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EPISODE 115 - A SPECIAL REPORT ON GARMENT WORKERS & CORONAVIRUS
Welcome to this special report on how garment workers around the world are being impacted by COVID-19. Fashion is being severely impacted by the shutdowns. You might argue, the sustainable business is the one that survives this. But as usual, it is the worst off who bear the brunt, because they don’t have safety nets to catch them.
How is coronavirus impacting garment workers around the world? Why are activists calling for brands to #payup as factories reel under the strain of cancelled orders? And what's the outlook for a sustainable fashion industry long-term?
Featuring Remake's Ayesha Barenblat, union and NGO leaders Kalpona Akter, Rubana Huq and William Conklin, and factory owner Mostafiz Uddin, as well as the first-hand experience of a garment worker who's been laid off, this episode is a call for brands to act responsibly.
WHO YOU’RE HEARING FROM
ELIZABETH L. CLINE is an NY-based journalist and ethical fashion advocate. She is the author of Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion and The Conscious Closet.
DR. RUBANA HUQ is the president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
KALPONA AKTER is the founder and executive director of the Bangladesh Centre for Worker Solidarity. She was awarded Human Rights Watch's Alison Des Forges award for extraordinary activism
AYESHA BARENBLAT (above) is a sustainable supply chains expert and the founder of Remake - “a community of millennial and Gen Z women who pledge to wear our values and put an end to fast fashion.”
MOSTAFIZ UDDIN is owner of the Denim Expert factory in the city of Chittagong on the southeastern coast of Bangladesh. He is the CEO of Bangladesh Apparel Exchange.
MARISSA NUNCIO is director of the Garment Worker Center in LA.
PAULINA is a garment worker in the LA region. She spoke to Remake about her experiences. Find the whole conversation here.
WILLIAM CONKLIN Cambodia country director for the Solidarity Center, which serves as a worldwide advocate for union activists, defending worker rights, administering training programs for organizing, sharing information with unionists, and providing support for struggling unions.
LINKS AND REFERENCES
SIGN THE PETITION Find the payup petition on change.org here
READ THE BACKGROUND Along with CCC & Workers Rights Consortium, Remake launched the PayUp campaign on March 24th, starting with H&M. Read the story here.
FORCE MAJEURE is a legal construct designed to provide relief to parties affected by an unavoidable or unforeseeable event.
The blog post Clare mentions from the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre is here. The authors say, “COVID-19 is forcing companies to make tough business decisions. But they cannot declare moral bankruptcy and expect to emerge unscathed from the pandemic. By triggering force majeure clauses to halt payments to suppliers with vulnerable workers, companies risk losing their social license to operate. In the post-pandemic world, they will be judged by how humanely they handled this crisis.”
The text of C&A’s STATEMENT is: “It is important to acknowledge that no single company can deal with the economic repercussions for the production countries alone. We are in talks with other industry stakeholders including other brands and the International Labour Organization (ILO) to find ways to work together to mitigate the impact this crisis has on the supply chain.” What do you think about it?
DENIM EXPERT was the first Bangladeshi business to join the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, and the ZDHC (acting on hazardous chemicals), they’ve worked with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and signed up to the UN Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action. Find them here.
Read what Mostafiz told the Guardian here, and his Business of Fashion op-ed, here.
Read Clare’s Business of Fashion op-ed here.
Read Brooke Roberts-Islam’s on the topic for Forbes, here.
Will Primark’s fund make a difference? More here.
CAMBODIA’s GARMENT INDUSTRY employs close to 800,000 people, and accounts for 16 % GDP and 80% of export earnings. Before the spread of the virus outside of China, factories were already seeing impacts, because they couldn’t get fabrics. At the end of March, the Cambodia PM made a comparison with the global financial crisis of 2008, when many factories closed and spoke of the industry’s dependence on US and European markets. He announced that workers who’d been temporarily suspended would get 40 % of their basic minimum wage from the factory and 20 % would be covered by the state. More here.
The ILO warns that COVID-19 and its ramifications have already affected 81% of the global workforce, in the most severe economic crisis since WWII.
Pic via Fashion United
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Clare & the Wardrobe Crisis team x