Making clothes for profit kills workers and wrecks the eco-system

The capitalist model for producing clothes – from start to finish, field to shop – is a global blight. It puts at risk not only garment workers, but textile workers, cotton farmers, retail workers and the global eco-system itself.

In Bangladesh, where over 1,100 workers were victims of industrial murder in the Rana Plaza collapse, the government helped employers keep wages down and unions in check. A decision to raise the minimum wage in the wake of the disaster won’t make a lot of difference.

One factor in keeping wages down in both Bangladesh is climate change. Thousands of people have moved from coastal areas to Dhaka in search of work because family-based fishing and agriculture is being wiped out by coastal erosion and collapsing fish stocks.

In Cambodia, where three workers were killed in a shoe factory fire earlier today, more than half a million people work in clothing manufacture. Many are driven into the factories by a massive land clearance programme.

Nearly a million hectares of land have been leased or sold to private companies for the development of agro-industrial plantations, much of it palm oil for bio-fuels. The companies, either Chinese or owned by members or cronies of the government, are ruthlessly clearing forest and jungle and destroying the livelihoods of local people.

Cotton is one of the world's most environmentally damaging crops. One kilo of cotton fabric grown by industrialised methods contains as much as 10,000 litres of fresh water. Cotton uses approximately 25% of the world's insecticides and more than 10% of the pesticides (including herbicides, insecticides, and defoliants).

Most cotton is produced by smallholder farmers, but to compete in the world market they have been coerced into using industrialised seed and chemicals. Their working conditions are dangerous and the chemicals pollute their water supplies. They are in effect the ruthless exploiters of themselves and their families. Where there are larger producers, forced indentured labour and child labour, is common.

Exactly the same oppressive and inhuman working conditions prevail in cotton ginning and cotton cloth manufacture.

All these millions of workers – cotton growers, textile workers and garment workers – are feeding a profit-driven market frenzy. UK consumers buy 2.15 million tonnes of new clothing and shoes each year and send over 1.4 million tonnes to landfill. There the cotton and wool rot down eventually, but the synthetic fibres remain for many decades, leaching chemicals in the land and water courses.

People are conned into joining this marketing trick. Nothing is made to last, the clothes are inappropriate for our climate and massive spending on branding and advertising are needed to draw us a belief that we must constantly replenish our wardrobes.

This is all coming to an end however, with a collapse in sales of clothes and shoes across Europe. Many retailers are facing bankruptcy and their low-paid, part time staff thrown on to the unemployment lines. As this feeds back down the production chain, millions of production workers will suffer.

There is an alternative. The Better Cotton Initiative has shown that it is possible for growers to reduce their costs whilst still producing the same quantity of cotton, using conservation methods of agriculture instead of frequent applications of chemicals.

They are supporting farmers to group together to share expertise, and also to improve their communities and family lives. Making this the mainstream, however, will be achieved in the teeth of opposition from the agri-chemical giants and their government supporters.  

Set free from the global trade profit treadmill, co-operative approaches could transform all the other elements of the production chain. Textile mills working co-operatively rather than competing to be the cheapest, can produce the textiles we need for clothes, as well as all the medical and industrial cotton products we cannot do without.

Clothes made to last by garment workers, who control their own factories and can develop direct connections with those who buy the clothes they make, cutting out the fashion fraud, will have an incentive to produce products made to last rather than disposable junk.

Penny Cole

Environment editor

Corporate murder in Bangladesh

Cheers went up yesterday among the exhausted rescuers at Rana Plaza factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh. It had just been announced that six factory owners had been arrested.

So far 380 garment workers, mainly women, are known to have died in the rubble of that huge building, where 3,000 people were working at the time of its collapse.

The worst ever factory disaster in Bangladesh’s history has shocked people around the world, including those who wear clothes purchased at Primark, Benetton and Walmart, which used the factory. Matalan and Bonmarché are also appear to be connected with the New Wave Style company, the largest employer in the Dhaka building.

Many share the desire to make those who profit from employing cheap labour by making people work under such lethal conditions pay for their crimes. But – and there are several buts –  will punishing these men put an end to the crude and cruel exploitation of human labour that takes place day in and day out, not only in Bangladesh but throughout the world?

And how could this murder – and it is a kind of murder – happen so soon after the fire at the Tazreen factory last November, also in Dhaka, in which 112 people died?  Why was nothing done after that?

The factory owners at Rana Plaza insisted workers should return to work even after safety engineers warned that huge cracks in the building’s walls were evident. They were told they would be docked three days pay for every day they were absent.

In the wake of these events, many shoppers feel complicit in the suffering of those in the Bangladeshi rag trade. Are we wearing “blood clothes”, they ask?  Calls for consumers to boycott companies like Primark are widespread. Ethical buying is said to be the solution.

Like so many others, London Evening Standard fashion editor Karen Dacre calls for “consumer power” to force changes in the clothing industry. That sounds good. But how can you tell how a company treats its workers? And who is responsible for auditing conditions?

Responsibility Outsourced, a report by major US trade unions, is deeply critical of the companies and organisations that are supposed to monitor how workers are treated. The Ali Enterprises factory in Pakistan in which 260 workers died in a fire last year, had just earned its certification from the non-profit social auditing group, Social Accountability International.

In the report, which is dedicated to murdered garment workers leader Aminul Islam, the unions are deeply critical of social audit firms, including the Fair Labour Organisation which monitors the Foxconn plant that supplies Apple. FLA gets money from corporates such as Apple and Nestlé.  

Trade union and labour activists know that factories are not going to police themselves and are rightly calling for binding agreements. But even after a binding agreement was developed by labour organisations, Wal-Mart and Sears not only refused to sign but refused to pay compensation to the Tazreen victims.

But, while the report avoids saying so, it is the capitalist system itself which is the real murderer. As it notes: “While this globalised business model continues to provide vast profits for companies, it comes at a tremendous cost to working people and to the economies of many of the poorest nations.”

Human labour is simply another commodity to be bought and sold, at the cheapest price going. That’s why manufacturers moved into Bangladesh in the first place. The Rana Plaza was just one of the 5,500 factories Bangladeshi rag trade factories where the average monthly wage of the three million workers is around £25 per month. Clothing production accounts for 82% of Bangladesh’s GDP, a huge rise since 1985.

Companies must seek out the cheapest labour possible to out-do their competitors. No amount of consumer boycotting or regulation will abolish that underlying imperative. As one Bangladeshi union organiser told the BBC: "You buy one get one free - but it's not really free."

The global corporations will always find willing accomplices, whether it is in Bangladesh, China, Brazil or in Britain in their search for profits. Moving on from an economic system driven by greed and profit is the biggest priority of all.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary