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The garment industry - a global industry
Trade union rights
Living wages
Hours of work
Working conditions
Workers’ rights are human rights

International trade in textiles and garments goes back hundreds of years. The garment industry is now highly globalised and served by complex supply chains linking countries, workers and consumers all over the world.

The world's consumers spend around US$1 trillion a year buying clothes, with around one third of sales in the European Union, one third in North America and one quarter in Asia.
The market in garments is dominated by an ever smaller number of big companies. These companies deal mainly with retailing, the lucrative side of the garment industry, while manufacture is sub-contracted across the world.

Most of the production of clothes now takes place in the so-called global South, in countries in Asia, Africa and Central America where wages are low and exports are promoted. Transactions often occur through a complex network of agents, sub-contractors and manufacturers. So fragmented is this side of the industry that the companies selling the final products often do not know exactly where and under what conditions those products are made

The majority of the garment workforce is young and female and aged between 16 and 24 years. In many cases young girls from rural areas migrate to cities to work in garment factories in order to earn money for their families. In other cases garment workers are mothers with dependent children.

It is mostly women who are employed rather than men because discrimination means that they can be paid less than men. Socially stigmatised and often deprived of the schooling their male colleagues have received, they are perceived as less likely to organise and speak out about the difficulties they face inside and outside the workplace.

Women workers are more likely to be harassed than men workers. This can involve verbal, sexual, and physical abuse. Workers may be threatened with dismissal if they protest against this and try to organise to improve their working conditions. Long overtime hours mean that women often finish work at a time when there is no safe transport home. As a result they are vulnerable to sexual harassment and physical attacks late at night.

The fundamental principle of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining are a reflection of human dignity. They guarantee the ability of workers to join and act together to defend not only their economic interests but also civil liberties such as the right to life, security, integrity and personal and collective freedom. They guarantee rotection against discrimination, interference and harassment. As an integral part of emocracy, they are also key to exercising other labour rights enshrined in the ILO conventions.

Most workers are not aware of their rights and management will not allow them to form a union in the factory. The resulting climate of fear means that no one in these factories dares to form a trade union. "If anybody tries to form a union, they will be dismissed from their job. We never tried to organise a union due to fear of losing our jobs", said Abdul, worker in a Bangladeshi factory which is producing garments for European retailers.

A living wage means wages and benefits paid for a standard working week of a maximum of 48 hours which meet at least the legal or industry minimum and are always sufficient to meet the basic needs of workers and their families (including housing, food, medical care and education) and to provide some discretionary income.

In a Chinese factory producing bags with the Olympic logo, researchers for the 2008 Playfair campaign found that workers were earning only a third of the legal minimum, despite working over 350 hours per month. "Our wages are calculated on a piece rate basis," explained one worker, "so we all have to work very hard to earn around 1,000 yuan a month. Many workers stay behind an extra 10 minutes just to do a few more pieces. There is no overtime pay rate. The rate per piece is the same as during normal working hours. The company said we’d get an extra 0.7 yuan per hour for overtime but in reality, the extra money wents to pay for meals [ provided during overtime hours]."

Nadia works in a factory supplying a well-known fashion brand in Morocco. She earns theminimum wage of 1 Euro per hour and spends her 45 Euro weekly earnings as follows: "First, I give some to my parents, who don’t work. Next come my sisters [two of whom are studying]. Then I keep whatever is left for myself." At 35, Nadia still shares a 3-room house with nine members of her family. She would have liked to be a teacher, and would love to marry and have children of her own. But her obligations to her family, coupled with her low wage, mean that these aspirations are still unfulfilled.

Maria is a homeworker in Bulgaria. She earns 60 Euro a month, yet to support her family of four, homeworking organisations say she would need to earn 200 Euro. Maria is paid piece rate – a fixed amount per garment produced, rather than per hour. If she wants to earn even the minimum wage, she has to work sixteen hours a day; to earn more the whole family, including her children, has to help with the work. On top of this, Maria also has to cope with irregular payments . Maria sums up her situation like this: "nothing is secure. Life is much harder than it used to be. Instead of going forward, we are going backwards".

A typical work day at the Chinese Lekit factory is 12 hours, of which 4 hours is mandatory overtime. Staff work overtime Monday to Saturday and sometimes on Sundays too. In fact, most workers at Lekit only get Sunday nights off and production workers are rarely given any days off, even if they request them. In January 2007, overtime work at Lekit jumped to 160 hours - 4.5 times the maximum allowed of 36 hours a month. This means that, on top of their regular 168 hours (8 hours a day x 22 week days) a month, workers were forced to work another 160 hours, or about 40 hours a week.

"I sit behind the machine all day every day (from 7:30am until 11pm). My bottom gets numb and my right leg hurts. I can’t walk now without my leg hurting" a worker from the Lekit factory told us.

In February and March 2006, a number of garment factory collapses and fires in Bangladesh left almost 100 workers dead and many more injured. Yet company buyers had checked many of these factories. Interviewed workers state that emergency exits in their workplaces are still often kept locked.
In Mauritius another country that brands see as ‘low risk’ for exploitation – the Sunday Times reported about migrant workers in factories. "When I go to bed at the end of the day," one woman told the paper, "I lay down and weep." Another explained the conditions in which they work: We were put in dormitories – approximately 20ft-30ft, 40-50 workers huddled together in this room. There was no space to move around. For the 985 employees [in the factory] there were only 10 toilets and at least three of them did not work at any time. More often there was no water in the toilets. The food was so bad we could not consume it.

All workers everywhere do have rights, including homeworkers, domestic workers and migrant workers, as well as workers in factories, offices and plantations. These rights are laid down in international agreements and in the national laws of many countries.

All governments that are members of the United Nations have agreed that:

- All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.
- Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
- No-one shall be held in slavery or servitude.
- No-one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Workers' rights are human rights and it is the fundamental right of everyone:

- To have just and favourable conditions of work.
- To get equal pay for equal work, and suffer no discrimination.
- To get just and favourable pay, giving the worker and his/her family "an existence worthy of human dignity".
- To form and to join trade unions to protect their interests.
- To have rest and leisure, reasonable working hours and paid holidays.

(United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Articles 1, 3, 4, 5, 7, 23 and 24)