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Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Activists Know How to Stop Sexual Violence in the Garment Supply Chain. Will Brands Buy In?
Women across South and Southeast Asia are demanding an end to gender-based violence and harassment in the garment supply chain, which they say is riddled with ineffective efforts by brands that are little more than PR maneuvers meant to burnish their reputations while fostering the status quo. On Thursday, the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, Global Labor Justice and their trade union partners kicked off 'Violence Out of Fashion,' a campaign that is calling for meaningful change through binding, enforceable solutions—like the Dindigul Agreement to Eliminate Gender-Based Violence and Harassment and the more recent Central Java Agreement for Gender Justice—that safeguard freedom of association, bolster women's leadership and create union-led grievance mechanisms by centering worker voices that have long been consigned to the periphery. More from Sourcing Journal Are Amazon's Warehouses Facing an 'Injury Crisis'? Former Calik Employee Dies Following Altercation Bestseller Wants Higher Wages for Myanmar's Garment Workers. Activists Call Foul. 'We want to say, 'No more silence, no more fear,'' said Sultana Begum, president of the Green Bangla Garments Workers' Federation and a member of AFWA's women leadership committee. 'This campaign is a call for change, not just in words or on paper, but in action.' Begum has worked in Bangladesh's garment industry for more than a decade. She's been a union leader for over 25 years. In that time, she said, very little has changed, with women fending off sexual harassment and verbal and physical assault every day. They are often afraid to file complaints because doing so can lead to unemployment, which would mean starting all over again at a new factory, where there's no guarantee the same thing won't happen again. 'Sometimes it's a supervisor yelling and insulting women to work faster. Sometimes it's unwanted touching,' she said through a translator. 'Violence happens in many forms and it has become part of the production process for women workers. Many women come from their village at a young age to get a job in the RMG sector. They are overly trusting. It has happened so many times when an innocent young woman is forced into a relationship with her male supervisor.' Gender-based violence and harassment, or GBVH, isn't just a Bangladeshi problem. Or a Cambodian problem. Or an Indonesian problem. Instead, it's a 'daily reality' for millions of women in Asia making clothes for major fashion brands, said Ashley Saxby, AFWA's gender justice and Southeast Asia coordinator. The problem derives from a fundamental power imbalance in factories' gender makeup. An estimated 42 million women garment workers are employed in Asia alone, accounting for more than half of the workforce in many countries and as much as 80 percent in others, according to the International Labour Organization. Supervisors and managers on the factory floor, however, tend to be male. Because they're used to wielding bullying, harassment, intimidation and violence as 'tools of control' to speed up production and discipline workers, Saxby said, GBVH has become not a flaw, but a feature. 'And brands may be far away from the factory floor, but they drive this violence through constant pressure on suppliers to produce faster and cheaper without any real oversight, and the ones who are paying the price are women workers,' she said. 'These brands know what is happening. They know because unions have been telling them for decades. But instead of real action, we get superficial programs about gender equality because protecting their image has mattered more than protecting the women in their factories. And real accountability would mean admitting that brand-led voluntary initiatives have failed to keep women safe.' The social media part of the campaign includes an Instagram page that is publishing illustrated accounts of workers' everyday indignities. There is a woman from Bangladesh who has been slapped, pushed and struck on the head for minor transgressions. A worker from Sri Lanka must endure inappropriate questions from her supervisor or risk increased targets if she provides an unsatisfactory response. Another from Indonesia is forced to hide in a bathroom whenever auditors come calling, only to see the 'cruelty of supervisors' resume after they leave. 'Every day they have to make a hard decision: to suffer abuse or feed their families; so, they remain silent,' Yang Sophorn, president of the Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions and another member of AFWA's women leadership committee, said through a translator. Speaking out could also have broader consequences, since brands 'easily move their production from one country to another and if one supplier doesn't meet their standards, they will move to another place, leaving workers jobless,' she said. But the climate of secrecy and fear is its own problem, and one that can be incredibly isolating and dehumanizing, Sophorn said. It's also why any collective power must extend beyond borders. 'Suppliers need to make sure the brands keep placing orders, so that's why they discipline their workers with violence and use threats and intimidation to keep them silent,' she added. 'The system works by silencing workers to protect their profits, not by protecting workers' rights.' While the Dindigul and Central Java agreements have been held up as success stories, they're still vastly limited in scope because they've been backed by only a handful of brands at one or two factories: Gap Inc., H&M Group and Calvin Klein owner PVH Corp. with Eastman Exports' Natchi Apparel and Eastman Spinning Mills in the former and Fanatics (and, by extension, licensor Nike) with PT Batang Apparel Indonesia and PT Semarang Garment Indonesia in the latter. Labor activists say they must serve as blueprints for more extensive, systemic efforts. It's why AWFA and GLJ, together with unions in India and Indonesia, have developed the Safety Engagement for Women Workers—or SEWW—Commitment Framework, which they will be asking brands to adopt. Based on lessons from Dindigul and Central Java, it features components that workers 'know are effective and scalable in garment supply chains around the world,' said Sahiba Gill, GLJ's deputy legal director. These include strong workplace standards for GBVH and freedom of association that incorporate and build on international labor mores, women-worker monitors who are empowered to report harassment and violence on the shop floor, grievance mechanisms that include labor management dialogue as an option for remediating harm, an oversight committee involving civil society, brand and supplier signatories, and training for workers, managers and supervisors. The framework also hinges on commitments from brands to use their supply chain leverage to fight for women's safety by creating market incentives for supplier participation and enabling protected jobs for workers through order stability. 'The solution truly is here,' Gill said. 'Now we are willing to work with brands to end gender-based violence and harassment through the SEWW framework. With the launch of this 'Violence Out of Fashion' campaign, we will be calling attention to brands that are falling short on women's safety, because there is simply no more excuse for inaction. Brands will either sign on to the SEWW framework or enable violence against the women who make their products.' Ratna, who works at PT Semarang Garment Indonesia, said she wants to see agreements like the one Fanatics agreed to 'everywhere.' The Central Java agreement, she said through a translator, isn't 'just words on paper.' Rather, it monitors and prevents GBVH on production lines before it escalates. And if harassment happens, she said, factory management will be held accountable by its biggest buyer. 'Before we had the agreement, women were afraid to speak out,' Ratna said. 'After we have this program, our complaints are taken seriously and we have the support of our union. This agreement changed my workplace, and it showed that real safety is possible. Every woman worker deserves that protection. We need brands to stop pretending they care about our safety and start signing up to these agreements.'
