It has recently been brought up in social media that H&M and Zara are some of the fashion companies that allow child labour in the manufacture of their products. We should be inclined investigate for ourselves and challenge the issues that unfortunately exist within the fashion industry. However, one thing that surprised me when looking at comments from various accounts, was how quick people were to say that they would refuse to buy clothing from said shop without checking the facts and the lack of acknowledgement that this an issue which involves several other companies.
So what are the actual facts? What do we currently know about child labour? Which shops is it safe to buy our attire from?
It is indeed very difficult to know whether your clothes were the product of child labour or not. This is because the line of work of the fashion industry is very extensive, from growing cotton to sowing the pieces of garment together. It is challenging even for companies to know whether there were children involved in this process. Many suppliers effectively hide (for obvious reasons) that they exploit children and with many of the suppliers being very distanced from Europe or the USA, where the headquarters of these companies are, they are often ignorant of the unethical nature of their own products. But the truth to the matter is that the ILO (International Labour Organisation) estimates that 170 million children are engaged in child labour across the world, 6 million of which are doing it forcibly. A large portion of these are involved in the fashion industry because it requires low-skilled workers.
The reasons as to why this happens on such a large scale are revealed in a report made by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations and the India Committee of the Netherlands. It accounts that employers are able to lure children into working with them by approaching poor families (for example in rural India) and promising appealing job offers including good pay, free meals, accommodation and training/schooling. But the reality that these children face is one with poor working conditions, low pay and none of the promised benefits. This is not only damaging for the kids involved but for the economy of the targeted areas. These children come from poor families whose parents didn’t have access to education, leading to low-paid jobs, which is why their children need to work, depriving them of education too. Consequently a never-ending cycle is created and poverty remains high. Simultaneously some families depend on these jobs, even if it means making their children work in unsuitable conditions.
But there is hope. ILO estimates that child labour has declined by 30% between 2000 and 2012. And the power is also in our hands to contribute for the figures to keep going down. Companies are encouraged to check who their manufacturers are and visit factories to do thorough investigations. Consumers can start by looking at the Fair Wear Foundation’s list of over 120 brands which have signed up to its code of labour practices (which does not allow child labour).
Nevertheless there is still one problem: a quick browse through the referred shops’ websites allowed me to verify that most of these are very expensive and not affordable to many people. This is partially due to the very fact that they do not allow for child labour, meaning they pay their employees higher wages and therefore their prices are higher (in comparison to those that allow child labour). Of course there are other factors involved but this is definitely a very relevant one.
So we can say that for those who can afford Fair Wear brands, it is their moral duty to purchase clothing from them. But what about those who cannot afford such products? Are they doomed to buy unethically manufactured clothing? Some companies might even not be members of the Fair Wear Foundation but not engage in child labour, there doesn’t seem to be a way for us to know. There is also a question of where the responsibility lies: the governments of countries which still allow child labour, the companies or the consumer? It is a very complex issue which does not have an easy solution, but surely the more awareness we raise the closer we are to improvement.
For further research:
Jaime is a Portuguese film which explores the issue of child labour and the cycle it creates within families.
The Fair Wear Foundation’s list: https://www.fairwear.org/brands/
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