If you could change one thing about the fashion industry, what would it be? Cheaper clothes? Sizes 9, 11 and 13? It’s no lie to say that we all try to get as much as we can for as little as possible.
But what about the deeper, darker side of the industry, the poor animals that get slaughtered on a daily basis so the people wealthy enough to afford it, can wear their fur. What about those 11 year old children who work 16 hours a day on less than minimum wage to make the clothes we all wear?
We live in a world where it is known and frequently ignored that children are exploited just so that we get the chance to look good and what a damn shame that is.
Our parents and grandparents that fought for freedom in the wars still believe that sweatshops, if they do exist at all in the US and UK, are formed from the issue of immigration, and were not involving American and English citizens. However this is not always the case. As many members of the American government including Frances Perkins, Alfred Smith and Franklin Roosevelt were fighting for human rights in the workplace, World War II erupted and seemed to play a favourable role in this battle. The War had brought around jobs, especially for women, taking away the high level of unemployment that abusive employers had once taken advantage of. Although a lot of the work was still factory based, workers were producing uniforms rather than fashion items and were working under war production contracts meaning they were at least on minimum wage. By the end of the war, sweatshop abuse in the apparel industry was becoming a thing of the past. So why is it that sweatshops are still causing such an uproar?
In the past, Nike has been accused of selling goods that were produced in sweatshops. To get their reputation back, they promised to improve factory conditions, increase wages and make sure that the staff were treated with respect, putting in place a code of conduct for all factories. After inspection, any that did not comply with these rules were threatened to be closed unless improved. In 2000, a report by the BBC released information that they were however breaking these codes of conducts. They found girls under the minimum age working up to 16 hours a day. Nike then rolled out a program to check the identity of about 150,000 of its workers in China and found 167 cases of people who were below minimum-age standards when they were hired, but were now 18 or older. Child labour in China has come under fire from human rights as children as young as eleven are being hired because employers can get away with paying them less than a skilled worker. Due to a high demand for money to pay education fees etc, the costs of manufacturing in China are constantly increasing. This means a lot of brands are moving production to places like Vietnam and Cambodia as labour costs are 25-30% lower, adding the constant circle this arguement goes round. As soon as a problem occurs, the prices raise, the production moves to somewhere cheapers, somewhere that can be exploited a little more than the place before.
Kelsey Timmerman wrote a book ‘Where am I wearing’, a diary of his personal experiences while travelling around the world to find who makes his clothes, his journey takes him to some of the worst sweatshops in the world giving him the chance to meet the workers. Without the work and money that the sweatshops offer them, these people would not be able to survive. This creates the contradicting argument that however bad the exploitation that occurs in sweatshops gets, without the chance to earn money, these people’s lives would be a lot worse. In the conclusion of his book, he wrote ‘There isn’t a single worker who makes my clothes who lives a life that I would find acceptable’.
What is the right answer? Is there one? This, along with fur, is a debate that may never reach an end.
But what about the deeper, darker side of the industry, the poor animals that get slaughtered on a daily basis so the people wealthy enough to afford it, can wear their fur. What about those 11 year old children who work 16 hours a day on less than minimum wage to make the clothes we all wear?
We live in a world where it is known and frequently ignored that children are exploited just so that we get the chance to look good and what a damn shame that is.
Our parents and grandparents that fought for freedom in the wars still believe that sweatshops, if they do exist at all in the US and UK, are formed from the issue of immigration, and were not involving American and English citizens. However this is not always the case. As many members of the American government including Frances Perkins, Alfred Smith and Franklin Roosevelt were fighting for human rights in the workplace, World War II erupted and seemed to play a favourable role in this battle. The War had brought around jobs, especially for women, taking away the high level of unemployment that abusive employers had once taken advantage of. Although a lot of the work was still factory based, workers were producing uniforms rather than fashion items and were working under war production contracts meaning they were at least on minimum wage. By the end of the war, sweatshop abuse in the apparel industry was becoming a thing of the past. So why is it that sweatshops are still causing such an uproar?
In the past, Nike has been accused of selling goods that were produced in sweatshops. To get their reputation back, they promised to improve factory conditions, increase wages and make sure that the staff were treated with respect, putting in place a code of conduct for all factories. After inspection, any that did not comply with these rules were threatened to be closed unless improved. In 2000, a report by the BBC released information that they were however breaking these codes of conducts. They found girls under the minimum age working up to 16 hours a day. Nike then rolled out a program to check the identity of about 150,000 of its workers in China and found 167 cases of people who were below minimum-age standards when they were hired, but were now 18 or older. Child labour in China has come under fire from human rights as children as young as eleven are being hired because employers can get away with paying them less than a skilled worker. Due to a high demand for money to pay education fees etc, the costs of manufacturing in China are constantly increasing. This means a lot of brands are moving production to places like Vietnam and Cambodia as labour costs are 25-30% lower, adding the constant circle this arguement goes round. As soon as a problem occurs, the prices raise, the production moves to somewhere cheapers, somewhere that can be exploited a little more than the place before.
Kelsey Timmerman wrote a book ‘Where am I wearing’, a diary of his personal experiences while travelling around the world to find who makes his clothes, his journey takes him to some of the worst sweatshops in the world giving him the chance to meet the workers. Without the work and money that the sweatshops offer them, these people would not be able to survive. This creates the contradicting argument that however bad the exploitation that occurs in sweatshops gets, without the chance to earn money, these people’s lives would be a lot worse. In the conclusion of his book, he wrote ‘There isn’t a single worker who makes my clothes who lives a life that I would find acceptable’.
What is the right answer? Is there one? This, along with fur, is a debate that may never reach an end.
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