A garment worker at Denim Expert LTD in Bangladesh, where major brands have cancelled billions of dollars worth of clothing orders.

I was never an economics or law major in college, so to unabashedly speak on the efficacy of capitalism would be a moot point, especially when most of the top world economies operate under some form of capitalistic system. Despite the overwhelming success of this eco-political model, it is important to discuss its impact on the under-represented within the chain of command.

The ugly side of conglomerates that function on capitalistic models is that sometimes they encroach and overshadow basic moral tenets. Profit margins are prioritized over the well-being of lower tier employees such as garment factory workers.

The impact of COVID-19 has devastated the economy. In March, the U.S unemployment rate rose from 0.4% to 4.4%; the largest over-the-month increase since January 1975. This instability naturally demands we reassess our hierarchy of values and needs — the fashion industry included. Without the luxury of expendable income, fashion is taking a financial blow. In a show of solidarity and good faith, many fashion brands are donating and repurposing unused fabrics to create masks for healthcare professionals.

However, what doesn’t make the news are the numerous brands canceling or just simply not paying for completed, partially completed, or full collections recieved from overseas manufactures. This in turn leads to factories and garment workers incurring the costs of bulk fabrics orders.

SupportGarmentWorkers.org aims to bring together the numerous fundraising and advocacy campaigns in process by the Clean Clothes Campaign, International Labor Rights Forum, the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles, Asia Floor Wage Alliance, ReMake, and more under one roof, so that the wider public can understand the issues and help garment workers through this crisis.

To learn more about this powerful project and the ladies who spearhead it, please see our below interview with Lauren Fay (LF), Benita Robledo (BR), and Elizabeth L. Cline (EC).

Courtesy of the Garment Worker Center in Los Angeles.

Where are you based?
LF: Seattle
BR: Lancaster, Pennsylvania
EC: New York

It seems self evident, but for those who don't know, what is the goal of Garment Worker COVID-19 relief? How are you supporting garment workers? What triggered your desire to help?
LF: I had started a big nationwide email chain at the beginning of March to connect dots for PPE needs, and we spun off of the thread to address the needs of garment workers.

BR: On Lauren’s email thread, I saw manufacturers and brands hopping into action, but as an individual I felt helpless. There was so much information out there, it was difficult to know who to help or how. I was drowning in information, but didn’t know what to do with it all. I knew that if I was feeling lost others must be feeling the same way. That’s when I proposed the idea of creating a website that consolidated initiatives that were already underway. It turned out Elizabeth was already working on something sort of similar so we decided to join our efforts.

EC: We’ve changed the name to SupportGarmentWorkers.Org so that it’s easier to remember.

It's truly shocking that completed orders can be cancelled without any ramifications. It is like canceling a restaurant order right while the food is on your plate and refusing to pay; time, resources, staff, etc. are all expenditures that must be taken into account. Can you expand on the issue regarding brands canceling orders from factories? Also, what should be the next course of action for factories affected? Is there anything they can do? Has something like this ever happened before?
EC: The restaurant analogy is apt if we think of what brands are doing to garment workers in the same way we would if the President of McDonald’s (which turns $21 billion in sales annually) refused to pay their 1.7 million low-wage employees for the months of work leading up to the coronavirus simply because their stock prices and cash reserves were low and the company was headed into a downturn. It’s wage theft. These huge fashion brands and retailers (Kohl’s, Walmart, C&A, Primark, Urban Outfitters, ASOS) are pushing the financial burden caused by coronavirus onto the supply chain and the people who are least able to deal with it. Brands are losing profit. Garment workers could actually go hungry without this money. Bangladesh is not able to offer much severance to workers, which has resulted in social unrest and factory workers protesting in the streets over the last few weeks. In Bangladesh, brands have cancelled $3 billion and owe multiple millions of dollars to individual factories. In that one country, over two million workers were let go directly because of the cancellations, most without severance.

LF: This unfortunately happens occasionally with big companies having so much leverage over these factories (which they purposefully don’t own to avoid accountability and cost). Primark, for example, has a 180 day payment window. That’s massive amount of credit for even a big factory to essentially carry. Think of the amount of money the factory has to have to float those terms. It’s completely skewed in favor of the people who already have money. It’s an incredibly flawed system.

