How To Hold The Garment Industry To Account? You Vote With Your Wallet. Its Simple Maths – British Vogue

Shocking claims about the work and pay conditions of the garment workers in factories in Leicester have been headline news this past fortnight. The National Crime Agency said it was investigating modern slavery and human trafficking at a number of business premises in the city after an undercover reporter for the Sunday Times claimed that he had been employed by a Leicester garment factory making clothes for Boohoo, and told he would be paid between 3.50 and 4 an hour. (The national minimum wage for people over the age of 25 is 8.72 per hour.)

In a statement, Boohoo responded: We are grateful to the Sunday Times for highlighting the conditions at Jaswal Fashions, which, if they are as described by the undercover reporter, are totally unacceptable and fall woefully short of any standards acceptable in any workplace. Our investigations have shown that Jaswal Fashions is not a declared supplier, and is no longer trading as a garment manufacturer. It therefore appears that a different company is using Jaswals former premises and we are currently trying to establish the identity of this company. We are taking immediate action to thoroughly investigate how our garments were in their hands, and we will ensure that our suppliers immediately cease working with this company.

Subsequent reports by the Guardian have linked the factory in question to a business with links to Jalal Kamani, a Boohoo shareholder and the brother of Boohoos executive chairman, Mahmud Kamani. Boohoo has confirmed that the factory in the centre of the allegations is run by Morefray Ltd, but said that Mahmud Kamani had no involvement in the business. Investors have continued to sell off shares in the company.

What a difference a quarter makes. Ahead of the Covid-19 outbreak, Boohoo was an extremely agile, successful business. Sales for the year to February 2020 rose by 44 per cent to 1.2 billion and pre-tax profit grew 54 per cent to 92.2 million. As well as its own online platform, currently selling Disco Slinky Twist Front mini dresses for 7 (down from 12), and long-sleeved Bardot crop tops for 4 (at 50 per cent off), Boohoo owns Boohooman, Pretty Little Thing, Nasty Gal, Coast, Karen Millen, and recently added Oasis and Warehouse to its stable.

This is a business that believes in paying above and beyond where its top executives are concerned. In 2019, Primarks former chief operating officer John Lyttle joined the company as CEO on a salary of 615,000 and with an annual bonus of up to 150 per cent of his annual salary, as well as company shares. Co-founders Mahmud Kamani and Carole Kane were both paid more than 1.3 million each for the last financial year. In June, a third of Boohoos investors voted against a proposed bonus of 50 million for Lyttle if the company reaches its target of a valuation of 6 billion by March 2024. The fact that the company had 2 billion wiped off its market worth last week, plus a massive press and social media backlash, means Lyttle has his work cut out for him.

Boohoo, meanwhile, announced an independent investigation into its supply chain, an attempt to regain the trust of its investors, not to mention its customers the majority of whom are aged 16 to 24, and make up a generation that is increasingly political and outspoken. One such customer is Vas J Morgan, who had been paid to promote Boohoo via his social media following of 466k on Instagram, but withdrew his services. He captioned an Instagram post: Although 80 per cent of people working in these factories are women of colour; this is not about race, this is about human rights This is not an attack on Boohoo this is a wake up call for ALL fashion companies... His followers responded with comments suggesting that they were emptying their shopping baskets.

At the same time, 21-year-old Isabel Hambly, graduating from her fashion degree at Nottingham Trent University, just down the road from Leicester, posted on her Instagram feed a short essay she had written earlier in the year about the seductive value of a 3 dress. The allure of that killer dress would soon falter if the conditions in which it was made were revealed, she wrote. I told my flat mates about my research into slavery in factories at the time, she said when I called her this week. They didnt seem that bothered about it. Now, people who never thought about it before are messaging me. There will be outrage for a few weeks we need to keep up the clamour for change.

Hamblys own research showed her that while the allegations centring in Leicester have been spot lit against a backdrop of the local spike in coronavirus, illegal labour conditions have been well documented since 2014, when the University of Leicesters Centre for Sustainable Work and Employment Futures published a report on working conditions in UK garment manufacturing. This report, which was not specifically investigating Boohoo, but was focussing on manufacturing across Leicester and East Midlands, identified a new business model that was based on small margins and relatively small orders, caveated with fast turnaround times. It detailed that there was widespread under- or even non-payment of wages, which were well below the minimum wage. A conservative estimate on the above evidence would put the underpaid wage sum in apparel manufacturing within the East Midlands at 1 million per week, the report stated.

