Dolly Jones
TODAY, where once the Rana Plaza building stood in Dhaka, Bangladesh, a pile of twisted metal and concrete rubble sits unmoved since the day of its collapse. Plants grow from amid the molding fabric abandoned in the wreckage. A pair of jeans swings from a broken railing like a noose.
It took tragedy on an epic scale to take the subject of ethical fashion from the specialist pages of the liberal press and make it headline news across the world. The factory collapse on April 24, 2013 left 1,133 men, women and children dead, over 2500 injured and at least 800 children orphaned. Subsequent headlines detailed untold horrors: illegally run, poorly-built factories, desperately bad pay, foul mistreatment of (mainly female, often underage) workers and a system of mind-numbingly slow bureaucracy which would prevent compensation getting to the survivors. By the year’s end Bangladesh was rife with violent protests and the outcry surrounding the politics of garment manufacture sent tremors around the world.
If a positive can be found, it’s that Rana Plaza has been a turning point – the 21st Century equivalent of New York’s 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire which killed 146 but led to a unionized, safe garment industry. But, while that protected the workers of America, today, workplace laws must straddle international boundaries and cultural practices – involving brands, governments, employers, trade unions and consumers. It’s fraught with complication. To create too much red tape around trading in Bangladesh would lead to companies taking their business to less rigorously controlled areas, adding unemployment to the suffering.
But – slowly, hopefully – attitudes are changing towards the ethics of clothes manufacture, and the ethical fashion movement is growing in momentum. Emma Watson is among the growing lobby of celebrities galvanizing a generation of teenage girls to think twice about their Saturday shopping habits. “I’ve travelled to Bangladesh and visited factories like Rana Plaza,” she says. “I knew how bad the conditions were before the collapse,” she says. ‘I think it’s important that I’m accountable for the choices I make and understand they have serious consequences.”
The disaster’s inevitability was its greatest outrage. The result of a complicated international supply chain that exonerates Western retailers from the responsibility of protecting the people making their clothes, it is extremely vulnerable to corruption and abuse. The fact that this building, which had been illegally expanded to house five factories over eight floors, was in no fit state was common knowledge – bankers and shop workers had evacuated days before, but the garment workers were threatened with losing their jobs if they didn’t return to work overtime in the groaning building. Its ultimate collapse took just 90 seconds. The victims’ families have described the deaths as being murder.
Cate Blanchett says that garment manufacture demands the same attention as climate change. “If you offer options then it’s not sacrifice, it’s choice,” she says. “As well as the fundamental improvement to our spiritual health, buying with conscience is about the option to buy something for £1 that has the potential to blind 15 children as a result of an inhumane production line – or something else for £1.50 that will have a positive effect. Like climate change – we need to change the way we consume fashion. And if more individuals do then we make a change collectively.”
In the immediate aftermath of the factory collapse, investigators tried first to identify the brands being produced there (oftentimes, a clothing company won’t necessarily know exactly where its clothes are made – designs are passed to an agent tasked with sourcing the cheapest supplier which, when over-stretched, outsources elsewhere.) When Rana Plaza fell, Primark was first to admit responsibility and provide compensation to affected workers. Acutely aware of its supply chain because of past issues, it was able to pinpoint precisely which garments were being made in the premises. Yet many of the other 28 brands producing there are still unable, or unwilling, to admit involvement. Neither were the clothes all destined for the high street – T-shirts designed to be sold on Bond Street may well have been be made in the same building.
So, what progress? Set up in the aftermath of the tragedy, the UK-run Bangladesh Accord and it’s corresponding US-based Alliance (chaired by President Obama’s former Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs, Ellen Tauscher) commit businesses to properly inspect factories and provide financial support for improvements as well as, critically, compensating workers while the work is being done. Additionally 5000 factories are being independently audited and given democratically elected worker participation committees as well as access to an anonymous worker helpline. Though daunting, the progress has been significant: “I don’t spend my time on things that I don’t believe will be successful,” says Tauscher.
