Companies ought to shield employees: Clean Clothes Campaign

The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the grossly unequal energy relations that outline international garment provide chains, with employees paying the worth, in keeping with the Clean Clothes Campaign community, whose member organisations just lately known as for motion from manufacturers, retailers, governments and different stakeholders to mitigate the affect of this disaster on employees.

The purpose must be to construct in direction of a future wherein employees have entry to dwelling wages and a social security web, the Netherlands-based Clean Clothes Campaign, a world community devoted to bettering working situations and empowering employees within the international garment and sportswear industries, stated in a press launch.

As quickly because the pandemic hit the world’s main garment firms, they responded with their customary reflex, by pushing danger and prices down the provision chain. This has left many factories with out the monetary means to pay employees their wages, even for work already performed. Millions of employees are actually with out earnings and job safety, at a time of already excessive anxiousness about well being dangers, the community stated.

Now is the time for manufacturers, retailers, and e-tailers to cease making the most of suppliers and employees and begin paying again for the years of earnings made on the premise of poverty wages, little-to-no social safety, and the buildup of danger on the backside of the provision chain, it stated.

To act responsibly on the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturers, retailers and e-tailers have to honour their obligations to suppliers and employees by paying for orders which might be accomplished or in manufacturing; guarantee and allow fee of wages or severance to all attire, textile, footwear and logistics employees who had been employed on the onset of the disaster; be sure that employees who work through the pandemic can comply with World Health Organisation safety requirements and are supplied with extra labour safety together with childcare services or allowances, medical insurance, paid sick days, and hazard pay; and be sure that employees can refuse unsafe work and employees who’re unwell, or whose members of the family are unwell, can keep at dwelling with out being penalised.

“The absolute minimum that brands and retailers must do during this crisis is to pay for work already commissioned. When the practice of most brands to cancel orders was criticized, several major apparel companies back-tracked their decision, to the relief of factory owners,” stated Liana Foxvog of the International Labor Rights Forum.

“However, several major players in the field, including C&A, Gap, Nike, and Uniqlo, continue to stand by their decision not to pay for work already in process or completed, or have turned to insufficient alternatives, such as Primark’s proposal for a fund to pay for the worker wage portion of its cancelled orders,” she stated.

To alleviate the plight of the employees whose livelihoods are threatened by this disaster, it’s essential to create emergency reduction funds and monetary help packages particularly for the garment sector, with contributions from worldwide monetary establishments, donor governments, in addition to manufacturers and retailers, the community stated.

Ineke Zeldenrust of the Clean Clothes Campaign International Office, stated: “This crisis is the worst wake-up call imaginable to show that the total absence of social security as a concept in current supply chains is not sustainable. If supply chains start functioning again, they must start to operate with a radically changed pricing model that allows for the payment of living wages, social benefits, and worker safety.”

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (DS)