The days of $200 jeans are long gone and with the rise of social media influencers, the demand for expensive looking and cheap garments has skyrocketed. People are buying too much and using too little just to keep their feeds “fresh”. How do brands keep up with this demand? And more importantly, do we care?
Fast fashion is powered by cheap labor which allows brands to keep up with demand while generating huge profits. From Bangladesh to Leicester and Los Angeles, this industry is built upon the mass exploitation of those who work within its supply chains [1]. In this post, we are focusing on the “modern-day slaves” that grind behind locked doors in secret urban sweatshops not so far away from home. Yes, these places not only exist in third-world countries, but they are much closer than you think.
What are sweatshops?
The term “sweatshop” was first used in the 19th century to describe aspects of the tailoring trade [2]. The Cambridge Dictionary defines it as “a small factory where workers are paid very little and work many hours in very bad conditions”[3]. These, ladies and gentlemen, are the reason why we can buy trendy jeans for as low as $10.
A not-so-distant reality
Labels that say “made in India” or “made in Bangladesh” on our clothes have made us believe that sweatshops are a distant reality. Even though this willful ignorance has catastrophic consequences for the lives of millions of workers, we have managed to convince ourselves that it is “not our problem”. Out of sight, out of mind…right?
Now, allow us to pop your cute little bubble: these abuses are happening way closer than you think!
Some decades ago, clothing companies started moving their operations abroad in search of cheaper labor forces, predominantly to Asia where wages are among the lowest in the world. Nowadays this trend is reversing. Due to unstable politics in these countries, increases in import duties, decreases in product quality, and increased demand for higher wages abroad, companies are moving their operations back home [4].
Naturally, there has been a substantial increase in local garment factories and… you guessed it… sweatshops. In developed countries like the U.S., sweatshops tend to use uneducated, non-English speaking workers which are either unaware of their rights or simply “grateful” to have a job.[5] In the words of a worker in New York’s garment district
“We know we should be paid the minimum wage, we know we should be paid overtime, but what can we do?… If we complain about not getting overtime, if we ask for days off, they can always find someone else.”
Aurelio Rojas, Border Guarded, Workplace Ignored, S.F. CHRON., Mar. 18, 1996, at Al.
“Made in the U.S.” ≠ “Ethically Made”
It is an easy lie to believe that just because a piece of clothing is made in, let’s say, the U.S. or the U.K., workers are being looked after. “Made in the U.S.” is in no way equal to “ethically made” or even “made with a minimum respect for human rights”. It might be shocking (well, maybe not that shocking…) but in these countries, workers are working 12 hours a day, making garments that will most probably be sold for less than $50, and getting paid around three cents apiece[6].
Let’s take a look at some recent and famous sweatshop cases both in the U.S. and the U.K.
The Fashion Nova case
Speed is key to success in the fast fashion industry and Fashion Nova knows it very well. When a celebrity wears an outfit in public, it takes less than a blink of an eye for the brand to provide its customers a cheap copy of the look.
To keep their clientele happy and up to date with the latest fashion trends, Fashion Nova manufactures most of its clothing in the U.S., particularly in Los Angeles[7]. And thanks to an endless list of local suppliers that promptly respond to the brand’s requests, Fashion Nova produces thousands of new styles every week![8]
In December of 2019, the New York Times unveiled Fashion Nova’s dirty (not-so-little) secret: hundreds of underpaid workers in Los Angeles factories. After a four-year investigation (2016-2019), the U.S. Department of Labor discovered Fashion Nova clothing being made in factories that paid their sewers as little as $2.77 an hour and owed around $3.8 million in back wages to hundreds of workers[9]. Shocked? Of course not! Let’s be honest, for prices like the ones offered by Fashion Nova, sweatshops are kind of expected.
The company’s modus operandi is the following: “it places bulk orders with companies that design the clothes and then ships fabric to separately owned sewing contractors, where workers stitch the clothes together and stick fashion nova’s label on them”[10]. Fashion Nova does not deal directly with factories so, if they can credibly claim that they did not know their clothes were made by workers paid illegally low wages they cannot be penalized for wage theft under U.S. Federal Law.[11]
The Boohoo case
On the other side of the Atlantic, we have Boohoo. Founded in Manchester in 2006 and now the owner of giants PrettyLittleThing and Nasty Gal, this brand boasts of “never sleeping”. According to them, they are “24/7, dropping over 500 new products a week, so you always have the latest looks for less”[12]. If this is not the very definition of ultra-fast fashion, then we don’t know what is.
To fulfill their customers’ constant demands for new products (which will often be discarded after one wear) Boohoo works with factories close to home: Leicester, England. Hence, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, just like Fashion Nova does, to produce such cheap and fast clothing, exploitation is required. Apparently, their philosophy not to take life, or fashion, “too seriously”[13], also includes their workers’ rights.
Last year, The Sunday Times published an undercover investigation that said workers in a Leicester factory that supplied Boohoo were being paid as little as £3.50 the hour[14]. And that’s not all, it was also revealed that proper equipment to protect against the coronavirus was pretty much non-existent. [15]
What did Boohoo say? A few days after the news broke, the company published a statement saying that they were “shocked and appalled by the recent allegations that have been made and [they were] committed to doing everything in [their] power to rebuild the reputation of the textile manufacturing industry in Leicester”.[16] Do we believe them?
Consumers: The ball is on our side
As Syama Meagher said in a Forbes article, “being offered a shiny apple of fast fashion leads to a rotten garden of human rights violations”[17]. It is time to become aware that all our actions have an impact, to a greater or lesser extent, on our environment and workers. It is time that we make responsible choices because the longer we choose to ignore these abuses, the messier and dirtier it is going to get.
“There is no redemption for fast fashion, no alternative ethical model in which workers’ rights are prioritized.”[18] Maybe next time you’re tempted to buy the $10 dress you’ll think twice.
“In this era of concern for civility, decency, and family values, sweatshops are repugnant to our moral core. It is wrong to value fashion when we do not value the people who make fashion real… Sweatshops reflect too vividly how we as a nation feel about the weakest among us. And it is such an ‘underground’ problem that there is no definitive source on how many sweatshops operate in this country. But we know this: One is one too many.”[20]
Alexis M. Herman, U.S. Secretary of Labor, 1997
What are your thoughts on this post’s issue? Do you think you will now take this into account when buying new clothes? Let us know in the comments below!
