While we were dealing with our mother mass starters and settling into our tracksuit pants, the pandemic was one of the “boldest monetary thefts in the company’s history,” according to Scott Nova, chief executive of the Worker Rights Consortium, was unfolding right under our noses. A new report, “Unpaid Billions,” co-authored by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the Penn State Center for Global Workers’ Rights, relies on knowledge of the importation of clothing from the United States and Europe to shed light on the bleak history of unethical transactions through primary marks of the pandemic.
When he hit the coronavirus, hard-clothing corporations “canceled” orders, an educated way of saying they refused to pay their clothing suppliers for clothes they had explicitly ordered months before the pandemic and were already cut, sewn and finished or almost finished. Commercial knowledge shows that at least $16. 2 billion has disappeared from the chain of origin, of which only about $2 billion is due to the wages of garment workers. The report also estimates a total of $40 billion in orders, first of all, unpaid. Crisis.
“We may see the cancellations in the data, and we may see them across the country,” says Mark Anner, co-author of the report and director of the Center for Global Workers’ Rights. “And it has had a dramatic effect on workers’ rights. “
I’ve been writing about this saga going on for months and I’ve joined the factory refund requests. After great public pressure, nearly two dozen clothing stores have pledged to pay for orders worth around $15 billion, adding Gap, Levi Strauss, Nike, H
Some brands claim to be working with suppliers to mitigate the devastation of those decisions. A Kohl representative said he was looking for “liquidation opportunities” and would “reorganize” some products in addition to other strategies. It adds that it had the “contractual right” to cancel orders, which are estimated at $150 million in Bangladeshi and Korean products only. Bestseller’s press representative said the company continued to pay all of our suppliers. “Staying on the Worker Rights Consortium Tracker for Enforcing discounts on those products is so strict that labor rights teams say this erases suppliers’ profits. The WRC report estimates that some other $1 billion was not paid to suppliers only for retroactive refunds.
Unpaid fashion expenses have been catastrophic for garment staff. A September report in co-authorship through the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights, the WRC and the International Netpaintings of Lawyers Helping Workers of the Solidarity Center (ILAW Netpaintings) showed that these debts have resulted in mass layoffs (at least one million garment workers in Bangladesh, 150,000 in Cambodia), while the Clean Clothes Campaign has revealed that millions of employees are still paid for the paintings they made at the beginning of pandemic. As Kalpona Akter, a Bangladeshi garment activist, said earlier about the crisis, and paraphrase: “For brands, orders are a waste of profits, for staff, it means wasting food. “
But the lack of cash is not just a fashion-related challenge, and it should not provoke outrage just out of fear of the world’s poor. When giant companies don’t have to hold other people accountable, they harm and must lock up human workers. beings in poverty as they expand their gains in the midst of a crisis – we lose confidence in our institutions. Americans on both sides of the aisle see the pandemic as evidence of the failure of globalization; and order chains from more localized sources. This is bad news for the millions of people around the world who will continue to produce the maximum of the products we buy and who only need a fair refund and social protection.
Moreover, Americans have more in common with operating factory personnel than we think, and relocation will not solve those problems. The clothing source formula is strangely similar to many other precarious jobs that Americans now occupy, whether as structured economy staff, delivery drivers. , freelance writers, janitors, etc. What all these jobs have is not unusual is that they are outsourced (what Harvard economist David Weil calls the “place of cracked paintings”), and staff in those sectors have no rights because of labor law and poor regulation that prevents them from taking credit for the wealth accumulated through the giant corporations for which they paint. Inequality is developing in the fashion chain of origin (Oxfam estimates that the average fashion ceo earns a garment painter’s lifetime salary in 4 days), however, this also happens in American society. The invisible hand of the market does not paint for many people.
We have also tried decades of rapprochement with farm factory workers and allowed giant corporations to push for the replacement of social and environmental problems in their factories. This strategy has failed. As canceled orders show, the interests of multinationals oppose workers. What was smart for marks during the pandemic was terrible for garment workers, and vice versa. We deserve not to entrust brands with a duty to eliminate factories when they are encouraged to do so. A recent report through MSI Integrity mapping shows (and canceled orders pass home) that voluntary codes of conduct fail to “reliably stumble upon abuse, hold corporations accountable for damage, or provide access to repairs.
Meanwhile, Anner’s previous studies have continually shown that situations for garment staff in many garment-producing countries are not improving or stagnant. In fact, this new WRC review shows that the costs brands pay to suppliers have fallen further since the start of the pandemic. “Some brands have taken it down but costs have dropped even more,” Says Anner. “And that staff was already hanging from a wire.
