Category Archives: Fashion industry

‘I thought about killing my children’: the desperate Bangladesh garment workers fighting for pay

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Workers face destitution after the collapse of fashion retailers – and despite beatings and police crackdowns vow they will protest until they are paid

It was 4.30am when the police charged the hundreds of garment workers sleeping under makeshift shelters and in sleeping bags on the streets of Dhaka, Bangladesh. As blows rained down, the workers fled.

By morning the streets had been cleared of the non-violent protest that more than 700 garment workers had been peacefully staging outside the Dhaka Press Club calling for their unpaid wages as they faced mounting destitution and hunger.

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Philip Green is the Scrooge who haunts millions of garment workers | Meg Lewis

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The fallen tycoon leaves behind a mountain of debt, much of it owed to exploited people in Asia earning as little as £4 a day

The collapse of Arcadia in the lead-up to Christmas, and with it the demise of Sir Philip Green’s controversial reign over the UK high street, has a Dickensian feel to it. Over the years, Green has embodied the role of billionaire boss, brazenly handing his wife a tax-free £1.2bn dividend in 2005 (four times the actual annual profits made by the company), while relaxing on his luxury yacht in Monaco. He has rarely showed concern for the workers propping up his empire.

The stark prospect of 13,000 workers losing their jobs and an estimated £350m pensions deficit during a global pandemic is more than enough to constitute the bleak reality of Christmas present, and Arcadia’s collapse will send further shockwaves throughout the fashion industry. Already, news has emerged that Debenhams faces liquidation as JD Sports pulled out of rescue talks, a knock-on effect following the closure of Arcadia’s concession outlets in the department retailer.

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Garment workers going hungry as fallout from cancelled orders takes toll – report

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Workers are being forced into debt and facing food shortages as suppliers to western fashion brands cut wages and close factories

The catastrophic fallout of the fashion industry’s decision to cancel billions of pounds of clothing orders at the start of the pandemic has left garment workers across the world facing chronic food shortages as wages plunge and factories close.

Interviews with nearly 400 garment workers in Myanmar, India, Indonesia, Lesotho, Haiti, Ethiopia, El Salvador, Cambodia and Bangladesh conducted by human rights group Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), found that almost 80% of workers, many making clothes for some of the world’s largest fashion brands, are going hungry. Almost a quarter of those surveyed said that they were facing daily food shortages.

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World’s garment workers face ruin as fashion brands refuse to pay $16bn

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Analysis of trade figures reveals huge power imbalance as suppliers and workers in poorest parts of the world bear cost of Covid downturn

Powerful US and European fashion companies have refused to pay overseas suppliers for more than $16bn (£12.3bn) of goods since the outbreak of Covid-19, with devastating implications for garment workers across the world, according to analysis of newly released import data.

Two US-based groups, the Center for Global Workers’ Rights (CGWR) and the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), used previously unpublished import databases to calculate that garment factories and suppliers from across the world lost at least $16.2bn in revenue between April and June this year as brands cancelled orders or refused to pay for clothing orders they had placed before the coronavirus outbreak.

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Revealed: auditors raised minimum-wage red flags at Boohoo factories

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Exclusive: Third-party reports set out allegations at 18 Leicester suppliers

The fast-fashion retailer Boohoo has been selling clothes made by at least 18 factories in Leicester that audits say have failed to prove they pay the minimum wage to workers, a Guardian investigation has found.

Third-party audit reports produced over the past four years make claims of “critical” issues over record-keeping and working hours at the time they were written, suggesting that in parts of the supply chain workers may be paid as little as £3-£4 an hour.

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The fashion industry echoes colonialism – DfID’s scheme will subsidise it | Meg Lewis

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Covid-19 has exposed the fragility of supply chains, which rely on the labour of black and brown workers. The deep inequalities won’t be fixed by injecting funds at the top

Is the UK governed by parliamentary democracy or big businesses? It is a question that should concern us all, yet it is becoming increasingly hard to differentiate between the two, as the government hands out multimillion-pound contracts to private firms with dubious track records, and ministers revolve between roles at big banks and government. Last week, the line between UK aid and private businesses was called into question, as the Department for International Development (DfID) announced the decision to direct £4.85m of taxpayers’ money towards the work of large retailers including M&S, Tesco and Primark.