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Nike's Supply Chain Workers Continue to ‘Fight the Heist'
More than two years after a group of 20 garment-sector unions representing workers in Nike's supply chains in South and Southeast Asia filed an international labor complaint accusing the sportswear juggernaut of running afoul of guidelines for responsible conduct by multinational businesses, the hundreds of thousands of mostly women who lost wages during the Covid-19 pandemic are still 'fighting the heist,' as the Asia Floor Wage Alliance and Global Labor Justice have put it. And despite what appears like complete disinterest from Nike in engaging with the issue—the Just Do It firm has yet to respond to multiple requests for comment from this publication—the labor-rights nonprofits better known by their acronyms AFWA and GLJ say they're not giving up. Their campaign, in fact, will only escalate. That includes taking the fight to Nike's hometown of Oregon. More from Sourcing Journal Shuffle Board: Carbios' Changing of the Guard Inside Nike's 'Win Now' Strategy Aimed to 'Help Consumers Fall In Love With Something New' Nike CEO Is Confident Company Is on the 'Right Path' 'I really think that this campaign has a chance to be transformative and to change the calculus for Nike about how it will need to treat its workers to continue to have the reputation that it wants, which is to be a champion of equality,' said Noah Dobin-Bernstein, GLJ's lead campaign organizer for the Americas, said in a virtual press conference kicking off an online day of action on Friday. To be sure, there seems to be a disconnect between Nike's championship of women's sports and what Dobin-Bernstein described as its 'history of, unfortunately, ignoring the workers in its supply chain and the unions that represent them.' The Air Jordan purveyor's recent Super Bowl ad—its first in nearly three decades—showcased the likes of WNBA stars Caitlin Clark and Sabrina Ionescu and Olympic sprinter Sha'Carri Richardson, along with a voiceover by Grammy Award-winning rapper Doechii, in a minute-long spot that would have cost at least $15 million simply to air. Meanwhile, 4,500 garment workers in Cambodia and Thailand are still waiting for the $2.2 million they say they've been legally owed since 2020 from their respective Nike suppliers, one of which has since shuttered due to a pandemic-induced reduction in orders, and the other of the opinion that workers gave up their mandatory leave pay voluntarily. Even a letter from 70 investors urging Nike to, in a phrase, 'just pay it' held little sway. But it isn't only a repayment of arrears that workers in Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are calling for. With 1,000 of them risking retaliation by going public with their faces in a first-of-its-kind photo petition to Nike, they're also asking the company to raise wages, partner with workers and their unions to protect human rights in its supply chains, and establish some kind of mechanism to expediently address wage theft and other labor violations. Overlaid on the mosaic of faces in large type are the words, 'Do you see us now, Nike?' 'We know that brands like Nike have the power to change the conditions in the industry,' said Ratna Tigga, an activist from the Garment Workers Unity League in Bangladesh who has been stitching Swooshes onto garments for the past 11 years. 'I have a six-year-old daughter. I want to make sure that by the time my daughter is old enough to work, companies like Nike will offer better working environments and better wages.' Siti Nursyafitri, a Serikat Pekerja Nasional union member who makes Nike clothing in Indonesia, has seen the Super Bowl ad. She was recovering from a C-section delivery during the pandemic when she saw her payments disappear, leading her to feed her baby water instead of formula. Hearing that Nike would bounce back from its lockdown slump to rake in $44.5 billion in revenue in 2021, a 19 percent increase from the year before, made her and her fellow workers angry, she said. 'And then I saw an advertisement that Nike made, and it involved strong women athletes,' Nursyafitri said. 'I think even Nike workers like me deserve to be in those advertisements because the Nike workers show the Nike quality. Nike should present their workers instead of other women.' The day of online action came just as unionized retail employees at nine Nike stores in Turkey were set to strike over a failure to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. This would have followed a wider suspension of online sales in the country through Nike's website and mobile app after the Turkish government increased customs taxes on goods from abroad in August. But Eyüp Alemdar, chairman of Koop-İş Sendikası, a UNI Global Union affiliate, appeared via a recorded message to say that the strike had been averted because Nike met its demands for better wages and working conditions through a renewed deal. 'While we grow our union strength in Nike stores, we support your fight for justice in the factories,' he said. 