Labour Behind The Label

After months of intense struggle, unions and employers reach an agreement to increase wages in Cambodia. Unions and garment manufacturers in Cambodia have reached an agreement to increase wages significantly. The agreement follows months of unprecedented labour activism in Cambodia, where a rapidly growing garment industry has become the most important industrial sector and income-earner.

Take action today to support over 300 Cambodian workers sacked for their participation in strikes for fair wages. The workers downed their tools in September last year to support trade unions in ongoing minimum-wage negotiations. They were dismissed from their factories as a consequence. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.