The 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.
The majority (60%) of those interviewed were still employed in clothing factories supplying overseas brands. The report found that across all nine countries, workers had experienced an average 21% drop in wages since the beginning of the year, leading to many being unable to cover basic living costs. Others had lost their jobs when their factories closed or sacked or suspended workers after brands cancelled orders or pulled their business at the beginning of the pandemic.
In order to continue feeding their children, 75% of workers said they had taken out loans or gone into debt since the beginning of the pandemic. Prof Genevieve LeBaron, a professor of politics at Sheffield University and a co-author of the report, said the debt workers were running up was one of the most alarming aspects of the research. She said that “75% of the 400 workers we talked to said they were borrowing money to buy food, and almost half of these workers are still working at the same factory that employed them before the pandemic, which means that even those who have managed to keep their jobs are taking on debt to cope with falling income.
“Brands bear substantial responsibility for the destitution garment workers are facing,” said Penelope Kyritsis, director of strategic research at WRC. “The fashion industry has made its overseas workers exquisitely vulnerable to this crisis by paying them chronically low wages, leaving workers unprotected and unable to absorb the pandemic’s economic shocks. And the industry’s response to the crisis has often made matters worse. Unless something is done to help them we are likely to see tremendous suffering across global supply chains.”
“What is most concerning is that brands are now seemingly exploiting their suppliers’ desperation for orders by demanding lower prices and slower payment schedules, increasing the downward pressure on wages and making more job losses inevitable,” said Kyritsis.
“What is most significant is that garment workers from nine countries with very different worker and industry demographics are all experiencing the same difficulties … This is a system where the workers at the bottom are taking all the risk and paying the price when things go wrong.”
Fashion brands cancelled an estimated $15bn of orders when the global lockdown closed retail outlets earlier this year. Clothing companies used force majeure clauses in their contracts with overseas suppliers to cancel existing orders. Many of these orders had already been completed but brands refused to accept shipment, leaving suppliers stranded with millions of pounds of unsold stock. Factories were also forced to shut because of Covid, and the refusal of foreign buyers to continue to pay workers’ wages while business was suspended has, the report said, led to mass redundancies and hours and pay being slashed.
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