BR: Because brands have so much leverage over factories, it’s up to us, the consumers, to hold brands accountable, now and moving forward. We’ve benefited from their underpaid labor for too long. We can’t expect them to also have to turn around and defend themselves as well. At some point, we consumers have to own the part we’ve played in this flawed system. From petitions, to donations, to legal action, there is a lot we can and should do.

Some large brands such as Adidas and the V.F Corporation, which owns brands like Vans and The North Face, have made public commitments to fulfill existing purchase orders to factories. However, on the contrary, brands like Timberland are under suspicion of not honoring their word. How does the #PayUp movement help pressure larger organizations? How can the average person get involved and help mitigate the issue?
EC: The #PayUp campaign is a consortium of labor rights groups and activists, including Clean Clothes Campaign, Re/Make, International Labour Rights Forum, and The Garment Worker Center, that are leveraging the #PayUp hashtag on social media to pressure individual brands to fulfill their obligations to factories. It’s working. The campaign is responsible for helping convince more than a dozen global retail giants, including H&M, Zara, Nike, and Target, to fulfill their commitments. In terms of keeping track of which brands have or have not paid in full, Scott Nova at the Worker Rights Consortium, and Mark Anner at the PennState Center for Global Worker Rights, who released the initial report about brand cancellations, are in regular contact with the brands and the factories. While there are some nuances as to whether some brands are paying in full or are trying to negotiate discounts, Nova and Anner are carefully sorting the commitments and updating what brands have yet to #payUp on their Brand Tracker. So that the movement leads with one unified message, we follow the Brand Tracker. That means there won’t be some false promises as we move along, mostly because these brands are negotiating with hundreds of suppliers in some cases, and making promises to some and breaking them with others. It’s quite a project to track and keep up.

BR: Sign the petition, follow the organizations working on the PayUp campaign, on social media, and talk about this publicly. The more we can lend our voices to the Pay Up campaign the more seriously brands will take it. Also, make any donations to the organizations that you can. They’ve been working on labor rights for years and will continue to do so long after this crisis has ended. The better funded they are, the more work they can do, and the less chance that this sort of thing will happen again.

LF: Signing the petition and spreading the word is hugely helpful. Naming and shaming needs to happen. Consumers need to know the players.

A number of labor rights groups including Re/Make, The Clean Clothes Campaign, Labour Behind the Label, The International Labor Rights Forum, and the United Students Against Sweatshops make up #PayUp. Can you talk about how this collaborative movement came together?
EC: The #PayUp hashtag was originally used by labor activists in 2013 to get brands to pay compensation to survivors of Rana Plaza, the factory collapse that killed and maimed over 3,000 people in Bangladesh. The hashtag was resurrected following the PennState and WRC Report that came out the last week of March. It was an organic campaign. All of the groups involved, from CCC, to ILRF to Labour Behind the Label, USAS, Garment Worker Center, and Re/Make, have a long history of advocating for garment worker rights. So, the campaign fell into place. I started a WhatsApp chain for a few of the groups and activists so we could share resources more easily. And Re/Make, in particular, is so savvy with social media, and they have leveraged their global ambassador movement to get some high-profile people on Instagram, like model and environmental activist Arizona Muse, to post about the campaign, which has had a lot of impact. Extinction Rebellion has even joined in.

With Bangladesh being the second largest garment producing nation, what could be some of the lasting implications as a result of this flawed system?
EC: We’re already seeing some of the impacts. There is increasing social unrest in Bangladesh, with workers protesting in the streets and factories opening back up, even though the coronavirus has not peaked there, because they can’t afford to be closed and they want to finish orders for Western brands. There’s no safety net there, so essentially brands are just letting their supply chain fall apart and not stepping in to help workers. It’s a situation where people want to work because the alternative is starvation or losing orders to Western brands that hold so much power over them. There is some talk of brands setting up a relief fund for workers through the ILO, but there is no time to waste. With Rana Plaza, it took brands years to #PayUP. We can’t let brands’ empty promises replace immediate action.

