According to reports, India recorded around 4,200 COVID-19 deaths last Saturday, with more than 400,000 new infections. Experts even state that figures are not precise and that the real situation is even more serious.
New Delhi is struggling to contain the outbreak and there are shortages of hospital beds, PPE, medicines and oxygen with people getting desperate to save their dear ones. Infections are also spreading to nearby countries - Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka.
It is even more tragic to think about all this happening while vaccine campaigns in richer countries are giving us good results and helping us lowering infection rates and going back to normal.
Yet, while we are slowly going back to normality, Coronavirus is deepening the divide between richer and poorer countries. Inequality and disparity are showing, but what can we do as consumers? Well, we can play our part and contribute to the change.
Both fast fashion retailers and luxury houses manufacture many of their designs in India, with major fashion houses commissioning embroidered pieces to Indian artisans, for their high skills and lower production costs. Yet, last year in full COVID-19 pandemic and with non-essential shops closed, many brands and fashion houses cancelled their orders or refused to pay for them.
Millions of factory workers and artisans in India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, were left without jobs. In a report issued last November, the Worker Rights Consortium highlighted how most garment workers' incomes had fallen amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Many
workers had permanently lost their jobs, often without receiving legally mandated severance pay; 38 percent of workers in the survey reported that no longer had jobs, while others registered a decrease in wages. As you may easily and tragically guess, the consequences of these issues are hunger and insecurity.
A more recent report from April 2021 analysed the situation of garment workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia and India among the other countries and found that many workers are being denied legally mandated severance benefits, in violation of the law and the labor rights obligations of the brands and retailers whose clothes they sewed.
In March last year Remake launched the #PayUp initiative, a petition asking to hold brands accountable and build a fair future for garment workers in 7 actions.
The latter include honoring contracts with factories and pay up for all orders completed and in production without extending payment terms (unless low-cost financing can be offered); protecting garment workers' basic human rights (this also means to support them during civil disobedience demonstrations like the ones organised in Myanmar, or make sure garment companies do not work with factories in China using Uyghur forced labour) and labor rights at all times; ending exploitation and starvation wages and supporting a Severance Guarantee Fund.
Besides, #PayUp also asks fashion houses to go transparent disclosing their supplier list and wages (it should be highlighted that some fashion houses may not even know who are the artisans who actually make their designs as supply chains include a contractor and subcontractor and the anonymous artisans at the very end of the line do not speak with the prominent fashion houses they are working for and have no voice), focusing on worker representation and on enforceable, legally-binding contracts that put workers first.
#PayHer: Worker Testimonials from Remake on Vimeo.
Contracts are actually a key issue: cancellations due to Coronavirus have been possible because most factories and brands are covered by non-binding Codes of Conduct that often do not protect workers, but favour brands and retailers. If there were proper agreements, retailers and brands could instead be held accountable. #PayUp fashion also highlights that it is standard industry practice to not pay factories for 60, 90 to 120 days after order shipment, with factories bearing the raw material and labor costs. Afraid they may lose further orders, suppliers did not seek legal recourse when brands evoked force majeure contract clauses and cancelled orders because of Coronavirus.
Yet it is impossible to sustain this situation further: payment terms should definitely include a percentage paid to suppliers upon signing to purchase raw materials while the remainder should be paid no later than 30 days after shipment.
Many garment factories were able to remain open last year in Europe and the United States as well during the beginning of the pandemic and produce face masks and PPE. Some textile companies have been doing the same in India but that is not enough to keep them going and protect the health and safety of their workers as well.
It is obvious that, considering the current situation in India, production will be delayed evem more, more brands will cancel their orders and, by the time things go back to normal, many workers will probably be blackmailed by companies to work at even lower wages.
One solution to help this situation and a void a wider humanitarian crisis is to support initiatives that push fashion houses and brands to pay for at least part of their orders, and pay for samples and shipping as well. Another way you can actively help is picking a project and financially support it: Minneapolis-based designer Maria Stanley for example produces her collections in a family-run factory in New Delhi and has set up a GoFundMe page.
The money collected has so far been sent directly to the owner of the factory as an emergency fund to distribute to his team as he sees fit. Funds sent so far can be used to pay off hospital bills, pay time off to stay safely home from work, assist a family member in need, food, safety and sanitation supplies, rent, and so on.
When we started suffering from the isolation caused by the long months of lockdown or we saw coffins being transported in Italy from one city to another to be buried, we vowed to radically change our lives at the end of the pandemic. A year on and the change is not coming: most of us are just thinking about when we will be getting our vaccines or are just happy they already got theirs so they can feel a bit safer as they socialise maybe in a pub, while most countries are reluctant to waive patents on COVID-19 vaccines.
At the weekend during the "Vax Live: The Concert to Reunite the World" concert Pope Francis spoke about the "virus of individualism" making us "indifferent to the suffering of others" and about new virus variants.
"A variant of this virus is closed nationalism, which prevents, for example, an internationalism of vaccines," he stated. "Another variant is when we put the laws of the market or intellectual property above the laws of love and the health of humanity. Another variant is when we create and foster a sick economy, which allows a very rich few - a very rich few - to own more than the rest of humanity."
Another variant will be generated if we keep on thinking that the fashion industry can restart without going through a radical change first and without putting human rights and living wages of vulnerable garment workers up front. Fashion houses, brands and apparel companies will have to play their role in all this, but we can all have our part and turn from consumers into promoters of fair and sustainable economic models.
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