who pays for cheap clothes?

who pays for cheap clothes? five questions the low-cost retailers must answer

Something new is sweeping through the high street. Whereas five years ago, style-conscious teenagers would never be seen, like, dead in a bargain clothes shop, today the Saturday afternoon high street is awash with Primark bags and their proud owners boasting the bargains they have found.          

The four companies this report focusses on, Asda, Tesco, Primark and Matalan, are to fashion what McDonalds and Burger King are to food: mass produced, hassle-free, fast, popular, and reliant on exploitation down the supply chain to keep things that way.  It asks what impact this trend is having on workers' rights, and challenges these retailers to ensure that workers are not paying for our cheap clothes with their human rights.

depressing but enlightening reading. discovered while searching for ethical sportswear - that's actual technical sports clothing for running and working out, not leisure/casual wear. funny how companies like nike triggered the whole ethical clothing movement with their working practices, and yet years later they still have the actual sports clothing market sewn up.

earlier today i was in the adidas store and niketown in oxford street. such beautiful stores, stylish clothes, images and sounds of empowerment and achievement. and hidden inside each garment, a little label saying 'made in vietnam' 'made in cambodia'. temples of forgetfulness, of consumer denial, trying to drown out the real story of each garment with recorded cheering. it's as good as a work of art.

Comments

[DAS]

know nothing of vietnam, but garment factories in cambodia are not *that* bad. there are unions, albeit relatively weak ones. wages are modest, but the unions are working on it. in the context of a country with little or no job ops, a garment factory job is okay. it's not perfect, mind you, but nothing is.

[steve collins]

glad to hear it. where do you get your info? i'm always aware of the dilemma of buying people's stuff so they can make a living, versus colluding in their exploitation. especially as the difference can be between one factory and the next, and the 'good' factory can be hoodwinking the inspectors. what i'm reading suggests that the best is when the brand/retailer has a transparent and committed relationship with its manufacturing base.

[cheryl]

The Oxfam 2006 sweat shop report doesn't paint such an optimistic picture. http://www.oxfam.org.au/campaigns/labour/06report/docs/5904oxflrrsummaryDR41.pdf