New reports uncover major fashion brands growing on the back of underpaid work of a largely women driven workforce coerced into silence.
Governments, factories and global fashion brands are profiting from the continued repression of garment workers and abuse of their labour rights in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, Amnesty International said in two companion reports released today.
The two reports — ‘Stitched Up: Denial of Freedom of Association for Garment Workers in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka’ and ‘Abandoned by Fashion: The urgent need for fashion brands to champion worker rights’ — document widespread anti-union abuse in the garment industry, manifesting in abuses of workers’ rights, harassment and violence by employers.
“An unholy alliance of fashion brands, factory owners and the governments of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka is propping up an industry known for its endemic human rights abuses. By failing to ensure that the right of garment workers to unionize and collectively bargain is respected, the industry has thrived for decades on the exploitation of a grossly underpaid, overworked and mostly female workforce,” said Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International.
“This is an indictment of the entire business model of the garment industry which sacrifices the rights of garment workers in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the relentless pursuit of profits for the shareholders of largely western fashion companies.”
The two reports are based on research carried out by Amnesty International between September 2023 and August 2024, including 88 interviews covering 20 factories in the four countries. This included 64 workers, 12 with union leaders and labour rights activists with over two thirds of those interviewed being female. Amnesty International also sent a survey in November 2023 to 21 major brands and retailers in nine countries, including Germany, Denmark, Japan, Spain, Sweden, UK, USA, Spain and China, requesting information about their human rights policies, monitoring and concrete actions related to freedom of association, gender equality and purchasing practices. Adidas, ASOS, Fast Retailing, Inditex, Otto Group and Primark provided full responses. Many others replied with partial information, including M&S and Walmart, while some failed to provide information, including Boohoo, H&M, Desigual, Next and Gap.
“Managers shout at us that if we join the union, we will also be sacked.”
The global garment industry has long faced scrutiny over human rights abuses in its supply chains and business model. South Asian workers, especially women, are systematically disenfranchised through informal and insecure contracts, poverty wages, discrimination and precarious work conditions.
In all four countries, garment workers said the threat of repercussions from employers prevented them from joining a union. All union organizers interviewed by Amnesty International described a climate of fear in which supervisors and factory bosses frequently harassed, dismissed and threatened workers for belonging to or organizing a union, in a clear abuse of their right to freedom of association.
“When workers raise their voices, they are ignored. When they try to organize, they are threatened and sacked. And finally, when workers protest, they are beaten, shot at and arrested,” said Taufiq*, a labour rights NGO worker in Bangladesh.
“Human rights violations are happening every day, in almost every factory”
Authorities in all four countries use numerous ways to deter workers from organizing themselves or deny them their labour rights through union busting, obstacles to the right to strike such as the specific barriers to union organizing in Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and replacing independent unions with pro-management bodies.
In Bangladesh, legal restrictions deny workers the right to freedom of association in the many SEZs where most garment production takes place. Instead, workers are encouraged to form welfare associations or committees, which have limited ability to organize and represent them. Authorities have violently repressed protests by garment workers and weaponized the law to punish workers taking part in largely peaceful protests.
In India, vast numbers of home workers in the garment industry, working outside the factory on embroidery or finishing garments, are not recognized as employees under the country’s labour laws and thus, are not eligible for pensions, other employment-related social protection benefits or union membership.
In Pakistan, garment workers face daily challenges in accessing the minimum wage and work contracts. Underpayment of wages due to a lack of proper written contracts and oversight is endemic. In addition, the devolution of labour law administration, alongside pervasive anti-union repression by the government, has led to the effective denial of the right to freedom of association for workers in SEZs.
In Sri Lanka, workers in free trade zones are denied the right to freedom of association through overly complex administrative measures which often place insurmountable barriers to forming a union. When workers do manage to unionize, they are harassed, intimidated and often dismissed due to the authorities’ failure to protect them from reprisals by factory owners.
Global fashion brands – an invaluable ally for repressive governments
Fashion companies contribute to workers’ vulnerability as they are not fulfilling their human rights responsibilities, instead turning human rights due diligence and codes of conduct into tick box exercises. They have allowed the growth of opaque supply chains and demonstrated a willingness to source labour from governments and business partners that fail to oversee and remedy poor labour practices, or which actively repress freedom of association. The lack of due diligence legislation in many countries means brands are not held to account for their supply chains, enabling an extractive and exploitative industry. Where such laws exist, their implementation and scope are still emerging.
International law and standards, including the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the Organisation of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, require fashion companies to identify and address all human rights risks and impacts by conducting ongoing human rights due diligence throughout their supply chain. However, in most garment producing states, the lack of binding legislation has allowed the abuse of workers’ rights to become embedded in supply chains, with little meaningful action taken to address it. Moreover, the governments of countries where these global brands are headquartered have failed to take steps to prevent abuse abroad by business enterprises within their jurisdiction.
Due to a lack of transparency in global supply chains, there is little evidence to determine whether or not human rights policies are being implemented at the factory level. All 21 fashion brands and retailers surveyed had codes of conduct for suppliers, human rights policies or principles, which affirmed the company’s commitment to workers’ right to freedom of association. Despite this purported commitment to freedom of association by brands in their supply chains, Amnesty International found very few independent trade unions that were operating in the fashion companies’ supply chains in all four countries. This denial of freedom of association and collective bargaining continues to hamper efforts to prevent, mitigate and remedy human rights abuses in the supply chain.
“Access to justice is minimal generally for all women… and this is doubly so with Dalit women”
The majority of the garment industry workforce in South Asia are women, who are often rural migrants or from marginalized castes. Despite their numbers, they are under-represented in factory management, which typically reflects the patriarchal system outside the factory, as well as existing class, ethnic, religious and caste discrimination.
Female garment workers report being routinely harassed, attacked, and abused physically or sexually in the workplace. Yet they rarely get justice. The lack of effective, independent mechanisms to hear their grievances in male-led factories, combined with state-sponsored restrictions on organizing and employers’ threats against workers unionizing, means their suffering continues.
“I was touched physically and abused verbally. No one in management would listen to my complaints then I asked other women to organize. I was threatened with dismissal many times,” Sumaayaa*, a union organizer from Lahore, Pakistan, told Amnesty International.
“Freedom of association is the key to unlocking change in the industry”
As the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association summarized in his 2016 report, “Without assembly and association rights, workers have little leverage to change the conditions that entrench poverty, fuel inequality…” According to the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) Committee “trade union rights, freedom of association and the right to strike are crucial means to introduce, maintain and defend just and favourable conditions of work.”
Amnesty International is calling on states to ensure that all workers can exercise their right to freedom of association, including by being able to form and join trade unions at factory level and engage in collective bargaining. States must also investigate all potential breaches of labour law and other relevant law. Where offences are uncovered, they must penalize employers appropriately, including through prosecutions, and ensure adequate and timely remedy for affected workers.
Companies should urgently take concrete action to protect the rights of workers in their supply chains and support the empowerment of women workers. There is an urgent need for mandatory due diligence to ensure that brands hold factories throughout their global supply chain to account and crucially ensure remedy for workers who have been subjected to human rights abuses, as well as serve to prevent any future abuses.
“The need of the hour is to build a human rights respecting sourcing strategy for the global garment industry. One that ensures genuine freedom of association, penalizes its denial, prohibits retaliation against unions, and reconsiders sourcing from any location that denies workers’ rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining,” said Agnès Callamard.
“The economic success of the garment industry must come hand-in-hand with the realization of workers’ rights. Freedom of association is key to tackling the abuse of workers’ rights. It must be protected, advanced and championed.”
*names changed to protect identity.