The garment industry turns over almost $3 Trillion a year. Yet garment workers, 80% of them women, work for poverty pay, earning as little as $21 a month. Human rights abuses are systemic throughout the industry. Poverty wages, long hours, forced overtime, unsafe working conditions, sexual, physical and verbal abuse, repression of trade union rights and short term contracts are all commonplace in the clothing industry. It is an industry built on exploitation and growing under a lack of transparency that makes holding brands accountable difficult. Labour Behind the Label is dedicated to changing this.
Discover Labour Behind the Label and find out how you can join their campaign that works to improve conditions and empower workers in the global garment industry.
Labour Behind the Label is the only UK campaign group that focuses exclusively on labour rights in the global garment industry. Founded in 2002, the organization has fifteen years of experience in awareness raising, research and lobbying in support of workers demands for improved pay and conditions. Labour Behind the Label is small but mighty in relentlessly raising the profile of garment workers who need their stories to be told. Their effective campaigning has been instrumental in pushing UK retailers to sign the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, ensuring Rana Plaza victims receive long-term compensation, supporting workers in Indonesia to receive legally-owed severance pay, and campaigning with Cambodian garment workers to demand a living wage, among many other cases.
Labour Behind the Label is a workers cooperative based in Bristol. They represent the Clean Clothes Campaign in the UK and work with over 250 partner organisations worldwide through this network. In the UK labour Behind the Label works with a variety of partners, such as other NGOs and trade unions, to ensure their campaigns have the greatest impact.
This report looks into the stories behind two leading high-street brands who have made claims to be ensuring a fair living wage is possible for workers who make their clothes. H&M and Marks & Spencer have received significant acclaim for headline commitments to a living wage. Real wages being paid in their factories however are not yet delivering on their promises. Read and download the full report here.
Fast Fashion is a relatively new phenomenon where brands change their stock every 4 to 6 weeks to keep up with the very latest fashion trends at a price which makes the clothes cheap and disposable.
Fast Fashion is the drive to increase profits and get products into our high street shops faster and faster, to satisfy an insatiable desire for new trends; the drive to sell more, consume more, make more, waste more. This, however, has disastrous consequences for the people who make our clothes.
The Six Items Challenge is designed to challenge our increasing reliance on fast fashion and raise vital funds which will enable Labour Behind the Label to keep fighting for the justice that garment workers deserve.
Get involved, join Labour Behind the Label and discover all of the amazing work they do in the fight for garment worker rights in the global garment industry.
Disclaimer: I am not at all an expert on the big business of fast fashion however I am a concerned consumer who has chosen to learn & share as much as I can through my own personal experiences & the wealth of resources available online.