Several years later, in March 2017, the Labour MP Harriet Harman went on a fact-finding mission to the city and found that between a third and three-quarters of people were working in situations where they did not have contracts of employment or received below the minimum wage. She called it an epidemic of factory workers being badly treated. In August of that year, Asos and New Look bosses described the dark underbelly of Leicesters factories as a ticking timebomb. This was widely reported, including here at Vogue.

Separately, according to a subsequent report by Labour Behind the Label, released in June, most of the garment workers in Leicester are from ethnic minority groups, largely from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh but also Somalia and increasingly Eastern Europe. The report observed: These workers are vulnerable to abuse as a result of their immigration status, language skills, integration in the community (and support mechanisms such as union membership etc) as well as higher unemployment rates.

Last week, Priti Patel described the allegations of exploitation of people in sweatshops for commercial gain as truly appalling. Either Patel has not been paying attention for the past six years, or these illegal practices on their own have not caused enough of a public outcry to warrant serious action until now.

Because ultimately its about inequality an inequality and an imbalance of power that underpins the industry, one that is built on exploiting peoples aspirations in the most cynical of ways. When the millionaire CEO and founder of Pretty Little Thing, 32-year-old Umar Kumani, who is the son of Boohoos founder Mahmud Kamani, paid Kylie Jenner a six figure sum in July 2016 to wear a 15 orange dress to host a pool party for the brand in an LA mansion, complete with pink cocktails and flamingo floats, it resulted in a 10-fold increase in sales. While there is an argument that cheap fashion provides access to people on low incomes to dress like their favourite influencer, the issue is whether a dress can be sold for 15 without having to exploit another human being. The price tag it is feared is only possible because someone, somewhere, is vulnerable enough to need to work for next to nothing, in unsafe conditions that put them and their families at risk.

The Boohoo allegations have shone a light on the inequalities that lie at the heart of the industry, said Orsola de Castro, co-founder of Fashion Revolution, the campaign for a more transparent fashion industry. What is particularly shocking about these allegations is how our own communities are affected. This is happening right under our noses.

So, how can brands change the systems that allow exploitation to happen within the fashion supply chain? Frankie Phillips set up her business To Be Frank in 2019 to prove that a brand can operate in a way that respects both environment and people and still maintain affordable prices. Nothing is worth the mistreatment of another person, no matter what it is, but especially if its a pair of polyester leggings, she told me, earlier this week. Phillips lived in Asia for three years as a supply chain manager for a high-street brand before setting up on her own. To Be Frank pays its workers in Turkey a living wage of $9 per hour (in a country where minimum wage is $4). You have to make sure you are working with a factory operating with full transparency, she says. They are open about sharing pay cheques. If a supplier wont share this information, she says, then you know something is wrong.

The price for a kilo of cotton is set at market rates. But labour costs are not. The reality is: there is always someone whose situation is desperate enough to take a pay cut. The thought of not earning enough to feed your family is not acceptable. How can a brand sell clothing for that cheap and pay themselves such huge bonuses? asks Phillips.

Subcontracting is part of the problem: it provides cheap labour that can be hidden away. The pricing structure is built on what the brand wants a garment to cost on the website, not on what the garment actually costs in terms of materials and labour.

What worries Phillips is the fact that the unregulated factories that are called out subsequently see their contracts cut which means those workers are now out of work, without a safety net. When your income is already on a knife edge, there is no cushion to prevent you from starvation and homelessness. But this is what thousands of garment workers in garment-producing countries including India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Vietnam are facing. For while shops in the UK are starting to open up, and we are being encouraged to spend, garment workers around the globe are still not being paid, as factories are still reeling from the sudden pause in orders. Many big-name brands and retailers have still not paid up for orders that were produced pre or during lockdown and then not shipped.

De Castro is hopeful that a new generation will not stand for brands exploiting fellow humans. Climate emergency, Black Lives Matters and anti-racism are encouraging the next generations to be more political, more informed, and this is the kind of cultural shift we need to see permanent changes, she says.

Each of us has the power to demand that governments hold illegal practice to account, as well as to make careful choices when we shop. You can see brands that are behaving unethically and not fulfilling their contracts to pay for orders, and sign the petition to protect workers in supply chains, at Labour Behind the Label. You can donate to a range of organisations who are organising aid to workers including the Awaj Foundation founded and led by garment workers in Bangladesh. The Worker Rights Consortium has a tracker that shows which brands have paid up and which havent. Theres also the Clean Clothes Campaigns Fashion Checker. But as Phillips says, most importantly: You vote with your wallet. Its simple maths.

For the latest news on the impact of Covid-19 in the fashion industry, a list of ways to get involved, how to email a brand, make your voice heard and support the garment workers, go to Fashionrevolution.org/covid19