Notwithstanding the coronavirus pandemic, leading fashion brands have made huge profits even as workers in the supply chain have had to undergo pay cut for the work already completed on account of non-payment and order cancellations.
This was underlined by a global report, published recently.
‘Wage theft and pandemic profits: the right to a living wage for garment workers’, published recently by the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre (BHRRC), underlined that 16 leading fashion brands including names like Levi, H&M and Nike have recorded profit of at least US$ 10 billion during the second half of 2020, which is in stark contrast to the destitution faced by the garment workers, even as it went on to add most of the major fashion brands were once again turning to profits and, in some cases unprecedented profits, having already recovered from the initial pandemic-induced disruption, while also demonstrating the so-called business model of the fashion brands and the structure of global garment supply chains that have created and sustained the poverty wages for the apparel workers.
A per the report — BHRRC investigated eight factories supplying 16 major fashion brands and found that around 10,000 workers were fighting for the legally owed benefits and wages — at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the fashion brands had cancelled their orders with supplier factories and demanded discounts of up to 90 per cent on clothes already made, to protect their bottom line and went on to add that this had a direct impact on the suppliers’ ability to pay their workers (even for work already completed), while adding that a year on, and the destitution faced by workers who have lost their jobs has worsened consequent to not being paid what they are owed.
