What we do

The global garment and sportswear industry was founded on exploitation. These are the key issues and how we work to tackle them.

Bad contracts, no job security

Subcontracting work is the norm in the industry, often several layers deep. That means workers don't get a regular contract, but a series of short-term contracts or not even that. Forced overtime is common. Home workers and other vulnerable groups are even more at risk, as are workers in special "Free Trade Zones" or the informal sector.

Covid Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic is touching lives all over the planet, but is hitting garment workers in particular. They risk their health working in crowded factories without sufficient protection and risk their livelihood if they are sent home without pay. Brands and retailers need to act to protect the workers who have enabled their profits in the past.

Exploitation of migrants

Hundreds of thousands of migrants are employed throughout the garment and textile supply chains around the world. They are subjected to many of the same abuses that local workers encounter. However, these abuses are compounded by the specific contexts in which migrant workers work.

Gender Discrimination

Eighty percent of the estimated 40-60 million garment workers are female, and this is not a coincidence. In an industry notorious for less-than-decent working conditions, low wages, forced overtime and unsafe conditions, women are often deprived of maternity leave, child care and safe travel to work. These structural violations are made worse by gender based violence.

Climate change

Garment production is a major contributor to climate change and garment workers are being severely affected. Brands must urgently address the need for industry wide solutions to social and environmental crises concurrently. You can’t have one without the other.

Poverty wages

Tens of millions of people work in the global garment and sportswear industry. Most of them work extremely long hours for very little pay. Sweatshop wages can be found from Asia to Eastern Europe to Latin America, with major brands admitting that literally zero of their workers earn a living wage.

Unclear supply chains

The garment and footwear industry stretches around the world. Clothes and shoes sold in stores in the US, Canada, Europe, and other parts of the world typically travel across the globe. A T-shirt label might say “Made in China,” but in which of the country’s thousands of factories was this garment made? And under what conditions for workers?

Union busting

Most production takes place in countries with the lowest wages, but also with the worst record on union freedom. Major garment producing countries, such as China, Bangladesh, Indonesia, The Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam belong to the worst countries for workers to organise in.

Unsafe workplaces

Fashion's search for the lowest costs comes at a high price: the health and sometimes even lives of workers. Thousands have died in factory fires and collapses. And other dangers lurk, like the use of hazardous chemicals or sandblasting. Then there's the noise, heat and bad ventilation.

Waste and pollution

The garment industry is one of the largest carbon polluters on planet Earth, and one of the greatest producers of waste. Three out of five of the 100 billion garments made in 2018 will end up in landfill within a year. Toxic chemicals land in the environment and worker communities, and the production of cotton uses up vast amounts of water.

Weak, voluntary efforts by brands

Fashion brands have lots of nice policies listed on their websites. The problem is, most of these are non-binding and voluntary. Factory inspections are often announced before-hand, and are done by auditing firms who are paid by the brands, without any involvement of workers.

Worker rights violations

Factory workers who manage to organise often face repression, or are fired. Fashion brands sometimes try to deny their responsability by hiding behind the fact they are outsourcing their production. However, international standards make clear that brands must make sure that all labour rights need to be respected and full remedy needs to be given when violations occur.

Bad contracts

Climate Change

Fast fashion and the business model at its heart is the wider cause of both the environmental and social crisis in the industry. Ever cheaper and faster production is driving a regulatory climate that causes environmental and social damage to accelerate. The cost of environmental and social responsibility is held in production countries, but rarely paid for through retail value.

Covid crisis

Garment workers should not be paying the price for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gender Discrimination

Women form an overwhelming majority in the global garment industry and work in terrible conditions. They are underpaid, face gender-based violence and sexist employment requirements. Yet they are also organising themselves, letting their voices be heard and taking the lead in changing their situation.

Poverty wages

We want everyone working in the garment industry to be paid a wage they can live on. The UN recognises a living wage as a human right, yet the current reality means millions of garment workers are systematically exploited as a source of cheap labour. Since the birth of the industry, garment workers all over the world have been forced to live in poverty, to the detriment of not only their own well-being but their communities and economies as well.

Unclear supply chains

Transparency across supply chains is vital to ensuring that workers rights are respected. Although transparency in general has increased after years of concerted effort from the CCC network, the kind of information brands release about the manufacturing of their products is still sorely lacking.

Union Busting

Workers are the best advocates of their own rights, if given the freedom to organise themselves. Many garment producing countries and factories however curtail workers’ freedom of association through restrictive laws or outright union-busting actions, thereby limiting workers’ ability to take collective action and negotiate better working conditions.

Unsafe workplaces

Most garment workers do not feel safe at work. Not only are they working in dangerous buildings, but workers are routinely exposed to inhumanely high temperatures, harmful chemicals and physical violence. We are involved in programmes to help prevent injuries and deaths on the job and appeals for compensation for workers involved in incidents that could have been prevented.

Voluntary agreements

What’s better than brands’ giving their word on how things will improve for the workers with voluntary agreements? A legally binding agreement that holds brands accountable by a court of law.

Direct solidarity

The Clean Clothes Campaign grew out of direct solidarity between women workers in the Philippines and women in the Netherlands. Thirty years later, direct solidarity is still a backbone of our work - linking the people who make our clothes to the people that buy them.

Issues

What is going on in the international supply chain of fashion? In many countries, a job in a factory producing clothing for the fashion industry is a sought-after position. But garment workers across the world face a daily grind of excessive hours, forced overtime, lack of job security, poverty wages, denial of trade union rights, poor health, exhaustion, sexual harassment and hazardous working places. Even in factories which on the surface look clean and modern, workers are often deprived of their internationally-recognised basic rights. Learn more about the conditions workers face here.