WORKING CONDITIONS IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY

We live in an era of “information overload” and for us, customers, now is easier than ever to search for information about our favourite brands and discover what their practices in terms of transparency and working conditions are. Although this might sound straightforward, nowadays we all know most of the fashion companies we buy clothes from are made by people in other continents under inhumane working conditions. With this information, customers are powerful enough to change their buying behaviour and lead to a change in the fashion industry, but why are we still demanding clothes from these companies instead of contributing to small businesses with excellent working conditions?

According to the book ‘Black Brands’, society started to get information about this topic after the disaster which happened in the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh, which we will talk about in later posts. Since this tragedy, people are more concerned than ever about big companies such as Mango or Inditex paying less than the minimum wage to their workers whilst brands talk about amazing economic figures at the end of their activity in their annual reports. Along with this, the working hours are endless to be able to meet fashion brands deadlines. According to sustainyourstyle.org, most garment workers are forced to work 14 to 16 hours in factories without the required health and safety conditions, which in many cases, has led to absolute disasters where thousands of workers have died for different reasons. In addition, well-known fashion brands have also been involved in child labour scandals as fashion industry requires low-skilled labour; and the prohibition of union workers. Governments in export zones where factories are established usually restrict the creation of unions because, through them, workers would be able to communicate their problems, threats and devastating conditions.

In the next posts, we will talk about different aspects of the big fashion companies’ factories and how they treat their workers in other parts of the world while we are just focused on continuing to consume without caring about these people. Our goal with these articles is to concern our readers about this topic and how we can change our behaviour in order to make a needed change in the fashion industry.