To the Teacher
Over the last several decades, with the increasing integration of the global economy, more and more of our clothing has come from factories abroad. At the same time, social movements have expressed concern that some of these clothes are being made in sweatshops with exploitative labor conditions. In some cases, our clothing may be produced with the use of child labor. In recent years, several popular clothing brands have embraced the practice of “fast fashion,” a style of production where new clothes are produced in rapid response to the latest trends then sold at low prices. The business model, however, can place high demands on workers while pushing factories to find cheaper and cheaper forms of labor, leading to abusive conditions.
This lesson includes two readings on the issue of sweatshops and child labor abroad, each with questions for class discussion. The first reading discusses the persistence of child labor in the garment industry supply chain. It also covers some charges against “fast fashion” brands accused of exploiting workers. The second reading documents the efforts of students in the 1990s to oppose their colleges’ sale of sweatshops clothing, and it draws lessons for young people today. Questions for discussion follow each reading.
Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash
Reading One: “Fast Fashion,” Sweatshops, and Child Labor Abroad
Take a moment to look at the tags on your clothing. What country were your clothes made in? What do you know about the labor conditions there?
Over the last several decades, with the increasing integration of the global economy, more and more of our clothing has come from factories abroad. At the same time, social movements have expressed concern that some of these clothes are being made in sweatshops with exploitative labor conditions. In some cases, our clothing may be produced with the use of child labor.
In recent years, several popular clothing brands have embraced the practice of “fast fashion,” a style of production where new clothes are produced in rapid response to the latest trends then sold at low prices. The business model, however, can place high demands on workers while pushing factories to find cheaper and cheaper forms of labor, leading to abusive conditions.
Workers’ rights advocates point out that child labor and sweatshops are not merely foreign problems; they exist in the United States as well. At the same time, countries with weaker labor laws and workers’ protections create opportunities for abuse. In a January 2015 article for The Guardian, written in collaboration with the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF), investigative journalist Josephine Moulds discussed the prevalence of child labor in the garment industry supply chain globally, as well as the labor pressures generated by “fast fashion.” Moulds wrote:
Child labour is forbidden by law in most countries but continues to be rife in some of the poorest parts of the world.
The situation is improving. ILO estimates suggest child labour declined by 30% between 2000 and 2012, but still 11% of the world’s children are in situations that deprive them of their right to go to school without interference from work.
Many of these child labourers work within the fashion supply chain, making the textiles and garments to satisfy the demand of consumers in Europe, the US, and beyond.
Fast fashion has engendered a race to the bottom, pushing companies to find ever-cheaper sources of labour. That cheap labour is freely available in many of the countries where textile and garment production takes place.
Sofie Ovaa, global campaign coordinator of Stop Child Labour, says: “There are many girls in countries like India and Bangladesh, who are willing to work for very low prices and are easily brought into these industries under false promises of earning decent wages.”
A recent report by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), and the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) revealed that recruiters in southern India convince parents in impoverished rural areas to send their daughters to spinning mills with promises of a well-paid job, comfortable accommodation, three nutritious meals a day and opportunities for training and schooling, as well as a lump sum payment at the end of three years. Their field research shows that “in reality, they are working under appalling conditions that amount to modern day slavery and the worst forms of child labour…”
Child labour is a particular issue for fashion because much of the supply chain requires low-skilled labour and some tasks are even better suited to children than adults. In cotton picking, employers prefer to hire children for their small fingers, which do not damage the crop.
According to Moulds, roughly 170 million children around the world were engaged in child labor, which the United Nations defines as “work for which the child is either too young – work done below the required minimum age – or work which, because of its detrimental nature or conditions, is altogether considered unacceptable for children and is prohibited.” Unlike the UN’s definition on child labor, there is no single agreed-upon definition for sweatshops. However, the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), a labor rights monitoring organization, includes in its essential employment standards for all workplaces the mandate that they prevent child labor, maintain a maximum work week of 48 hours, provide a day off every week, and offer a livable wage.
While not necessarily accused specifically of using child labor, a variety of fast fashion brands have been charged with having their clothing produced under exploitative conditions. In a 2022 article for Business Insider, business reporter Sarah Jackson summarized the results of an undercover investigation on the working conditions in the supply chain of the fast fashion brand Shein. Jackson wrote:
Fast-fashion company Shein sells clothes at dirt-cheap prices, and a new undercover investigation shows the human cost of maintaining that business model.
Workers at factories in China that supply clothes to Shein frequently work up to 18 hours a day with no weekends and just one day off per month, according to an undercover investigation from Channel 4 and The i newspaper in the UK.
The news organizations say a woman using a fake name got a job inside two factories and secretly filmed what she saw as she worked there….
"There's no such thing as Sundays here," said one worker shown in the footage, who said they work seven days a week.
At one of the factories, workers get a base salary of 4,000 yuan per month — the equivalent of roughly $556 — to make at least 500 pieces of clothing per day, but their first month's pay is withheld from them, per the investigation. Many of these workers toil long hours to earn a commission of 0.14 yuan, or just two cents, per item.