On the Wardrobe Crisis podcast produced in collaboration with Re/Make, host Claire Press quoted The Business of Fashion stating a "Darwinian shakedown" is occurring within fashion, which has been dramatically exacerbated by COVID-19, many of which were brands struggling pre-corona. What are your thoughts on this prediction? Do you think there will be a more blatant sustainability, ethical, and transparency movement across the production line? What do you think will be the most drastic systemic change within fashion?
EC: I personally think we’ll see many long-struggling chains go out of business, and we will be left with a winner-take-all industry, where it’s only the big, financially healthy giants like Zara, Nike, LVMH, Kering, H&M, etc. Having a more concentrated industry could make it easier to get change pushed through, but it’s no guarantee. If we’ve learned anything in this movement, it’s that voluntary commitments don’t amount to much. Brands are set up to maximize profits and reduce costs, and without new legislation and binding agreements to the contrary, we’ll be having this same conversation when the next crisis rolls around.

LF: If more people are informed, vocal and vote with their wallets, yes. We have a much louder movement in what is called sustainable fashion than we did even three years ago, but these things are still happening. We need to advocate more for unions and garment workers being supported to speak out. I am very hopeful that the breakneck fashion weeks seasons will be curtailed. I know that will cost jobs, but their environmental impact is just too great.

BR: I think a lot of brands will go out of business, but I don’t think we’ll lose any giants. I think it’s possible that there will be a stronger push for sustainable and ethical practices, but only if we use this time to call for it. If the brand giants are hurting enough and consumers are pushing strongly for this kind of change, brands could see it in their best interest to adopt more ethical practices. However, I think the best hope we have to achieve this goal is through legislation and regulation. Large companies don’t become large by voluntarily lowering their profit margins.

Some garment factories have been converted into mask making plants. How are the workers in these factories being treated?
BR: This aspect of the crises breaks my heart. We have an already vulnerable population, and factories are forcing them to work without proper PPE or social distancing policies in place. It’s another example of how people of color are routinely, and without a second thought, asked to risk their lives for those our culture deems more valuable. It’s a microcosm of how brands have always been able to get away with wage theft and labor rights violations. If the people being abused are people of color, women, or live far away, we turn a blind eye.

LF: Generally not well. There isn’t social distancing, there aren’t adequate supplies like masks, toilet paper, soap etc. The pay in most cases is less. And these (mostly women) already live on the margins of, or in, poverty.

Many brands that are staying silent amidst the plight of their manufacturers and garment workers. Factory owners often fear speaking out, criticizing and publicizing brands. That you know of, are there any brands that are fighting to help their garment workers during this time?
BR: I know Tonle Design, Hiptipico, and Astor+Orion are actively doing things to help their workers. We hope that with the Pay Up campaign, and a soon to be launched phase 2 of the website, that we can add more brands to that list.

Consumers are, in large part, responsible by supporting cheaper alternatives to their sustainable counterpart. Going forward, what habits do you encourage the consumer adopts to assist this crisis?
EC: We should be fighting for living wages alongside sustainability. It would cost less than a $1 per garment to pay fair wages to garment workers. It’s simply not true that a just fashion industry is an inaccessible fashion industry. Everyone is quick to accuse ethical and sustainable fashion of being “too expensive,” but don’t seem to mind when the women who make sweatshop clothes that are dirt cheap can’t afford those clothes themselves.

LF: Buy less, invest in key pieces, thrift for everything else (I buy almost 100% from small thrift shops), learn how to mend and do your laundry gently to prolong the life of your clothing.

BR: We need to move past the model of new, new, new and instead develop a deeper relationship with what we wear. Once our clothes become a reflection of who we are, as opposed to what some trend analyst tells us we should be wearing, our consumption will slow, and we’ll be able to invest in clothes that bring us real joy. Buy less, and be picky.

What is your motto in life?
BR: Do better. I don’t believe in perfection, but I do believe in doing just a little bit better every day.
LF: Every day is an opportunity.

To learn more about these amazing women and garment workers rights, please follow them via the below platforms:
https://www.supportgarmentworkers.org/
https://thenewfashioninitiative.org/
Instagram: @thenewfashioninitiative
@elizabethlcline
@benita_robledo

Elizabeth Cline, Benita Robledo, Rachael Wang, and Lauren Fay Fight For The Garment Workers