The Bangladeshi government, meanwhile, has changed the law to allow garment workers to form trade unions without prior permission from factory owners and, in November, the minimum wage was increased by 77 per cent – though workers continue to press for a further increase.
On the global stage, fair-trade pioneer Carry Somers, fashion activist Lucy Siegel and Livia Firth have declared April 24th an annual Fashion Revolution Day – for which people all over the world will be encouraged to wear their clothes inside-out. “We want people talking about the provenance of clothes,” says Somers, “raising awareness of the fact that we aren’t just purchasing a garment, but a whole chain of value and relationships. FRD will become a platform for best practice – for brands to show off what they are doing to improve things.”
“As consumers, we want people to re-engage with fashion, slow things down a bit, love the clothes we buy more,” adds Firth. “Care about how they are made and by whom.”
For cynics, there has been much talk and not enough action – factories continue to fall and workers die – but Tascher remains resolute: “Within five months we’d agreed common safety standards and inspected over half the target factories,” she says, while the brands themselves claim momentum is positive. “The biggest sign of progress is the collaborative approach with other brands,” says H&M’s head of sustainability, Helena Helmerson. “We’re working with a common task force to make structural surveys that weren’t done before.”
These surveys will make all the difference in the short term. Incredibly, a factory audit pre-Rana Plaza did not involve structural checks. “We’ve learned our lesson,” says Paul Lister, of Primark. “We had audited Rana Plaza twice but we hadn’t done a structural survey because nobody did. Now we all do.” Action is being taken: in July inspectors deemed the Liberty Fashion Wear Factory in Dhaka unsafe and both Tesco and Primark pulled out. “Previously that wouldn’t have happened,” says Lister.
It’s not an easy game to play nicely. Suppliers aren’t used to this level of scrutiny and fear of losing business can give rise to greater corruption, while brands wishing to disassociate themselves from the corrosive PR of an inhumane supply chain are often reticent about joining the discussion. A humane one, though, is a solid defensive PR strategy so unarguably good for business. You can, says Tascher, “do good while you’re doing well.”
But, says Firth, we should be wary of green washing. “A paper bag here, an organic T-shirt there – some brands tick a couple of boxes and ignore the main issue,” she says. “Some mega brands still don’t give a damn but there are brilliant examples like Paul Smith who is absolutely in charge of his production chain,” she continues. “This is a global problem – we need to question how loyal we are to all brands to flush out sweatshops all over the world, even in developed countries, on our doorstep. If we imagine we are voting every time we buy something, and we use our purchase power, then things will change.”
But is the product good enough? “Things are improving but I wish there were more choices for me – badly,” says Watson.
Designers, too, see their potential influence: “Smaller designers tend to work with small factories so it’s easier to have full visibility of how the clothes are made and by whom,” says Roksanda Illincic. “But as brands grow, we can’t just stop working with them. We have the power to change things for benefit of everybody.”
“I hate this modern slavery,” says Isabel Marant. “But if you’re realistic there is a bad and good in the situation now. It’s given workers the opportunity to protest and, maybe I’m an idealist, but I think if things go on like this, eventually everybody will be on the same level. Most people went to China to manufacture their stuff 10 or 15 years ago and now they’re coming back because it’s not as inexpensive as it once was.”
We could stop buying cheap clothes altogether – but a morally high handed boycott isn’t going to do any good for people in developing countries who will lose their jobs as a result of it, or those in developed countries earning minimum wage for whom a £5 pair of jeans is the difference between drudgery and some semblance of materialistic pleasure. It’s the ethics of businesses we’re buying from that we have to campaign for, as well as keeping own morals in check.
“If you care about a brand, let them know you’re watching them,” says Peter McAllister of the Ethical Trading Initiative. “Applaud them for progress and let them know you want to know about the people in their factories.”
Ultimately this is about protecting a creative, inspirational, positive industry and its vast potential to provide for millions of people all over the world. The issue is not whether or not we can continue to enjoy it; simply that if we want fashion that is beautiful, let it also be kind.
Source: Vogue
