WORKERS FORCE BIG APPAREL FIRMS TO PAY $22B FOR CANCELLED ORDERS

Garment workers worldwide who have furiously resisted attempts by 20 big apparel companies accounting for 97 percent of the industry’s profits to steal $40 billion by not paying for their orders have won their first skirmish and forced these companies to cough up $22 billion.

Writing for Waging Nonviolence, Loretta Graceffo said the indignant garment workers, among the most exploited and oppressed in the world, toil in sweatshops in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia, Myanmar, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Haiti, Indonesia, Lesotho, and other nations.

Their real wages have skidded 21 percent due to the pandemic while the profits of the big apparel companies and retailers like Walmart, Sears, Kohl’s, Nike, Forever 21, H&M, Gap, Adidas, The Children’s Place, and Ross Stores soared more than 11 percent for the same period.

Amanda Lee McCarty, who lost her job in an apparel company due to the pandemic, said it is insane for these huge companies to steal the money for the work done and shut down factories as companies in poor nations could not collect from their buyers, who just invoke force majeure to avoid paying.

“This wasn’t theoretical money,” said Elizabeth L. Cline, who works with the consumer activist nonprofit Remake. “This was garment workers not being paid for work already done, which is slavery.”

She added: “Why were companies so comfortable robbing their factories in the middle of the biggest humanitarian crisis of our lifetimes?” Cline said. “It had a lot to do with the fact that the people impacted were in the Global South. They were women of color, who companies were used to being able to subjugate without any consequences — who they thought weren’t going to stand up to them."

Yet, the workers were not powerless. They organized themselves and in a matter of days, a movement was born, comprised of non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, and thousands of garment workers, grassroots organizers, and consumers across the globe.

They named their first campaign after their primary demand: PayUp. By March 2021, PayUp had secured $22 billion from brands who had initially refused to pay and laid bare the exploitation fundamental to the global supply chain. It was one of the most successful labor rights campaigns in the fashion industry in modern times — and activists say they’re just getting started.

“This is an industry that is part of every person’s life, but nobody really knows what happens behind the scenes,” said McCarty, who became a vocal advocate for the movement after being laid off from her job.

“If a brand is refusing to pay up, it’s likely they’re paying slave wages in the first place, and not caring about the climate and burning billions of dollars of excess clothing every year. When you take a step back, the fashion industry is really a case study of everything that is wrong in the world right now.” While wealthy fashion brands continued to deliver shareholder payouts, workers already living in poverty were plunged even deeper into debt and starvation.

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