Read all about what Labour Behind the Label has been working on - our Annual Report for 2011-12 is now online.

Let's Clean Up Fashion 2011

You can download and read our latest report on the state of pay on the UK high street here.  Find out what brands have been doing (or not doing) to improve wages, working conditions and union rights in garment supply chains across the world.

The real Asda price:
Poverty and abuse in George’s showcase factories

LBL's new Killer Jeans report reveals the shame of the denim industry and its potentially deadly dangers to workers' health.

The Global Union representing workers in the garment industry, the ITGLWF have released a report on working conditions in Asian sportswear supply chains.

The battle to obtain wages high enough to ensure a dignified and decent life is being fought by hundreds of thousands of mainly women garment workers in some of the poorest countries in the world.

Asda has its sights trained on becoming Britain’s number one cheap fashion retailer. But while the company tries leaping ahead of its rivals on the high street, it’s falling behind in its efforts to improve conditions for women workers in poor countries, whose wages are keeping them trapped in poverty.

Report into conditions of football stitches in China, India, Pakistan and Thailand. Released in June 2010, this report, produced by US labour rights group ILRF, shows that little has improved for workers in this notoriously exploitative indistry. Covering 7 factories producing for some of the biggest sportswear brands including Nike, Umbro and adidas the research showed that child labour is stil being used, that most of the workers are on temprary contracts and over half were not earning the living wage.

Labour Behind the Label's Annual Report for financial year 2009 - 2010.

Many of the biggest brands have publicly accepted that garment workers' wages need to increase but no company is yet paying workers a living wage.  Let's Clean up Fashion 2009 surveys the state of pay on the UK high street.

Addressing a company's purchasing practices is a key issue, an area where huge changes are recommended by the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC).  This report by CCC covers working conditions within factories supplying the top 5 global retailers: Tesco, Walmart (Asda), Lidl, Aldi, Carrefour and the lack of sufficient action to address them.

Britain’s fashion industry is split on paying garment factory workers more in developing countries, a survey of 27 of the top fashion brands revealed in the 2008 Let's Clean Up Fashion report.

Steps to improving wages and working conditions in the global sportswear industry.  This report was produced by the Clean Clothes Campaign for the Playfair 2008 Campaign.

Detailed research undertaken inside China by Playfair 08 – represented in the UK by the TUC and Labour Behind the Label - into working conditions in four factories making 2008 Olympic bags, headgear, stationery and other products reveals that factory owners are falsifying employment records, and forcing workers to lie about their wages and conditions.

Full Package Approach to Labour Codes of Conduct Four major steps companies can take to ensure their products are made under humane conditions.

This new report by War on Want uncovers evidence of workers in Bangladesh regularly working 80 hours a week for just 5p an hour, in potential death trap factories, to produce cheap clothes for British consumers of Primark, Tesco and Asda's 'George' range.  The research found six factories producing for some or all of the companies, and found serious workers rights violations in each, with workers too frightened to join a union and few who had even heard of a code of conduct, let alone spoken openly to social auditors.  These six factories prove that despite the fact that all three have commited to ensuring freedom of association, a living wage, legal working hours and proper monitoring and verifaction of supplier factories illegal and exploitative conditions are found within their supply chain.  Whilst the research focused on factories in Bangladesh we can have little confidence similar conditions don't exist in other factories or other countries.

The state of pay behind the UK high street. For over a decade, consumers, workers and campaigners have been calling on fashion brands to make sure the workers who produce the clothes they sell are paid a living wage. For two years in a row, Labour Behind the Label has interrogated the biggest players in the fashion industry, to see what progress has been made. Based on evidence from partners in-country, written submissions from 23 companies, and meetings with 11 companies, it is the most comprehensive study of the case for and progress towards a living wage for the labour behind the labels.

Something different has swept through the UK high street.  Whereas ten years ago, style-conscious teenagers would never be seen, like, dead in a bargain clothes shop, today the Saturday afternoon high street is awash with Primark bags and their proud owners boasting the bargains they have found. That anyone would admit to buying clothes from a supermarket would have been inconceivable until recent years, but ask someone at a party now where their nice new jeans are from, and they may well have been picked up that afternoon along with the baked beans and cornflakes in Asda.  This report aims to set out questions that the consumer can ask of the retailers that are becoming ever more a key part of the consumer horizon.

For over a decade, consumers, workers and campaigners have been calling on fashion brands to make sure the workers who produce the clothes they sell are paid a living wage. At the start of 2006, Labour Behind the Label decided it was time to check in with the fashion industry, to see what progress has been made. This report presents the results of our investigation, revealing who is - and isn’t - doing what.

The world's Football Associations will make over £200m from sponsorship and licensing arrangements this year, while their sponsors are expecting hundreds of millions of pounds in additional revenue from World Cup goods.

Meanwhile, the people stitching the footballs, sewing the shirts and glueing the boots that will earn this money are working late into the night, six or seven days a week, for poverty wages. Those that attempt to form trade unions to try to improve their working conditions are persecuted and often lose their jobs.  This report was produced in 2005 by Labour Behind the Label and the TUC.

How those imposing unfair competition in the textiles and clothing industries are the only winners in this race to the bottom (ICFTU).

This 128-page publication published by the CCC International Secretariat includes feature articles on important themes relating to gender and labour rights and 17 profiles of women involved in different ways in the movement for garment workers' rights.

This report asks fundamental questions about the global sportswear industry – questions that go to the heart of debates on poverty, workers’ rights, trade, and globalisation.

‘Olympism’, in the words of the Olympic Charter, ‘seeks to create a way of life based on … respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.’ This report from the Playfair 2004 Campaign shows that the business practices of major sportswear companies violate both the spirit and the letter of the Charter.

Arcadia is the UK's second biggest garment retailer after Marks and Spencer, and its biggest women's wear retailer. In 2004 it owned seven high street labels: Dorothy Perkins, Burton, Top Man and Top Shop, Wallis, Evans and Miss Selfridge, whose products are available in more than 2000 UK outlets as well as international stores in another 20 countries. Arcadia Group employs 25000 workers. In 2003, Arcadia Group almost doubled its profits from £116 to £228 millions, which is estimated to have added £1 billion to the personal fortune of owner Philip Green. Philip Green, who also owns British Home Stores, is famed for his ability to source goods more cheaply and squeeze prices to suppliers harder than most of his competitors. Such practices, however, are responsible for the increasingly precarious lives of garment workers all over the world, and are unlikely to be compatible with Arcadia's claim to take its supply chain responsibilities seriously.  This briefing was produced by Labour Behind the Label in 2004.

Italian-born sportswear company FILA was bought in 2003 by US-based Sport Brands International after years of being unprofitable. Its annual advertising budget around this time was US$72 million.  It has sponsored some of the biggest names in tennis Bjorn Borg, Boris Becker, Monica Seles and Jennifer Capriati. Presently, it sponsors Kim Clijsters, Svetlana Kuznetsova and Mikhail Youzhny. It sources most of its production from East Asia, including Thailand, Indonesia,Cambodia and China.