Shein is not the only company accused of exploiting working people abroad to produce their garments. A January 2023 study published by Aberdeen University and the advocacy group Transform Trade found that “Major international fashion brands, including Zara, H&M and GAP, are exploiting Bangladesh garment industry workers, with some of them involved in unfair practices and paying the suppliers below the cost of production.”
Between children working in the fashion supply chain and other exploitative conditions documented at garment factories, there is reason to be concerned about whether the clothing we wear has been fairly made. Such concerns have given rise to activist campaigns to support garment workers globally.
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- According to the reading, how many children are estimated to be engaged in child labor around the world? What makes child labor a particular issue for the fashion industry?
- What would be your response if you learned that clothing you owned was made in sweatshop conditions?
- What responsibility do you think fashion companies have for ensuring that their clothes are not made under such exploitative conditions?
- What do you think are some things we can do to help improve conditions for workers laboring in garment factories or cotton farming abroad?
Reading Two: The Anti-Sweatshop Movement, From the 1990s to Today
While the rise of “globalization” in recent decades has raised concerns about modern-day sweatshops, it has also given rise to international efforts to support workers in the garment industry. In the 1990s, one group drawing attention to this issue was made up of college students pushing their universities to institute fair labor standards for the clothes that these institutions sold on their campuses.
In a 2001 article for The American Prospect, urban and environmental policy professor Peter Dreier detailed the rise of the anti-sweatshop movement on college campuses across the country, in particular highlighting the first campaign to arise at Duke University. Dreier wrote:
The campus movement began in the fall of 1997 at Duke when a group called Students Against Sweatshops persuaded the university to require manufacturers of items with the Duke label to sign a pledge that they would not use sweatshop labor. Duke has 700 licensees (including Nike and other major labels) that make apparel at hundreds of plants in the U.S. and in more than 10 other countries, generating almost $25 million annually in sales. Following months of negotiations, in March 1998 Duke President Nannerl Keohane and the student activists jointly announced a detailed "code of conduct" that bars Duke licensees from using child labor, requires them to maintain safe workplaces, to pay the minimum wage, to recognize the right of workers to unionize, to disclose the locations of all factories making products with Duke's name, and to allow visits by independent monitors to inspect the factories.
The Duke victory quickly inspired students on other campuses. The level of activity on campuses accelerated, with students finding creative ways to dramatize the issue. At Yale, student activists staged a "knit-in" to draw attention to sweatshop abuses. At Holy Cross and the University of California at Santa Barbara, students sponsored mock fashion shows where they discussed the working conditions under which the garments were manufactured. Duke students published a coloring book explaining how (and where) the campus mascot, the Blue Devil, is stitched onto clothing by workers in sweatshops. Activists at the University of Wisconsin infiltrated a homecoming parade and, dressed like sweatshop workers in Indonesia, carried a giant Reebok shoe. They also held a press conference in front of the chancellor's office and presented him with an oversized check for 16 cents-the hourly wage paid to workers in China making Nike athletic shoes. At Georgetown, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Duke, students occupied administration buildings to pressure their institutions to adopt (or, in Duke's case, strengthen) anti-sweatshop codes.
[https://prospect.org/education/campus-anti-sweatshop-movement/]
Many of these campus groups came together to form the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) in the summer of 1998. Since its founding, USAS and the broader anti-sweatshop movement have raised awareness around sweatshops, negotiated policy changes within universities and corporations, and helped establish the Workers’ Rights Consortium to monitor labor conditions in factories around the world. The organization remains active on college campuses today.
USAS recently launched a campaign accusing Nike of refusing to pay wages to a factory of workers in Thailand during the pandemic and calling on universities to end their contracts with the company. On February 24th, 2023, student journalist Phoebe Cykosky of The Daily Collegian newspaper at Penn State University covered a protest of USAS students on campus that called on the university leadership to “hold Nike accountable” and cut ties with the company. Cykosky wrote:
[M]embers of the Penn State Chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops gathered [in front of the Allen Street Gates on Friday afternoon during a protest] to call on the university to suspend its Nike contract until worker’s rights violations at the Hong Seng Knitting Factory in Bangkok, Thailand are remediated.
[Penn State graduate student Keegan] Conrad said the purpose of the protest was to continue “pushing for their rights to have their wages owed to them.”
When the factory in Thailand temporarily closed during the coronavirus pandemic, “it was required by law to pay workers part of their wages,” according to the campaign’s website.
“Instead, the factory forced workers to accept unpaid leave, robbing them of $600,000,” the website said.
While anti-sweatshop activists can claim significant victories, a great deal of work remains to be done to eliminate abuses in the global economy. For this reason, the student movement that emerged in the 1990s offers valuable lessons for today.
For Discussion:
- How much of the material in this reading was new to you, and how much was already familiar? Do you have any questions about what you read?
- What policy changes were the student-activists in USAS demanding of their universities?
- What were some of the tactics used by student activists in the 1990s? Which of these do you think could make the biggest impact? Why?
- According to the reading, what were some of the accomplishments of USAS and the anti-sweatshop movement?
- What are some things that students today might do to tackle this issue?
— Research assistance provided by Sean Welch