Femnet e.V.

The garment industry is a significant contributor to Indonesia’s large economy. In fact, it was the fifth greatest contributor to Indonesia’s non-oil and gas manufacturing export figures from 2014 to 2017, growing at an average of 1.1 % during that period. It is also an important source of employment, accounting for around 26.6 % of jobs in the manufacturing sector. The industry is affected by changes to economic conditions in the US and Europe, the major destinations for its products. It also faces the challenge of competing with other garment-producing countries such as Vietnam and Bangladesh, with costs including labour, affecting competitiveness.

Another challenge for the garment industry lies in meeting international expectations about the treatment of workers. Conditions in garment factories vary considerably. They are generally much worse in medium and small enterprises, which do not attract the kinds of scrutiny that large suppliers to international brands are subjected to. The industry has received a great deal of attention from international and local NGOs and trade unions, but there remains much to be done before the standards embedded in FWF Code of Labour Practice are fully met even in more compliant segments of the sector. In terms of labour rights, Indonesia has signed key international human rights instruments, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and all eight core International Labour Organization (ILO) conventions. However, the extent to which these commitments are reflected in Indonesian legislation and in its implementation, varies. Like many countries in the region, it also continues to experience serious problems in terms of the implementation of many aspects of its legal framework. This core problem has led to issues with freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively; working hours and conditions, including the right of women to be free of sexual harassment in the workplace; occupational health and safety; and the right to a living wage. FWF will continue to provide updated information on Indonesia at www.fairwear.org and will update this country study on a periodic basis in the future.

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Today, the organisation of the global apparel sector is characterized by global production networks (GPNs) that link actors at the different steps of the value chain from production to consumption. GPNs in the apparel sector are usually set up and controlled by large transnational retailers connecting their suppliers with their headquarters and stores. Sincere tailors seek to increase their profits by reducing labour costs, labour intensive production activities are sourced out to independent subcontractor firms located predominantly in countries in the Global South where wages are low and labour organizations weak. After the introduction of the Multifibre Arrangement in 1974, big European and US corporations, such as Walmart, H&M and Nike established large and geographically dispersed networks of suppliers of ready-made garments (RMG), with Asia being the biggest sourcing hub. Although the emergence of an export garment industry has played an important role info steering economic development in Asian countries, it has been achieved at the expense of the millions of workers in the supplier factories. Governments aim to promote the international competitiveness of their ready-made garment export sectors and to attract buyers from the Global North by maintaining low wages and implementing labour laws that allow for greater workforce flexibility. Thus, child labour, extremely low wages, insufficient health and safety provisions, excessive overtime and high levels of pressure at work characterize the reality in workplaces in the RMG export industry in many Asian countries.

As a response, over the last few decades, garment workers in Asia have developed strategies of resistance to fight against exploitative practices and policies by employers and government institutions at the international, national and subnational level. In most garment-exporting countries, particularly in South and South-East Asia, the labour movement is weak and fragmented, with trade unions dominated by political parties. But the expansion of the garment export sector has also brought about the development of several labour unions in this industry, which, rather than seeking institutional power through proximity to a political party, aim to build associational power through a social movement approach. 

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The Government of Uzbekistan operates a system of forced labour which has been estimated to coerce approximately one million people annually into participating in the cotton harvest. Following courageous reporting, activism, and whistleblowing, the Uzbek government has committed at the highest levels to eradicating forced and child labour from the cotton sector. One of the two crucial annual reports that both measures incidences of forced and child labour in the cotton sector, and attempts to diagnose strengths and weaknesses in Uzbekistan’s reform effort is produced by the International Labour Organization (ILO) through its third-party monitoring unit stationed in Tashkent. Established through a Multi-Donor Trust Fund by the World Bank, with support from the European Union, the United States and Switzerland, the unit has produced three annual monitoring reports since 2015. Following serious criticism of the third-party monitoring methodology, ethicality and accuracy by civil society, the first author of this evaluation was invited by the ILO’s Chief Technical Adviser to review the 2017 cotton harvest report. To conduct the review, benchmarks drawn from the international methodological literature and the ILO’s own monitoring manual were employed. Once applied serious breaches were identified. A series of questions prompted by the review’s initial findings was sent to the ILO’s third-party monitoring unit for clarification. No response has been received. 

Among the greatest concerns raised during the review was a lack of explicit reference in the 2017 harvest report to the vulnerability of participants who may be victims of state-organised labour, the special sensitivities this prompts for research, or the complexities associated with conducting accurate fieldwork in a deeply authoritarian country where surveillance, arbitrary detention, torture, and repression are lived realities for citizens. 

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Kinderarbeit kann unsichtbar in jedem Kleidungsstück oder Handtuch aus indischer Baumwolle stecken, denn Indien gehört zu den wichtigsten Baumwollproduzenten und -exporteuren weltweit. Wer Textilien und Bekleidung ohne Kinderarbeit anbieten (oder konsumieren) will, muss deshalb auch der Frage nachgehen, unter welchen Bedingungen das Saatgut produziert wurde, aus dem dann später die Baumwollfaser gewonnen und verarbeitet wurde.

SÜDWIND und der indische Partner CLRA (PRAYAS) führten Ende des Jahres 2017 eine Befragung in Gujarat durch, um das derzeitige Ausmaß der Kinderarbeit zu erfassen. Dabei wurden drei separate Erhebungsbögen zur Befragung auf den Farmen, der ArbeiterInnen und der Haushalte in den Dörfern erstellt.

Die konkreten Untersuchungsergebnisse:

• Bildungsniveau: Rund ein Drittel der Kinder und Jugendlichen hat nie eine Schule besucht.
• Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen auf der Farm: Alle Kinder berichteten von mindestens acht Arbeitsstunden pro Tag, die deutliche Mehrheit arbeitetet sogar regelmäßig zehn Stunden täglich. Qualitative Interviews mit Kinderarbeiter_innen zeigen, dass körperliche Übergriffe am Arbeitsplatz bei Kindern besonders häufig vorkommen.

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The 24th of April 2018 marked the five-year anniversary of the Rana Plaza textile factory disaster in Bangladesh. Numerous multinational textile companies sourced goods from the production in this building, among them a range of companies headquartered in the EU. Five years after the Rana Plaza disaster, to what extent have EU textile companies integrated respect for human rights throughout their operations? Are EU companies carrying out robust human rights due diligence throughout their supply chains to prevent the next ‘Rana Plaza’?

This briefing explores these questions by laying out the main challenges and opportunities in the EU textile sector. Based on data collected by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre over the last seven years on over 170 allegations of negative human rights impacts, this briefing sheds light on the key human rights issues, the scale and geographical dispersion of alleged abuses, and the quality of the responses from EU textile companies to these allegations. It also shares lessons from key legal cases involving EU textile firms where alleged victims sought access to remedy. 

The briefing concludes with recommendations for EU policy-makers and decision-makers, as well as to companies, to overcome the existing challenges to respect and protect human rights in the EU textile industry and its supply chains. A key problem at present is the lack of coordination among member states on how to tackle these issues. By surveying the scale of the abuses, the lack of access to remedy for victims, and identifying the gaps, challenges and opportunities, the briefing emphasizes the need for an EU-wide homogenous set of legislation on human rights responsibilities for EU textile companies.

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