The DfID funding is intended to support large companies to fix vulnerable supply chains and ensure that “people in Britain can continue to buy affordable, high-quality goods from around the world”. These aims, along with the fact that UK brands have been entrusted to deliver them, set off alarm bells for labour rights campaigners like myself, who advocate for better working conditions in the global garment industry.

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Marcus Rashford scores cover of British Vogue’s September issue

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The footballer is recognised for his activism in the magazine among 40 ‘faces of hope’

Marcus Rashford’s inspirational, policy-changing campaign against child poverty has garnered him accolades aplenty. Now it has also propelled the footballer on to the front cover of British Vogue’s September issue.

The Manchester United striker, who forced a government U-turn on the granting of free food vouchers for the poorest families over the summer, headlines a special edition dedicated to activism.

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‘Everything you think Rihanna would be, she’s that’ – Fenty insiders tell all

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Black Lives Matter, lockdown, and how Amina Muaddi is set to become the next high-heel superstar: RiRi’s closest collaborators on Fenty’s dramatic first year

The first and second times that Jahleel Weaver met Rihanna, they bonded over shoes. In 2007, when Weaver was a student in New York with a part-time job at the cult downtown Jeffrey boutique, he sold her a pair of Christian Louboutins. (The classic, “Pigalle” pointed-toe court in bronze, with graffiti on the side.) Four years later, Weaver was assisting stylist Mel Ottenberg, who was dressing Rihanna for a recording of the chatshow Good Morning America. “So this was, like, 4am, and she complimented me on my shoes,” remembers Weaver. “They were Raf [Simons] for Jil Sander brogues, black with neon-pink soles. One of my favourite pairs of shoes of all time.”

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‘We are on our own’: Bangladesh’s pregnant garment workers face the sack

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Employers are avoiding paying maternity benefits and purging union members as orders plummet during Covid-19, say activists

A few weeks ago, Kalpona Akter’s phone started vibrating. She watched with mounting dread as message after message poured in. First there was the garment worker who had been sacked for demanding personal protective equipment for his colleagues. Then pregnant women and union members started calling for help, saying they were also losing their jobs.

As Bangladesh’s garment sector reels from the economic impact of Covid-19 and the shock of £2.4bn of cancelled or suspended orders inflicted on the industry by overseas fashion brands, a wave of job losses has swept across the country. Moreover, during lockdown hundreds of thousands of workers were not paid for work they had already done.

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‘My life became a disaster movie’: the Bangladesh garment factory on the brink

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One factory owner tells how coronavirus cancellations by UK brands have seen him struggle to pay wages

As high streets across England opened this week and hundreds of people jostled through the doors of clothing shops, thousands of miles away in Chittagong, Bangladesh, Mostafiz Uddin is worrying about how to pay his workers’ wages.

At Denim Expert Ltd, the sustainable clothing company he founded in 2009 as a sustainable apparels clothing company, hundreds of boxes of jeans are crammed against walls and packed to the ceiling. These boxes contain 38,000 pairs of Burton jeans, worth more than £200,000 that were ready for shipment in early March. But as the UK went into lockdown that month, an email pinged into his inbox that tore his life apart.

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‘We have no money for food or rent’: plight of Bangladeshi garment makers

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Clothing factory workers in Bangladesh were hit twice by Covid-19, once when their factories closed, and again when global retailers cancelled orders

Nazmin Nahar, a 26-year-old garment worker and mother of two in Dhaka, Bangladesh, is living on borrowed rice. She hasn’t had the wages to pay for food or rent for more than two months.

Even though the hours were long and the targets relentless, Nahar had been happy working at Magpie Knitwear, where she earned £150 a month, making clothes for UK brands such as Burton and H&M. Then, in late March, Bangladesh went into lockdown and the factory closed. When it reopened on 4 April, Nahar was told she had no job to go back to.

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Racism is at the heart of fast fashion – it’s time for change | Kalkidan Legesse

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The fashion industry makes huge profits from the exploitation of black and brown women. Now is the time to call it out

Of all the shocks that the past few weeks and months have brought to all our lives, one of the biggest for me as a black woman working in the fashion industry is that finally people are realising that racism is more than calling someone a derogatory name.

The killing of George Floyd while in police custody and the global outrage and protest that followed is bringing a dawning collective understanding that white supremacy relies on the exploitation of black and brown people. 

