Slave to Fashion

Slave to Fashion

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 human rights, labor law, labor policies sweatshops, safety, health, labor market, multinational companies,workplace safety, prevention of occupational accidents and diseases, manufacturing sector, harmful chemicals, supply chain bangladesh, indonesia east asia and pacific, europe and central asia, south asia, africa

Safety and Health Violations in Garment Factories

April 28 marks the World Day for Safety and Health at Work. The International Labor Organization (ILO) celebrates this day to promote the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases globally. April 28th is also recognized by the trade union movement as International Commemoration Day (ICD) for Dead and Injured. It is an international day of remembrance and action for workers killed, disabled, injured, or made unwell by their work.

As we mark this day, I thought it would be appropriate to pay tribute to garment workers around the world who are exposed to appalling working conditions that put them at risk of being killed, disabled, injured or made unwell to make products that the workers themselves can never afford to buy. Yet big retail companies that are indirectly employing these workers are raking in huge amounts of profit without any legal obligation to ensure the safety of workers. 

  
Safety Violations

Accounts of excessive working hours, forced overtime, lack of job security, extremely low wages, sexual harassment, and poor working conditions are common in the garment sector of developing countries. Even though all these issues are interlinked, for the purpose of observing World Day for Safety and 

Health, this blog will focus solely on the working conditions of garment workers. On March 25th 1911, New York City saw its worst industrial disaster. 146 garment workers were unable to escape and died as a result of poor safety regulations. The factory had no fire alarms, and many exits were locked from the outside and the only fire escape collapsed. Now, 100 years later as most clothing manufacturing has moved to developing countries, it is not unusual to hear about garment workers dying in fires because of lack of safety regulations. In Bangladesh garment factories have been devastated by a series of fires and building collapses that have killed hundreds of workers. The estimated 3,600 garment factories in Bangladesh have inexcusable safety conditions. Most factories are overcrowded and do not have functioning fire extinguishers and fire blankets. It is a common practice for factory owners to lock fire exits and use them for storage. Factories rarely train staff in fire safety and many factories do not have smoke detectors, emergency lights, or public announcement systems. They are also notorious for faulty electric wires and switchboards. While the giant retailers and factory owners can pass off these factory fires as mere accidents the fact remains that these accidents are preventable. The complete negligence of health and safety in many factories is a clear violation of human rights. 

Health Violations
Many of the pressing health issues stem from working long hours and having to face the pressure of meeting production quotas. This can lead to eye strain, fatigue, and debilitating overuse injuries that often go undiagnosed and untreated. Most workers are unable to get the proper medical treatment either because they cannot afford to seek treatment or in many cases they are scared to ask for time off in fear of losing their job. In many factories workers do not have access to safe drinking water or adequate toilet facilities. This is especially harmful for women who need regular access to clean toilets during menstruation. Workers are also exposed to harmful chemicals that are hazardous to their health and many of the factories do not have proper ventilation creating a suffocating environment. 

So what is the excuse for the awful working conditions that these workers are exposed to? Now the garment industry is a tricky topic, while there are strong movements against these type of factories, prominent economists like Jeffery Sachs when asked whether there are too many sweatshops have said ‘‘My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops but that there are too few,'' (http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/22/weekinreview/in-principle-a-case-for-more-sweatshops.html) Rapid expansion of the garment sector within the last two decades has given a boost to job creation in the organized sector and has expanded export earnings for many countries. Also, the majority of garment workers are female, which signifies unprecedented entry of female workers in the manufacturing sector. It provides an alternative to the restricted village life for many women in Asia. In one study 35 women in Bangladesh expressed their willingness to stay and work in factories in Dhaka despite not being happy with their working and living conditions simply because it is better than the alternative.(http://devnet.anu.edu.au/online%20versions%20pdfs/51/FLDabsar51.pdf). 

Undoubtedly there have been some positive changes but the question is does the positive outweigh the negative? For pro sweatshop critics the argument is that even though wages and working conditions may appear inferior by the standard of developed nations, they are actually improvements over what the people in developing countries had before. At least the workers have some form of employment and sweatshops provide an alternative to other dangerous jobs like prostitution, begging, or stone crushing. The case most cited for this argument is that after The Child Labor Deterrence Act was introduced in 1993, an estimated 50,000 children were dismissed from their garment job in Asia. Many resorted to jobs such as ‘stone crushing’, ‘street hustling’ and ‘prostitution’. UNICEF’s 1997 State of the World’s Children Study found these jobs to be ‘more hazardous and exploitive than garment production’

The problem with this argument is that it justifies the exploitation of workers by reinforcing that even though the workers are facing unbearable working conditions at least they are better off than they were before. It should not have to be a choice between working in factories under horrible conditions or regular starvation. Unfortunately the fashion industry is structured in a way that it is difficult to hold one party responsible for these violations. Profits are taken out at each level of the supply chain that labor costs are reduced to a tiny fraction of the retail price.

Safety and health in the workplace should be a right and not a privilege and many workers in developing countries are being denied their right while huge amounts of profit are being made at their expense. This year, on the World Day for Safety and Health I will like to pay homage to all these workers.

Some Anti Sweatshop Campaigns:
Oxfam: www.oxfam.org
Clean Clothes Campaign: www.cleanclothes.org
NOSWEAT: www.nosweatapparel.com
An Ethical Industry: fashioninganethicalindustry.org
Behind the Label: www.behindthelabel.org
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS): usas.org/