Sew Bad!

 

Could the clothing manufacturing sector even exist without slavery? It’s a question few of us consider when we purchase those bargains, even some upscale brands, but it is a relevant consideration. There is an organization, KnowTheChain, dedicated to bringing such forced labor into the light of day. Their Website explains: KnowTheChain is a resource for companies and investors to understand and address forced labor risks within their global supply chains. Through benchmarking current corporate practices and providing practical resources that enable companies to operate more transparently and responsibly, KnowTheChain drives corporate action while also informing investor decisions. KnowTheChain is committed to helping companies make an impact in their efforts to address forced labor.

They tell us, “[t]oday, an estimated 24.9 million people around the world are victims of forced labor, generating $150 billion in illegal profits in the private economy.” Sex trafficking is one of the worst parts of this statistic, but 16 million forced workers work for manufacturing companies. One of the most pernicious sectors, footwear/apparel, is the focus of their 2018 APPAREL AND FOOTWEAR BENCHMARK REPORT, which analyzes the $3 trillion global textile industry that overall employs an estimated 60 to 75 million people, two-thirds of whom are women.

“[The] apparel and footwear sector is characterized by globally complex and opaque supply chains and competition for low prices and quick turnarounds. As precarious employment increases, vulnerable workers, including women and migrant workers, are hit the hardest. Workers in the sector are likely to become even more vulnerable as migration flows continue to grow rapidly. The apparel and footwear sector is increasingly reliant on migrant workers. As such, it is crucial that companies have the right policies and processes in place to address the dynamic nature of forced labor risks in their supply chains, including the risks to migrant workers…  The number of international migrants worldwide has grown faster than the world’s population.” Benchmark Report.

Writing for the December 18^th FastCompany.com, looking at the Benchmark Report and other sources, Elizabeth Segran explains: “Prada, Hermes, and Louis Vuitton fared poorly on a new report about forced labor. Meanwhile Adidas, Lululemon, and Gap had the most slavery-free supply chains…

“There are many reasons that the manufacture of clothes and shoes tends to be so tainted by forced labor. One is that people in wealthy, developed countries, like the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France, have gotten addicted to cheap clothing. This is partly because global free trade agreements have made it easy for brands to make their products in places where labor is cheaper, then transport them across the world. This also made it possible for fast fashion to become a trend. Brands like Zara, H&M, and Century21 built their businesses around making off-the-runway looks available at rock bottom prices. As a result, KnowTheChain’s report says that ‘competition for low prices and quick turnarounds’ has led to ‘globally complex and opaque supply chains.’”

Desperate workers, promised jobs in apparel and footwear, are often saddled with “recruitment” fees by various “employment agencies” and labor contractors. They are shipped off to factories with horrible working/living conditions where they labor to pay off fees that often represent months if not years of the potential income. Many are thus often not paid at all for years.

“Today’s slave labor doesn’t look the way it did a hundred years ago. Instead, it involves poor people in developing countries trying to find work at clothing and shoe factories and finding themselves exploited.

“Take the case of one woman in India. KnowTheChain found that she had left her rural village in search of a job in Bangalore, a major city in South India. An agent found her a job at a clothing factory in exchange for a recruitment fee, although the details of how much it would be were murky. The agency then proceeded to take her entire paycheck until she had paid the fee back. Six months into the job, she still hadn’t received a single wage slip. And to make matters worse, the agent had promised her free room and board, but when she arrived, she discovered this was not the case.

“Many clothes sold in the United States are made in India. It’s possible that you or I bought a piece of clothing that she made. Yet few of us have any idea about the misery, exploitation, and forced labor that go into the clothes we wear every day.” Segran.

China’s notorious mass detention camps, where inmates are incarcerated to be “reeducated” to China’s social norms, are hotbeds of slave labor. If you know about the “Muslim” troubles among ethnic Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, you might also know that there are about one million Muslim “detainees” in such camps. A vast number of those prisoners, according to the December 18^th Los Angeles Times (Associated Press report), “are sewing clothes that have been imported all year by a U.S. sportswear company…

“Now, the Chinese government is also forcing some detainees to work in manufacturing and food industries. Some of them are within the internment camps; others are privately owned, state-subsidized factories where detainees are sent once they are released.

“The Associated Press has tracked recent, ongoing shipments from one such factory, Hetian Taida Apparel, inside an internment camp to Badger Sportswear, a leading supplier in Statesville, N.C. Badger’s clothes are sold on college campuses and to sports teams nationwide, although there is no way to tell where any particular shirt made in Xinjiang ends up.

“The shipments show how difficult it is to stop products made with forced labor from getting into the global supply chain, even though such imports are illegal in the United States. Badger Chief Executive John Anton said Sunday [12/16] that the company would halt shipments while it investigates…

“Men and women in the complex that has shipped products to Badger Sportswear make clothes for privately owned Hetian Taida Apparel in a cluster of 10 workshops within the compound walls. Hetian Taida says it is not affiliated with the internment camps, but its workforce includes detainees.

“Hetian Taida’s chairman, Wu Hongbo, confirmed that the company has a factory in a reeducation compound, and said it provides employment to those trainees who were deemed by the government to be ‘unproblematic.’… ‘We’re making our contribution to eradicating poverty,’ Wu said.

“Police told journalists who approached the compound this month that they could not take photos or film in the area because it was part of a ‘military facility.’ Yet the entrance was marked only by a tall gate that said it was an ‘apparel employment training base.’… Posters line the barbed-wire perimeter, bearing messages such as ‘Learn to be grateful, learn to be an upright person’ and ‘No need to pay tuition, find a job easily.’” But they’re not free to leave. Where they are paid anything, it’s 10% of what outside workers would earn. Local authorities say it is a “vocational training center.” It’s not.

“A former reporter for Xinjiang TV in exile said that during his month long detention last year, young people in his camp were taken away in the mornings to work without compensation in carpentry and a cement factory… ‘The camp didn’t pay any money, not a single cent,’ he said, asking to be identified only by his first name, Elyar, because he has relatives still in Xinjiang. ‘Even for necessities, such as things to shower with or sleep at night, they would call our families outside to get them to pay for it.’

“Rushan Abbas, a Uighur in Washington, D.C., said her sister is among those detained. The sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, was taken to what the government calls a vocational center, although she has no specific information on whether her sister is being forced to work… ‘American companies importing from those places should know those products are made by people being treated like slaves,” she said. “What are they going to do, train a doctor to be a seamstress?’…

“Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, called on the Trump administration Monday to ban imports from Chinese companies associated with detention camps… ‘Not only is the Chinese government detaining over a million Uighurs and other Muslims, forcing them to revoke their faith and profess loyalty to the Communist Party, they are now profiting from their labor,’ Smith said. ‘U.S. consumers should not be buying and U.S. businesses should not be importing goods made in modern-day concentration camps.’” LA Times. Are you?

              I’m Peter Dekom, and most consumers do not have the slightest idea who made the very clothes off their backs… shouldn’t they?