As you are reading this there are millions of people enslaved around the world for the purpose of fashion. Here are just a few examples showing how slavery looks around the globe.
Scroll down to read about each country.
The United States and Migrant Labor
A Los Angeles study showed that 82% of workers receive no health and safety training, 60% work in excessive heat due and/or dusty workspaces with poor ventilation, and 42% of factories are infested with rodents and/or have regularly locked doors. Workers may be required to work 12-hour days six or seven days a week with no breaks and may be subject to sexual harassment.
“Made in America.” Those words hold great power for many of us. They make us think of good jobs, strong communities, and caring for our neighbors. Sadly, a number of actors in the American fashion industry are not living up to the ideals we may see embedded in this phrase.
After decades of outsourcing, the U.S. garment industry began to rebound in the early 21st Century. The greatest concentration of garment workers is in Los Angeles, with the second largest in New York. Profit margins are very narrow in the American garment industry, and some factories look to reduce costs by cutting corners. A major one is wages; garment workers may be paid below minimum wage, not receive overtime pay, may be subject to frequent weekly changes in rates which create wage uncertainty, and may experience wage theft. A Los Angeles study showed that 82% of workers receive no health and safety training, 60% work in excessive heat due and/or dusty workspaces with poor ventilation, and 42% of factories are infested with rodents and/or have regularly locked doors. Workers may be required to work 12-hour days six or seven days a week with no breaks and may be subject to sexual harassment.
Many workers are undocumented, making them particularly vulnerable to exploitation and labor trafficking. For example, employers may threaten to turn in workers for reporting labor violations. Foreign-born workers may have used labor brokers which lead to debt bondage, a form of trafficking, through charging up front or weekly fees for securing employment. Guestworkers, who are documented, may also be charged exorbitant up front fees and then be subject to a visa system that ties them to their employer, making it hard for them to take action if their employer runs afoul of labor laws.
The story of labor rights advocate and trafficking survivor Flor Molina provides a chilling example of how labor traffickers work. After the death of her infant daughter due to a lack of funding for adequate medical care, Molina was despondent. She began taking sewing classes to bring in additional income and hopefully start her own business one day. A trafficker approached her sewing teacher with promises to take Molina to the U.S. so she could make more money, however Molina was saddled with a large debt to repay upon arrival. While in America, Molina worked 18-hour days making high end dresses, was given just 10 minutes to eat her one meal each day, was forbidden from talking to anyone, and was forced to sleep in the factory alongside another victim. Although Molina escaped, her trafficker received a light sentence of six months of house arrest and continued to pursue Molina and her family for years.
Bonded labor in India
“Sumangali” is the Tamil word for “happily married woman”, and involves the “apprenticing” of very young women to work for spinning mills under near-prison-like circumstances with long hours, poor working conditions, and almost no contact with the outside world. In return, the woman’s family receives a lump sum of money at the end of 3 or more years to go towards a dowry, which is a sizeable expense for poor families in the Indian context (and illegal under Indian law).
SOURCE: Solidaridad Network
Schemes that rely on forced and bonded labor have also developed due to the pressures of poverty in areas where other formal jobs do not exist. A prominent example of this practice is the Sumangali Scheme, which has been extensively documented in the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India. “Sumangali” is the Tamil word for “happily married woman”, and involves the “apprenticing” of very young women to work for spinning mills under near-prison-like circumstances with long hours, poor working conditions, and almost no contact with the outside world. In return, the woman’s family receives a lump sum of money at the end of 3 or more years to go towards a dowry, which is a sizeable expense for poor families in the Indian context (and illegal under Indian law). Under this practice, however, workers are often paid only as trainees, quite lower than the minimum wage for workmen, with no benefits and little freedom of movement or association, and the expenses of food and boarding for the whole term are taken from the final subsidy.
Due to the exploitative and often deceptive nature of the scheme, where agents/brokers often lure families into sending their daughters on the promise of an end sum, this scheme in its current form was declared illegal and tantamount to bonded labor. However, it has been extremely difficult to eradicate due to a lack of effective government oversight and the convoluted nature of the supply chain. While some pressure has been put on international brands to stop supplying from these spinning mills, a major study found that less than 30% of the yarn coming from these mills is used directly in global brands and retailers, while the rest is supplied to the domestic market in India, or to the weaving and knitting sector, which in turn supply fabric to the domestic market. The Sumangali Scheme is just one example of forced and bonded labor in the production phase of fashion manufacturing, and points to the need for deeper and more holistic solutions than the dialogue and international pressure of campaigns so far.