The fashion industry will probably never pay its expenses to staff and suppliers in full. That’s why requests for reform of supply chain regulations and corporate responsibility for the human rights violations they cause are growing. That’s very encouraging. But to make the changes, more consumers and Western leaders will want to perceive that this is not just a challenge of clandestine workshops affecting other distant people.
The foundations of this crisis were laid long before the pandemic: textile staff are nerding and paying to sew garments for some of the world’s most successful corporations (only 20 brands control 97% of the industry’s profits), and do not have a safety net with little access to unemployment insurance and few choice options. “These are the massive force imbalances that outline global source chains,” Nova says. “Trademarks have used their strength to establish a unilateral payment system. This allowed them to take credit for the suppliers for this crisis. This same force allows the marks to get away with it”.
This imbalance of power, as the pandemic has revealed, has allowed corporations to circumvent trade regulations in a way that unduly harms suppliers and protects themselves. The ECCHR/WRC/ILAW report, entitled “Great Farce: How Global Clothing Brands Are the COVID-19 Pandemic for Rigid Suppliers and Abandon Workers,” tested the unethical contracts underlying cancellations. language that allows brands to cancel without payment for a multitude of reasons. The Arcadia Group contract allows you to cancel orders without payment for any reason, according to the report. Other corporations, adding Urban Outfitters, have used force majeure or force majeure clauses to opt out of fulfilling their contracts, even though many had cash to pay. As the “Major Farce” report points out, cancelled orders, regardless of unethical and unilateral contracts between trademarks and factories, most likely violate the United Nations Guidelines. (UNGP) and the OECD Guidelines. multinational corporations. So, contracts want to reform in the future.
Solutions for the fashion industry may not be clearer: we want new regulations and regulations to regulate global supply chains and hold brands accountable by the staff who manufacture their products, wherever they live. This will inspire corporations to pay higher wages, a network of protection to protect them in the event of a crisis, and to distribute fashion wealth more lightly. Negotiating new foreign regulations is a challenge in our political climate and big brands are very strong and heavily invested in the way things are. , however, the replacement will have to come. This can set a precedent that would gain advantages for a lot of fashionable staff and more.
The “Major Farce” report presents a transparent and compelling roadmap for change, calling for a rapid review of foreign source chain regulations; new legislation prohibiting unfair contractual clauses between companies and suppliers; national legislation in which trademarks are headquartered that punishes corporations for human rights violations in their chains of origin (the French law on the duty of surveillance is an example; California will have some other possibility to pass its apparel employee coverage law in 2021); and factory-binding agreements between trade unions, factories and brands that identify higher wages and operating conditions. The report also calls for a full regulatory and legislative investigation into the imbalance of strength in the chain of origin that led brands to cancel in the first place.
How are we going to realistically accomplish all this?In fact, I hope that the logos that were smart business managers during the crisis and who paid their expenses will lead the way, but we also want public and foreign establishments and support from the national government. To this end, the International Lawyers Assisting Workers Network (ILAW Network) is a new global network of more than 400 lawyers in 58 countries, trained to advertise greater regulation of the chain of origin. PayUp Fashion, a new initiative of the original #PayUp campaign, of which I am a member, uses the strength of citizens to help propel the public around the duty of the logo and those long-desired legal reforms. In addition to the Clean Clothes Campaign, we that logos want to partner with foreign establishments and governments to obtain a monetary protection network for clothing. staff during the pandemic, as a first step.
Violations of labor rights in clothing may seem remote and abstract, but they are a microcosm of what has happened in American society. Economic concentration is too high, staff salaries are low and strength is entrenched, making repositioning illusory. too past due to the reform of the way we do business, including across borders, long distances and long supply chains, to protect everyone and give all staff access to the ladder of prosperity. The apparel industry, as one of the largest labor sectors in the world, whether at home or abroad, has a great chance of having a positive effect and is the right position to start.
UPDATE – 15/10/20 – This story has been updated to better reflect the main points of the ECCHR/WRC/ILAW report, “Major Farce”, and contributions from THE ILAW, at the request of this organization.
I am a journalist for Overdressed and The Conscious Closet and a master’s student in foreign relations and global studies at Northeastern College of
I am a journalist, from Overdressed and The Conscious Closet and a master’s student in foreign relations and global studies at Northeastern College of Professional Studies. I am a regular radio and television commentator, appearing on NBC Nightly News, China Television News Network and NPR, among others, to discuss my perspectives on the industry’s progress towards morally sourced and environmentally friendly networks. My cash reports on factories, clothing staff and local environments have taken me to Bangladesh, China, Kenya, Italy, the Dominican Republic and the United States. .