Fashion Revolution Day 2015: the ugly truth behind the barcode

I feel bad. I have been neglecting this blog as I have been consumed with other aspects of my life: work, travels, spending quality time with loved ones. That said, I have never once given up on my mission to educate people I meet on this issue though I've also had to learn to hold back and be less aggressive in my approach.

A recently released report by Baptist World Aid Australia called "The Truth Behind the Barcode: Australian Fashion Report 2015" has prompted me to provide my perspective on the assessment especially considering that many of these brands are aggressively building their presence in Asia. 313 Somerset in Orchard Road, for example, easily houses half of the brands featured in the study. Fashion Revolution Day 2015 held on the anniversary of the Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh is another huge motivating factor. This report examines 59 apparel companies (219 brands) operating in Australia and assesses the efforts undertaken by these companies to protect workers in their supply chain from labour exploitation such as the use of child labour as well as highlight good practices within the industry. The assessment covers the entire supply chain from the management of raw materials, inputs to Cut-Make-Trim (CMT) manufacturing and covers four broad categories: policies, traceability & transparency, monitoring & training, and worker rights.

Based on the report, 22 out of the 59 apparel companies achieved A grades for policies which while very re-assuring, does not amount to much if they do not rigorously enforce these policies. Also, while slightly over half (52%) of companies are able to trace their suppliers at the CMT phase, the prevalence of  unauthorised subcontractors in this phase of production make it so much harder for clothing companies in particular global fast fashion chains with high volume and rapid turnover to closely monitor and track their supply chains. This fact is reinforced by the various case studies featured in the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report titled "Work Faster or Get Out:Labor Rights Abuses in Cambodia's Garment Industry'. The HRW report also highlights the issue of "coaching" whereby factory managers coached or threatened garment workers ahead of inspections to ensure only positive feedback are given to the inspectors. In fact, the report state that workers were " told to remove piles of clothes from their sewing machines and hide them....and underage child workers were hidden". So unless unannounced inspections are the norm, it is difficult to ascertain the effectiveness of these inspections in curbing human rights violations and instilling good labour practices.

Further down the supply chain, it only gets harder as evident by the Fashion Report which shows that only 25% of the apparel companies can fully trace their inputs and only a paltry 9% are able to trace their raw materials. A 2014 study carried out by SOMO and the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) entitled "Flawed Fabrics: The abuse of girls and women workers in the South Indian textile industry" examines labour exploitation experienced by girls and young women employed in the Tamil Nadu spinning industry in South India through a mix of desk research and on-the-ground interviews with 151 textile workers. The study found rampant human rights abuses including the use of forced labour and child labour, restricted freedom of movement, long working hours and the lack of labour contracts. As noted by the study, apparel companies monitoring and tracking efforts are generally limited to the CMT phase and do not focus on earlier production phases such as spinning, weaving and dyeing. The report subsequently recommends that clothing companies extend their supply chain responsibilities beyond end-product suppliers as supported by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Apart from the lack of traceability further down the supply chain, the amateur behavioural economist in me is interested in understanding the relationship between the pricing of apparels and the labour ethics of the brands. In order to do so, I have created a table to represent different categories of apparel price-point against the grades provided by the Fashion Report. It is important to note here that all the clothing companies which received F grades did not engage in the research process meaning that they could well be doing a lot more than what is publicly available to the study researchers.

 Apparel companies  price-point categories assessed against their labour rights management grades

Based on the table above, there appears to be very little correlation between apparel price-points and apparel companies' labour rights management. I say that with a grain of salt given the lack of scientific approach or rigorous methodology in my assessment. In fact, I was surprised that fast-fashion companies like the Cotton On Group and H&M performed considerably better than companies that retail mid to upper-mid range apparels like David Jones, Myer and the Oroton Group. But then again, numerous studies out there including one carried out last year by the Clean Clothes Campaign have proven that designer labels do not guarantee ethical supply chain. Neither do purchasing products made in established designer markets such as Italy as this fire outbreak in an illegal factory in Prato has underscored.

So where does that leave us fashion-loving consumers? I guess at the end of the day, it's important that we all strive to make conscientious choices when we go for retail therapy. The first step to this would be to make an effort to learn about the story behind the barcode. So...who made your clothes?