Cotton in Uzbekistan
However, as the Cotton Campaign notes, the Uzbek government appears to have shifted the use of forced labor to adults, and now requires public sector workers including teachers, doctors, nurses, students and government employees to harvest in the cotton fields or pay for a replacement worker, under threat of losing their jobs and other penalties.
SOURCE: Cotton Campaign
While there are variations in the nature of abusive labor practices from region to region, Uzbekistan stands out for its use of government-sanctioned forced labor during the annual cotton harvest. For many years, the Uzbek government forced over one million citizens to grow and harvest cotton, coercing farmers to produce cotton at assigned quotas on state-owned land, and then forcing them to sell the cotton back to the state at artificially low prices. Until 2012, the Uzbek government also required children ages 11-15 and their teachers to leave school during the harvest season to pick cotton.
International attention from human rights groups to these abuses has somewhat curtailed Uzbekistan’s forced labor practices, particularly for children under the age of 16, and in 2019 the U.S. Labor Department removed Uzbek cotton from a list of products that are produced with forced child labor. However, as the Cotton Campaign notes, the Uzbek government appears to have shifted the use of forced labor to adults, and now requires public sector workers including teachers, doctors, nurses, students and government employees to harvest in the cotton fields or pay for a replacement worker, under threat of losing their jobs and other penalties. Verite reports that neighboring Turkmenistan employs similar methods of forced and child labor in its annual cotton harvest, and lists 17 other countries as producing cotton by the use of forced and/or child labor. Prominent on this list are India and China, the two largest producers and exporters of cotton in the world.
Italy and Home-based Work
Home workers in Italy do their work in their own home or a small workshop outside of regulated settings, often without an employment contract or any guarantees of payment. Subcontracting is rampant, and labor may be shifted to smaller factories to reduce price or time without brands directly knowing that their products are made by irregular workers outside of contracted factories. Italy does not have a national minimum wage, and home workers may be paid as little as just one euro an hour for “luxury” garments which retail for above $1,000 USD.
SOURCE: NY Times
Italian fashion often conjures images of luxury. Many Americans also have a sense that the more you pay for an item, the better treated people are along the supply chain. Additionally, there’s also a sense that in EU countries conditions are always good for workers there.
However, the situation of home work for “luxury” brands in Puglia, the rural heel of Italy’s “boot”, paints a darker picture. This region’s unemployment rate is around 20%, and much of past production has been offshored to Asia and Eastern Europe. When brands have brought work back to Italy the power remains in the hands of brands, and many of them are looking to cut costs however they can.
Home workers in Italy do their work in their own home or a small workshop outside of regulated settings, often without an employment contract or any guarantees of payment. Subcontracting is rampant, and labor may be shifted to smaller factories to reduce price or time without brands directly knowing that their products are made by irregular workers outside of contracted factories. Italy does not have a national minimum wage, and home workers may be paid as little as just one euro an hour for “luxury” garments which retail for above $1,000 USD. Workers may only be paid upon completion of a garment, and payments may be late or even subject to an unexplained reduction in price.
Home work is also common in places Southeast and East Asia, where millions of primarily female workers labor at home without employment protections. Although the situation described in Italy doesn’t rise to the level of “forced labor”, as people are not made to work against their will or with threat of punishment, it is an example of the type of exploitation that is all too common.
Malaysia and Migrant Debt Bondage
The migration story can be a powerful and positive one, however Malaysia’s garment factories show that it can also be rife with exploitation. According to the International Labor Organization, Malaysia has nearly four million migrant workers which represent anywhere from 20% to 30% of the nation’s workforce. In 2017 alone Malaysia exported $3.6bn in textiles and apparel, and the United States Department of Labor has placed Malaysia-made garments on its list of goods produced with forced labor.
Enticed by the promise of good jobs with good wages, migrant workers from Bangladesh pay recruitment agents in their home country an average of $2,450 USD to work in Malaysia at TAL. These same workers then pay a second set of fees, which are TAL’s recruitment costs, upon arrival to Malaysia.
