Amnesty International delivered a scathing indictment of the worldwide garment business in a pair of experiences launched on Thursday, marking its first-ever examination of the sector.
The human-rights organisation, finest recognized for campaigning in opposition to authorities oppression and advocating for political prisoners, accused main trend manufacturers of taking advantage of a provide chain the place staff who try and unionise are routinely threatened, dismissed or violently repressed.
The organisation mentioned world trend corporations have successfully helped maintain unjust circumstances by working with manufacturing unit homeowners and governments that suppress labour rights, enabling a system wherein anti-union practices and employee intimidation are allowed to flourish.
“These findings point to an unholy alliance,” mentioned Amnesty’s secretary basic, Agnès Callamard, in an announcement. The business has “thrived for decades on the exploitation of a grossly underpaid, overworked and mostly female workforce,” she added.
In its two companion experiences on the garment sector — “Stitched Up” and “Abandoned by Fashion” — the rights group states that the denial of “freedom of association,” denoting staff’ means to kind and be a part of organisations of selection, stays entrenched within the world attire sector’s enterprise mannequin.
Across 88 interviews in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, staff described a pervasive “climate of fear,” the place the essential act of becoming a member of a union might result in harassment, firing or bodily assaults. Women, who dominate the business’s workforce, reported verbal, bodily and sexual abuse with little entry to justice.
Across the 4 main sourcing nations, Amnesty documented structural obstacles that make unionising practically not possible.
In Bangladesh’s particular financial zones, the place a lot of the nation’s garment manufacturing is concentrated, unions are largely banned. Meanwhile, in India tens of millions of garment staff are excluded from labour legal guidelines and thus union rights. In Pakistan and Sri Lanka, staff making an attempt to organise face authorized obstacles, intimidation by supervisors or reprisals that embody dismissals and threats.
Amnesty’s findings additionally spotlight how manufacturers’ human-rights insurance policies fall quick in apply. The group says many corporations depend on superficial due-diligence techniques and provider codes of conduct that perform as “tick-box” workouts, permitting opaque provide chains to flourish. Weak or nonexistent laws in key markets allows manufacturers to supply from factories and governments that fail to handle — and in some circumstances actively suppress — collective bargaining. Even in jurisdictions the place due-diligence legal guidelines exist, Amnesty notes that enforcement stays inconsistent.
Amnesty’s South Asia crew turned its consideration to the garment business after pandemic-era order cancellations triggered mass layoffs and lowered hours, leaving tens of millions of predominantly feminine garment staff in sudden precarity.
The experiences notably scrutinise the function of world manufacturers within the system of repression they doc, highlighting a disconnect between public commitments and factory-level realities. Amnesty surveyed 21 main trend corporations, discovering that solely six — Adidas, Asos, Uniqlo-owner Fast Retailing, Inditex, Primark and German retail conglomerate Otto Group — supplied full responses to detailed questions on human-rights insurance policies and oversight.
Marks & Spencer and Walmart provided partial data. Brands together with H&M, Next and Gap, amongst a couple of others, failed to supply substantive information, in line with Amnesty’s evaluation.
In response to the experiences, H&M mentioned it “acknowledge[s] that we should have answered this specific survey from Amnesty International back in 2023” and that it finds the organisation’s findings “concerning,” noting they’re “something that all brands working with global supply chains must tackle jointly.”
Marks & Spencer, Walmart, Next and Gap didn’t present feedback earlier than the time of publication.
Across all 21 corporations, provider codes of conduct universally affirmed staff’ proper to freedom of affiliation. Yet Amnesty mentioned it discovered “very few” genuinely impartial unions working within the factories supplying these manufacturers — an indicator that commitments on paper usually are not translating into protections for staff. Interviewees described speedy retaliation when making an attempt to hitch or kind unions, from verbal abuse to termination.
“The economic success of the garment industry must come hand-in-hand with the realisation of workers’ rights,” Callamard mentioned in her assertion. “Freedom of association is key to tackling the abuse of workers’ rights. It must be protected, advanced and championed.”
Learn extra:
A ‘Climate of Fear’ in Fashion’s Supply Chains
The killing of a union chief in Bangladesh this summer time has heightened nervousness over the dangers going through labour organisers amid a broader, typically violent, crackdown on labour rights.