Anyone serious about ensuring workers get a living wage and decent working conditions cannot ignore the role of trade unions. They offer the most effective and legitimate way to ensure that workers get a fair deal, by allowing them to stand together to defend their rights.

Most efforts by fashion companies to ensure that workers' rights are respected in their supply chains are based on a top-down model referred to as 'compliance', which relies on a code of conduct and audits imposed on suppliers. The compliance model fails time and time again to pick up serious abuses of workers' rights, because workers themselves do not have a real voice in the process.

In contrast, when workers are able to organise into trade unions and established systems of industrial relations are put in place, it is much easier to be confident that working conditions are decent. Unions give workers a voice to say things collectively that they are too scared to say on their own. Through collective bargaining, wages and working hours that workers themselves believe are decent can be negotiated with their managers.

What are trade union rights?

How workers see it

Trade unions offer a voice to marginalised and exploited people, and they offer a real chance for workers to improve their lot. Yet only a small percentage of garment workers are unionised, and many of these are in 'yellow' unions established by factory managements to please their clients. Workers across the world, with the help of existing trade unions, labour rights organisations and campaigners, are fighting to gain their rights to organise. Managers often respond by adopting 'union-busting' tactics to prevent workers from forming unions.

When, in 2006, workers in a Cambodian clothing factory supplying Topshop, Next, Debenhams and Asda (among others) tried to protest their low wages by exercising their legal right to form a union and strike, the factory began a major anti-union campaign. Some 19 union leaders and 120 union members were dismissed and replaced by new non-unionised workers, and 11 union activists were pursued into the courts. The man identified by the factory management as the leader during the strike, Mr Sok Vy, was singled out and prosecuted on charges of incitement and criminal damage, despite the fact that no evidence was presented against him at court and that witnesses claimed the strike had been entirely peaceful.

Similar problems were seen the same year in Turkey, when a factory owned by US conglomerate Paxar International fired 15 workers after they had formed a union, and refused to recognize the union. The factory's clients include Marks & Spencer, Next, Levi Strauss & Co and Gap. The Turkish High Court found that five of these workers had been fired specifically because of their union activities, and a further six had been fired with no legal justification.

Back in February 2005, 338 of 465 workers at the Paxar facility had joined a trade union known as TEKSIF (Textile, Knitting and Clothing Industry Workers' Union of Turkey). In November of that year, the Turkish Ministry of Labour granted TEKSIF authority to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement with Paxar on behalf of 246 of its members. A year and a half after the union was formed, Paxar still refused to enter in good faith into collective bargaining over wages with the union, and none of the sacked workers had been reinstated.

The Cambodia Fortune case was eventually resolved with the help of solidarity action by campaigners here in the UK: after the case appeared in a UK newspaper and some of the buyers put pressure on the factory management, the sacked workers were reinstated and allowed to form their union.

They are just two examples of the countless requests for solidarity received from workers in garment factories. The ICFTU estimates that in 2005, 115 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers' rights, while more than 1,600 were subjected to violent assaults and some 9,000 arrested.18 Nearly 10,000 workers were sacked for their trade union involvement, and almost 1,700 detained.

These dramatic figures are the tip of an iceberg of anti-union rhetoric and threats that are used to stop workers from trying to organise in the first place. Here is an example of the atmosphere in a factory supplying WalMart in Bangladesh:

"Workers...are not allowed to form any union or organisation. The management has warned them that if any one tries to organise workers and form a union he or she would be handed over to the police."

Why such a resistance to unionisation from suppliers? Hostility from management has been par for the course since the birth of the union movement, and an anti-union culture is rife among managers in many garment-producing areas. There is another thing, though. The pressure placed on suppliers by buyers to come up with the goods in shorter lead times and at a lower cost is an added pressure. An organised workforce would protest at the long working hours and low pay necessary to meet the terms of these orders, and so to keep business the factories are even more likely to crack down on workers who try to organise. Not only is the suppression of the right to freedom of association by a supplier a breach of workers' fundamental rights, it is also likely to be indicative of wider problems.

Another difficulty is that more and more production is taking place in areas where the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining are either not protected by law, or actually prohibited. This is the case in China, where the communist state insists that workers may only join the ACFTU, which is not a free trade union representing workers in collective bargaining. It is also true in many of the export processing zones in other countries where much of the world's garment production takes place. In such cases, it is possible to find alternative structures through which workers can organise, such as workers' health and safety committees.

For the thousands of garment workers who work from home , rather than in factories, forming a union also presents special difficulties. Isolated and ill-informed, they are frequently unaware of their rights.

Whether through a union or through another representative structure, workers who have been able to organise enjoy better working conditions and the security of collective bargaining. Not all garment workers who are aware of their rights choose to take them up by joining a union, but the fact remains that tens of millions have never been given that choice.

What should the brands do?

Any company that says it takes working conditions seriously should welcome the formation of a trade union in one of its suppliers, and indeed should set out to encourage it. The existence of management systems at factory level including trade union recognition agreements, procedures for the avoidance of disputes and regular collective bargaining ought to be a sign to buyers that a framework is in place for achieving compliance with the labour standards contained in their codes of conduct.

Given the atmosphere of fear and the 'divide and rule' tactics of suppliers towards their workforces, workers need to have the confidence to exercise their rights without fear of persecution. That requires moral support from people they trust, and it needs a strong, positive message from buyers.

It means inviting in local organisations with the confidence of workers, to train both them and managers in their rights and how to exercise them. It means breaking the atmosphere of fear that prevents workers from organising, and sending a clear message to managers that a collective bargaining agreement is a positive step, even if a newly vocal workforce might resist the unreasonable demands placed on wages and working hours by buyers' expectations.

When the response from a brand on trade union rights is lukewarm, one has to wonder whether this is not because it knows that the prices and lead times it demands from suppliers would not be sustainable if workers were really in a position to object.

There are several things that buyers should consider doing to ensure workers can properly access their trade union rights:

• Make it clear to suppliers that they must not prevent workers from organising.

• Through local labour rights organisations and trade unions, ensure that workers and management are educated about freedom of association and workers' rights.

• Ensure that local trade unions, who are better placed to judge what conditions are like, are involved in supplier audits.

• Make it clear to suppliers that a functioning, effective collective bargaining agreement will count in their favour, not against it.Where applicable, lobby governments to permit and protect freedom of association by law, and in the meantime take steps to FIND alternative means by which workers can organise.

This is an extract from Let's Clean Up Fashion: the state of pay behind the UK high street, published in September 2006.