Does Clean Clothes Campaign call for boycotts?

We avoid boycotts for two core reasons. 

Firstly, to protect workers: if a brand chooses to stop all production from a country or supplier, workers lose a vital source of income.

Secondly, boycotts fail to address the systemic issues that plague the fashion industry. This is why we campaign for long-term solutions for workers’ rights, encouraging brands and retailers to engage with workers, unions and suppliers to ensure factories guarantee worker safety and wellbeing. We urge brands to act responsibly in the course of their business, ensuring, for example, that order volumes are not suddenly changed, that payments to suppliers are not unreasonably delayed. Abusive practices like these have a detrimental impact on the safety and welfare of workers.

If brands do decide to withdraw their business from a factory, we recommend companies choose local alternatives.

There are rare exceptions to our boycott policy. In extreme cases we can ask brands to give suppliers an ultimatum: improve labour conditions or lose our business. As an example, in 2001, a lingerie brand, Triumph, faced a boycott for its factory conditions in Myanmar. Unions and people in Myanmar campaigned and rallied global support. Triumph withdrew its business from the country the following year.