We all take stock at the end of the year and look back at things that have happened to us or in the world. The fashion industry usually looks back remembering the designers who left us, celebrating a trend that was really popular or reminding us which were the most famous celebrities in their most amazing looks. But the end of the year should also be a time to ponder about the state of the industry on a global level.
In November this year the Carabinieri police force arrested a Melito-based (in the Naples area) entrepreneur who hid 43 illegal workers (all of them Italian) in a room with no windows nor toilets (the room was blocked with a reinforced door) for 6 hours. Among them there were a pregnant woman and two minors.
The Carabinieri were actually carrying out an inspection about a canteen, but, getting worried about his illegal workers, the entrepreneur hid them away. The workers made leather accessories for fashion companies, but, what may surprise some is the fact that they didn't produce fake items, but luxury items for designer brands (according to the reports for brands such as Fendi and Yves Saint Laurent).
Accused of exploiting workers and kidnapping them, the entrepreneur tried to explain the situation, saying that the workers weren't segregated in the workshop and added that the Neapolitan manufacturing businesses are the "new China", to highlight the fact that a garment worker in Naples is paid as much as a garment worker in a China (in this case 20 Euros for 9 hours).
No fashion company commented after the piece of news spread, and most of the names of the fashion labels the company worked for weren't revealed. This is not a new story, though, as the Italian fashion industry has always relied on seamstresses anonymously working from home for famous fashion brands and on illegal workers manufacturing garments and accessories in factories subcontracted by companies working for major fashion brands.
These workers do not have any guaranteed minimum wage, they don't have any paid holidays or safe working space. For the owners and managers of these plants legally registering them means having to pay extra taxes, investing in health and safety measures and therefore earning less. So, in the name of profit, the situation has remained the same for decades, without any major changes.
Yet, in a way, the Italian workers discovered by the Carabinieri were lucky as they were found before any accident happened to them.
Workers making handbags in a New Delhi-based factory in India weren't so lucky. In December a fire killed over forty people in a six-storey factory where labourers were sleeping.
The factory made handbags and other items and the raw materials stored in building tragically helped the fire to spread. According to reports, the building had no fire certification or emergency escape route, windows were blocked, flammable objects covered staircases and one of the building's exits was locked when the fire broke out.
There seems to be no ending to such news, but some companies aren't doing much to change things: in October this year The Wall Street Journal published an investigation that discovered that Amazon (but also other companies including Walmart and Target) sells clothes (albeit not in Amazon's case from its own brand, but from factories selling directly on Amazon and from third-party sellers) made in Bangladesh factories that leading fashion companies blacklisted after the Rana Plaza disaster in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
As you may remember, 1,134 garment workers were killed and hundreds of survivors were injured in 2013 when Rana Plaza, an eight-storey commercial building that housed garment units on its upper levels collapsed.
Five months before that accident a fire in the Tazreen Fashions factory in Bangladesh killed over 100 workers. The fire was probably caused in that case by a short circuit on the ground floor of the building, but rapidly spread trapping the workers as the emergency exits were absent and the windows on the lower floor were barred.
In a way the Rana Plaza factory collapse brought some changes with factories improving the safety conditions, investing in fire doors and sprinklers.
Two agreements between clothing retailers and manufacturers were also established to improve factory conditions in Bangladesh: Accord (a legally binding agreement between brands and trade unions involving mainly European companies) and Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety (destined to American businesses including Walmart, Gap and Target).
Signed by more than 200 retailers including H&M and Inditex, the 2013 Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety focused on workers' safety and led to some improvements.
Inspections were carried out and factories deemed unsafe were closed or blacklisted, so that brands could stop placing orders with them. Yet there have been companies (such as Amazon, as stated above) that kept on using blacklisted factories (some of them may not have fire alarms or may present weak structural columns; in other cases managers can still lock employees in, one of the causes of death in case of fire or other emergencies).
It is undeniable that there have been some interesting developments and improvements in the fashion industry, especially for what regards fast-fashion: H&M (sourcing garments from almost 300 factories located in Bangladesh) opted for transparency and, from 2019, consumers can read on its website information about its garments and their manufacturers.
Choose any garments, click on the Product Sustainability link, and you will see the name of the factory where that garment was produced, its address (you will discover how some products are made in Gazipur, Bangladesh, others in Shanghai and Dongyang in China, but the more products you check the more countries you will discover...) and the numbers of workers employed there (or you can get the same information in shop by scanning the clothes tag with the H&M app).
This is already a big step for a fast-fashion company, but there will be other issues to take care in future, from the mental and physical health of workers to work rhythms, from harassment to low wages.
What we learnt from fashion in the last decade and in 2019 in particular? That there is a possibility that things may change if we keep on raising awareness, educating consumers, putting pressures on companies (not just fast-fashion, but also luxury companies) to make sure that people come before profit.
In the last few years fashion has learnt new words - such as sustainability, health and safety regulations and workers' rights - but it is still struggling to speak fluently this language. Let's hope this will change in the next few years and that the industry will not just be about fast trends and endless collections, but about building a better and more human industry.
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