'Across Nike's supply chain, we are raising our voices together. Today we stand with you, the factory workers, in calling on Nike [to] recognize Nike workers' labor across the globe. Give them what they deserve.' Collin Heatley, a fifth-year PhD student and member of the Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation at the University of Oregon, described co-founder Phil Knight—not to mention Nike itself—as a 'common enemy' who has 'undermined the mission of public education' in the Beaver State, where Nike is headquartered and universities are facing a budget crisis from low state funding. Knight, he said, has turned the University of Oregon into a business that's 'fueled by stolen wages and tax avoidance.' 'Nike and Phil Knight are key to understanding why Oregon's failing in education,' Heatley said. 'Phil Knight has put over half a billion dollars into the University of Oregon in the last few years alone, through donations, which are earmarked for specific purposes: Hundreds of millions went into a new mega track and field stadium; $500 million went into the Nike campus, which is focused on producing profitable scientific patents. The key part is that Phil Knight and Nike have lobbied extensively against increased public education funding at the state level and against any type of state tax reform that would generate those funds for Oregon to pay for education. And we know that Nike gets away with paying next to nothing in federal taxes.' As far as David versus Goliath face-offs go, the stakes have never been higher. Abiramy Sivalogananthan, AFWA's regional coordinator for South Asia, said that 'Fight the Heist' is the yearslong realization of a vision of unions organizing and campaigning across borders to bring powerful companies like Nike to the bargaining table. The campaign is encouraging supporters to use its social media tools to broadcast its message and bring it to Nike's board of directors. But it's the workers' photos, she said, that will lend an 'emotional weight' to the campaign, 'making a bold statement that they will no longer remain invisible or silent.' 'It is true that we have less resources to fight powerful giants, and we have also figured out that individual countries alone can't take them on because they do have more resources,' said Swasthika Arulingam, president of the Commercial and Industrial Workers Union in Sri Lanka. 'But despite that, we as unions and civil society have found a way to fight even powerful brands like Nike, and that is exactly this campaign. We know that we can't do it as one union or one country, so we have come together regionally to fight this.'
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
New investigation uncovers startling exploitation of workers in 'Shein village': 'It violates basic human rights'
The price of each piece of clothing from fast-fashion megabrand Shein might be low — yet new investigations by BBC show that the true cost is much higher. BBC traveled to the "Shein village," a neighborhood in Guangzhou, China, where thousands of factories churn out cheap clothing day and night. And based on its description, it's a sensory overload. "The buildings have been hollowed out to make way for sewing machines, rolls of fabric, and bags brimming with cloth scraps," according to BBC. "The doors to their basements are always open for the seemingly endless cycle of deliveries and collections." But the real concern — which has attracted increased attention from the international community — is the hours, pay, and working conditions for the millions of employees powering the brand's success. "If there are 31 days in a month, I will work 31 days," one worker said to BBC. Reporters found that an average Shein factory employee works around 75 hours a week, nearly double the 44-hour limit set by Chinese labor laws. This is because the basic pay rate — without overtime — is well below the minimum livable wage, meaning employees seek overtime as much as possible. "It's clear that it's illegal and it violates basic human rights," said David Hachfield of the Asia Floor Wage Alliance. "It's an extreme form of exploitation, and this needs to be visible." This is hardly the first time Shein has been criticized for its dubious labor conditions. Last year, BBC reported that the brand admitted to having children working in several of its Chinese factories. Additionally, much of the cotton Shein uses is rumored to be sourced from Xinjiang, a region that's been wracked with scandal after allegations of forced labor by the Muslim Uyghur minority. What should the government do about the fast fashion industry? Set strict regulations Incentivize sustainable options Use both regulations and incentives Nothing Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. Other than human exploitation, many opponents of fast fashion point out that it wreaks havoc on the environment. The endless cycle of production generates staggering amounts of pollution and textile waste — not to mention the emissions worldwide shipping generates. Watchdog groups and international governments are keeping a close eye on Shein, especially as the company is rumored to be preparing for an IPO on the London Stock Exchange, BBC reported. Many consumers are also becoming more aware of the human and environmental impact of their clothing purchases and making changes accordingly. In their efforts to break up with fast fashion, more and more shoppers are buying secondhand instead. In fact, resale as a retail category is expected to more than double by 2028, growing nearly seven times faster than broader retail, based on research from online reseller ThredUp. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
