“The documentary revealed the reality behind the glamorous veneer of fast, cheap fashion sold in H&M stores,” said Klaus Melvin Jensen, Coordinator of Clean Clothes Campaign Denmark. “I fear many of H&M’s customers will loose their appetite for cheap clothing after seeing this film.”
In recent months H&M have held a number of high profile meetings with dignitaries such as the Vice Prime-Minister of Cambodia, and officials from the wage board of Cambodia to call for a higher minimum wage to be implemented for workers. Yet campaigners say that meetings and good intentions are not a sufficient response to the pressing health risks and poverty conditions faced by factory workers.
“Low wages come at a high cost. Last year, over 2400 workers passed out in Cambodian factories due to malnutrition as a direct consequence of low salaries. But H&M, one of Cambodia's main buyers, continues to refuse to pay a living wage to its workers,” says Jeroen Merk of the International Clean Clothes Campaign. “This is unacceptable.”
The Clean Clothes Campaign Network in collaboration with the Cambodian trade union C.CAWDU launched in September a European-wide campaign called 'No more Excuses', demanding that the company take a proactive role in paying a wage that allows its workers to live with dignity. The campaign aims to draw attention to the fact that whereas the minimum wage for garment workers is USD 61 a month this amounts to less than 25% of a living wage in Cambodia.
In an attempt to respond to the documentary's findings, H&M announced plans on Tuesday for a project to strengthen union – management dialogue at some production units in Cambodia. Campaigners and unionists have welcomed this step, but have expressed concern that it offers no guarantee of living wages for workers who need them most.
“We support the idea of building a respectful dialogue between the trade unions and the employers in Cambodia,” says Athit Kong, Vice President of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers' Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), “but H&M must also play its part. It is absolutely necessary that any project includes trade unions at the local and the nation level and really reflects the worker’s voices. This is the only way to achieve visible changes on a grassroots level. We call upon our Swedish union friends to make sure H&M is brought to the table to negotiate a real agreement with Cambodian and international unions that will improve the conditions for the Cambodian workers”
Clean Clothes Campaign activists are calling on H&M and other garment buyers from Cambodia to take immediate action to address the poverty caused by the low wages in Cambodia. They are asking H&M to support the Cambodian trade union's 131 USD minimum wage goal by issuing a public statement of support and engaging in building an action plan for paying this figure with suppliers. To ensure long term results on the ground and guarantee considerably higher wages for the garment workers, H&M needs to adopt an action plan for its whole supplier base with a clear benchmark for a living wage, a timeline, and a follow up procedure for delivering this at a factory level.
ENDS
Notes for editors:
The documentary is available with English subtitles here: http://www.tv4play.se/program/kalla-fakta?video_id=2232717
1.The 'No more excuses' campaign for a living wage is available at: livingwage.cleanclothes.org
2.Living wage figures for Cambodia were calculated by the Asia Floor Wage alliance, a pan-Asian network of trade unions and human rights organizations. The living wage figure for Cambodia is 283 USD a month. This figure allows for a worker with a family and two children to live at a subsistence level of dignity.
3.On top of the minimum wage, many Cambodian workers are given allowances for transport, housing and attendance, which boost wages to USD 83 a month, which still falls far short of a living wage figure.
4.H&M is a highly profitable company. On 15th of October, H& M announced that sales in September increased by 15 percent compared to the same month the previous year. Between September 2011 and September 2012, H&M opened 306 new shops and is now selling goods in 2699 stores worldwide1. In 2011, H&M made a turnover of 19.48 billion USD (129 bn. SEK) and a profit of 2.38 billion USD (15.8 bn. SEK). In Forbes list of the world`s billionaires, the main H&M shareholder Stefan Persson is ranked as number 8 worldwide with an estimated net worth fortune of 26 billion USD. It is time that the wage theft stops and that garment workers earn a fair share of this wealth.
