost and 1.2 million garment workers’ livelihoods have been impacted. Many factories have been shut down indefinitely and workers were given only 23 days of salary as severance or sometimes none at...

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Business

Study: "Exploitation Made in Europe": human rights violations plague apparel production

Five days ago was the seventh anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh. More than 1,100 garment workers lost their lives and thousands were injured. The event highlighted the inhuman working conditions: locked in, intimidated and grossly underpaid. Tragic, we think, but far away. New research by the Clean Clothes...

Business

Marks & Spencer, H&M and Bestseller detail measures to help suppliers

Marks & Spencer, H&M and Bestseller have outlined measures to help support suppliers after fashion retailers received widespread criticism in recent weeks when many companies cancelled or refused to pay for huge orders of clothing. As of the beginning of April, 1.4 billion dollars worth of orders had been cancelled and another 1.8 billion...

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Business|COMMENTARY

7 years later, has Rana Plaza prepared the industry for Covid-19?

Once again, it is the sad anniversary of the collapse of the Rana Plaza structure in Savar near Dhaka, Bangladesh, a building that housed various garment factories, the constant humming of their sewing machines, operating on two illegally constructed top floors, that made the building collapse on 24th April 2013, burying 1,132 workers and...