Labour Behind The Label

Our newest leaflet, Swooning Over Fashion highlights the key issue of mass fainting from our new No More Excuses campaign...

Bulletin 34 Autumn/Winter 2010

Includes: - Massive wage protests sweep Asia, Indian workers speak out about a life locked out from benefits and rights, Union leader kidnapped by M&S supplier, UK sweat shop scandal, Bangladesh: BCWS struggle against repression.

Step Into Her Trainers is a teaching pack aimed at Fashion & Textiles related courses, Citizenship, and Geography, at KS4, A-level and BTEC. This pack has been produced for the Playfair 2012 campaign, calling for better conditions for workers in sportswear and merchandise factories worldwide in the lead up to the Olympics in London 2012.

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.

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.