In the July NikeWatch edition we asked you to support the Clean Clothes Campaign who are being sued by an Indian garment company, FFI/JKPL. This is because the Clean Clothes, the India Committee in the Netherlands (ICN) and other Indian labour rights and women’s organisations spoke out about labour rights violations in FFI/JKPL factories.

Recently this situation got worse as an Indian court issued arrest warrants against seven staff members of the Clean Clothes Campaign and the ICN.

This legal action severely undermines the ability for organisations to speak freely about conditions for workers in supply chains and their right to organise.
Andrew Hewett, Executive Director of Oxfam Australia wrote to FFI/JKPL in early October asking the company to drop the charges against these organisations. Please take a few minutes to send a message to the brands making in the factory and the factory owners.

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A new report by the Brotherhood of St Laurence has found conditions for Australian outworkers have deteriorated. Whilst in 2001 outworkers’ average rate of pay was $3.60 per hour in 2007 one group said they were paid $2.50 for a detailed shirt which took one hour to sew.

‘Ethical Threads’ explores the Australian garment industry’s knowledge of Corporate Social Responsibility issues and its supply chain practices in Australia and overseas. The report found that there was a lack of awareness of, and in some cases the lack of a feeling of responsibility for, the difficult working conditions faced by many garment workers in Australia and overseas.

Meaningful standards for international manufacture are also lacking. Importantly, almost all companies with CSR strategies had developed and implemented their codes of conduct without involvement from workers, suppliers, unions, or NGOs.

Australian companies in the report said that they don’t believe consumers care about the conditions under which garments are manufactured.

Read the report 

The apparel and footwear industry magazine just-style.com has written an analysis piece looking at “How buying practices impact workers’ rights” (October 4). We have paraphrased some of the article below and have permission to send you the full article if you are interested to read more.

The article finds ethical teams and buying teams often operate in isolation from each other within companies, which means that ethical codes of conduct are not being sufficiently integrated into companies core practices and often remain marginalised within businesses.
There is an important connection between how the buying teams are placing orders into factories and the endemic problems of labour rights abuses in global supply chains. This means that even if a company is talking the talk of ethical business, their practices might be having quite a different effect on workers.

Retailers and brands need to adopt a 'positive buying' approach, such as making adjustments  to allow the manufacturer greater time to make the product, or balancing out production schedules by phasing orders more evenly over time. 

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