Brands don’t directly hire factory workers. So why do we target brands when they weren’t directly involved in a violation? 

Global brands strategically outsource their manufacturing to other companies to cut costs and evade responsibility in terms of working conditions or pollution. Cheap labour costs allow brands to maximise profits, fattening the pockets of shareholders and millionaire CEOs. 

But make no mistake — brands are huge players that control the market, often through abusive practices. They’re the ones pressuring factory bosses to reduce costs (and wages): pitting factories and even countries against each other. They’re responsible for a deep-rooted power imbalance, such that many contracts are ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ agreements, forcing factories to accept the deal or risk losing the order. One study found 90% of high street brands were guilty of unfair purchasing practices. 

As the biggest profit-maker and power-holder, brands have a responsibility to ensure that the workers in their supply chain are treated right.

But are brands responsible if they aren’t breaking any laws? More and more laws, on the national and regional level, hold brands responsible for harm they cause, even indirectly. This includes the EU’s new due diligence directive, which requires big corporations to prevent and address human rights abuses and environmental harm in their supply chains. But what’s right isn’t always enshrined in law. We consistently campaign to strengthen these types of legislation; it’s a work in progress. 

At the Clean Clothes Campaign, we believe that brands can — and should — do better. Brands often justify violations by saying that supply chains are far too complex for them to monitor or that it would be too expensive. Yet these supply chains were created by the brands themselves, and their profit margins suggest ample resources to protect vulnerable workers. 

Brands are very secretive about what percentage of their prices go to the person who made the clothes, so there is very little we can say for sure. However, for most items, wages will scarcely exceed 3% of the price you pay. This percentage is much lower for a luxury item since workers producing high end garments earn similar wages than workers producing for high street brands.

For an example of what a price build-up of a fast fashion brand could look like, look at this calculation for a Zara hoodie.

Because this percentage is so low, paying workers a living wage would be easy for brands. 

Garment-producing countries do have lower costs of living, but that does not mean their wages are sufficient. 

• Less than 2% of garment workers earn a living wage.

• Not a single fashion brand can claim all its workers are paid a living wage. 

• In Bangladesh, 91% of garment workers can’t afford enough food (Oxfam, 2019). 

• Garment workers earn on average 45% less than a living wage (Industry Wage Gap Metric, 2022).

That’s why we campaign for living wages, providing workers (and their families) the means to afford basic needs so they can live with dignity, reflecting the local cost of living to cover the cost of:

• clean water and nutritious food

• housing 

• clothing

• education

• healthcare 

• transport

• unexpected expenses

• savings.

The Asia Floor Wage uses an imaginary currency called Purchasing Power Parity $ (PPP$) to calculate living wages by region. Visit their site for more.

When this happens, it’s the brand’s cue to take responsibility and make sure the situation in the factory changes. Sometimes, brands will remove their business in case of scandals: they cut and run. Workers then lose their jobs, while conditions won’t improve. That does not solve the problem.

If violations of human rights and labour standards occur, brands must commit to improve working conditions with their supplier. They should ensure that the supplier has the means to make the changes needed. This includes having a close look at the brand’s own purchasing practices: how much are they paying for the products made and what is their relationship with the supplier? The brand and supplier should also ensure unions in the factory are involved in the process to make improvements. 

With brands increasingly sourcing their garments from around the world, public pressure to prevent human rights and environmental abuses in supply chains has mounted. In response to this, the majority of brands and retailers now rely on “social audits”: inspections of factories by external firms. This has led to the emergence of a multi-billion dollar industry of commercial “social auditing” firms, with significant lobbying power. 

Research by the Clean Clothes Campaign has shown that the audit industry has failed spectacularly in its stated mission of protecting workers and improving working conditions. 

Too often audits are tick-box exercises that exclude workers, reveal superficial interest from retailers and brands, and turn a blind eye to red flags. They’re also notoriously secretive: the results aren’t usually shared publicly or with affected workers. And with no governing body to ensure that the findings of audits are meaningfully acted on, there’s zero accountability. 

In essence, they allow brands to clean up their public image, whilst making little or no changes to actual working conditions. 

Whilst audits need a radical overhaul, more is needed to ensure worker protection. For meaningful change, governments and brands must place the experiences of garment workers at the centre of solutions to identify and mitigate harm. Such solutions should include binding agreements, with real consequences, like the safety accord that followed the Rana Plaza disaster, as well as building fair and long-term relationships with suppliers factories so that responsibility for improving working conditions is shared by the brand.

A code of conduct defines the standards to which brands hold their suppliers accountable. Brands started adopting these in response to our campaigning in the late 1990s together with other labour rights organisations. Nowadays, nearly all brands have a code of conduct.

Codes of conduct vary in content and levels of commitment. They are usually a standard a brand sets itself and holds itself accountable to, or not. Brands should be as concrete as possible on implementation, monitoring and dispute resolution. Good intentions are worth little to workers if they see no impact on the ground. 

Unfortunately, we see too often that codes of conduct are just that: fine words on a website. Many international brands adopt living wage commitments while changing nothing, as they continue to rely on a supply chain that pays poverty wages or refuse to support national minimum wage increases publicly. 

This is why, while we supported the idea of a code of conduct as a way for workers to leverage brands’ promises, we now focus on binding agreements. When brands’ promises are laid down in a binding contract with unions, which can be upheld in court, workers can expect results.