SOURCE: Transparentem
As highlighted by the important work of the NGO Transparentem, workers are recruited to come to Malaysia from poorer Asian countries including Myanmar, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Vietnam. Companies like TAL Apparel, which makes one of six dress shirts sold in the United States, employ these migrants lured by exploitative recruitment agencies with the promise of economic opportunity. Many migrants pay substantial recruitment fees to agencies when they are in their home countries as well as related travel costs, like visas and health checks, in order to secure their jobs in Malaysia. These workers may also suffer from additional deception or intimidation upon arrival, including withholding passports and unsafe working conditions.
Let’s look at one example highlighted in Transparentem’s work. Enticed by the promise of good jobs with good wages, migrant workers from Bangladesh pay recruitment agents in their home country an average of $2,450 USD to work in Malaysia at TAL. These same workers then pay a second set of fees, which are TAL’s recruitment costs, upon arrival to Malaysia. The former TAL company policy was for TAL to front the cost of these fees, which they considered “factory loans,” and then have workers repay them through paycheck deductions. For some workers the total fees were so high that they had used their life savings, sold family land, or taken out loans with high interest rates for the chance of a more lucrative livelihood abroad. Other workers were then threatened by recruitment agents and forced to say, on film, they were not being exploited at the risk of losing their jobs.
Although this example is from Malaysia and Bangladesh, and TAL has since changed their practices after Transparentem presented their findings, this story is still happening today in other locations around the world.
China and Prison and Internment Camp Labor
Members of the Uyghur minority group are moved from “reeducation” or internment camps to factories with government police stationed there and forced to worked for international brands ranging from Abercrombie & Fitch to Adidas to Uniqlo, and with these transfers resulting in financial gains to local governments, private brokers, and factories.
SOURCE: Uyghurs for Sale
In March of 2017 an Arizona woman opened a purse purchased at a local Wal-Mart to find a note highlighting forced labor taking place in the prison in China. Translated from Mandarin, the letter read, “Inmates in China’s Yingshan Prison work 14 hours a day and are not allowed to rest at noon. We have to work overtime until midnight. People are beaten for not finishing their work. There’s no salt and oil in our meals. The boss pays 2,000 yuan every month for the prison to offer better food, but the food is all consumed by the prison guards. Sick inmates have to pay for their own pills.” This is neither the first nor last time such a note has been found highlighting forced labor in Chinese prisons. American and European consumers have found notes highlighting prison labor in products from companies ranging from H&M to Lacoste to Saks to Zara.
Established in 1949, the Chinese prison system is modeled after Soviet gulags and offenders there range from violent crime to speaking negatively about the government. Members of the Uyghur minority group are moved from “reeducation” or internment camps to factories with government police stationed there and forced to worked for international brands ranging from Abercrombie & Fitch to Adidas to Uniqlo, and with these transfers resulting in financial gains to local governments, private brokers, and factories. Roughly one in five cotton garments sold globally contains cotton from the Uyghur region, which is likely tainted by forced labor and ironically may be marketed as “organic” and “sustainable”. Over the past three years an estimated 1.7 million Uyghur have been moved into detention centers and the buying and selling of Uyghur labor can be lucrative for local governments and commercial brokers. And it is not just over a million Uyghur who are that is detained by the Chinese government, but also other ethnic groups and religious minorities who may be subject to forced labor.
According to the International Labor Organization, prison labor is not itself forced labor, however if prisoners do not have a choice it falls into that category. Forced labor is all too common in China, and when American companies place orders with Chinese factories they may even be transferred to prisons without a company’s knowledge. In fact, prison factories may have “sister factories” where products are intentionally mislabeled and then prepared for international delivery, concealing prison practices from clients. Prison labor is also marketed to suppliers for outsourcing as having a stable supply of labor with no shortage in supply, cheap labor, and no need to pay for manufacturing space. Even if supplier codes of conduct specifically state that there will be no forced labor in prisons there still may be forced labor in supply chains due to the subcontracting in the industry.
And lest you think forced prison labor is unique to China, it has occurred in United States prisons from the time of Reconstruction until the present day. And what type of work do these prisoners do? Well, it ranges, but can include sewing garments for Victoria’s Secret.