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Anger at huge shareholder payout as US chain Kohl’s cancels $150m in orders

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Retailer paid $109m in dividends just weeks after cancelling clothing orders, leaving suppliers in Bangladesh facing financial crisis

Kohl’s, one of the US’s largest clothing retailers, cancelled millions of dollars worth of existing orders from Bangladeshi and Korean garment factories just weeks before paying out $109m (£85m) in dividends to shareholders, the Guardian can reveal.

The company cancelled orders of clothing worth approximately $100m from Korea and $50m from Bangaldeshi factories after the Covid-19 pandemic struck, and refused petitions from suppliers asking for the option to renegotiate payments. 

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‘These women aren’t victims’: director turns the spotlight on garment workers

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Based on true stories, Rubaiyat Hossain’s Made in Bangladesh challenges stereotypes while revealing the relentless pressure of fashion’s supply chain

Rubaiyat Hossain’s latest film, Made in Bangladesh, opens with a scene of pure, visceral panic: young garment workers trapped in a burning factory. Alarms blare, women scream and smoke fills the stairwells.

“A fire or a building collapse is every garment worker’s greatest fear,” says Hossain. When filming the scene, the women seen desperately running for their lives didn’t need much direction. 

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Bangladesh garment factories reopen despite coronavirus threat to workers

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In an effort to revive the stricken industry plant owners restart production, but labour activists claim safety measures are illusory

Workers in garment factories in Bangladesh, which have reopened despite a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, have said their lives are being put at risk as they are forced to return to work in cramped conditions where mask-wearing and physical distancing are not enforced.

Directives by the Bangladesh government stated that garment factories, which supply some of the biggest brands in the world and produce 84% of the country’s total exports, would be allowed to resume operations, but only if they maintain physical distancing and the ban on public transportation.

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Victoria Beckham firm sued by ex-employee over hand injury

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Kristina Kubiliene can ‘barely open her handbag’, allegedly as a result of working long hours

Victoria Beckham’s clothing brand is being sued by a pattern cutter who claims to have developed a serious hand injury that required surgery after working for up to 15 hours a day in the run-up to New York fashion week.

Kristina Kubiliene, 54, worked for Victoria Beckham Ltd at its London studio for nearly eight years and left last year after developing carpal tunnel syndrome, which left her barely able to open her handbag, her lawyer said.

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Arcadia Group cancels ‘over £100m’ of orders as garment industry faces ruin

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As owner of brands including Topshop and Dorothy Perkins cancels unshipped orders, thousands will be left without income, warn rights groups

The Arcadia Group, which owns brands including Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Miss Selfridge, is estimated to have cancelled in excess of £100m of existing clothing orders worldwide from suppliers in some of the world’s poorest countries as the global garment sector faces ruin.

According to data from the Bangladesh Garments and Manufacturing Association (BGMEA), the Arcadia Group has cancelled £9m of orders in Bangladesh alone.

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Primark announces wage fund for garment workers

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Pledge comes in response to claims that order cancellations to minimise Covid-19 losses have hurt millions of workers in the developing world

Primark, one of the UK’s most popular retailers, has announced it will create a fund to help pay the wages of the millions of garment workers affected by its decision to cancel tens of millions of pounds worth of clothing orders from factories in developing countries across the world.

The pledge followed sustained criticism of the fashion retailer after data from the Bangladeshi and Garment Exporters Association (BGMEA) revealed it had cancelled all orders already placed with suppliers.

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Primark among retailers cancelling £2.4bn orders in ‘catastrophic’ move for Bangladesh

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Coronavirus cutbacks amount to a ‘wholesale abandonment’ of garment workers, says labour rights group

More than a million Bangaldeshi garment workers have been sent home without pay or have lost their jobs after western clothing brands cancelled or suspended £2.4bn of existing orders in the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic, according to data from the Bangladeshi and Garment Exporters Association (BGMEA).

Primark and the Edinburgh Woollen Mill are among retailers that have collectively cancelled £1.4bn and suspended an additional £1bn of orders as they scramble to minimise losses. This includes nearly £1.3bn of orders that were already in production or had been completed, according to BGMEA.

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Garment workers face destitution as Covid-19 closes factories

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Campaigners call for fashion brands to protect workers in their supply chains globally as coronavirus causes orders to dry up

The fashion industry is facing calls to step in and protect the wages of the 40 million garment workers in their supply chains around the world who face destitution as factories close and orders dry up in the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic.

Many factories in garment-producing countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia and Vietnam are already closing due to a shortage of raw materials from China and declining orders from western clothing brands.

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