Our work is not done yet!

Have you ever thought about where the materials that make your clothes come from? Before the garment factory there is a ginning factory. In a ginning factory cotton is spun into thread through a high powered machine in a factory.

This is a stage of the supply chain that needs more attention than ever before. A BBC report reveals that a third of the workers who work in ginning factories may be children. There have been cases where labourers have fallen asleep from exhaustion and suffocated in the piles of raw cotton. Women and girls, no more than 10 or 11 feed ginning machines with raw cotton picked from nearby fields. Children have to work in the factories with little or no protection. Every factory is supposed to make sure workers are wearing masks to prevent breathing in dust, but this standard is hardly ever held up leaving workers to work in a “horror of the white cloud” left vulnerable to lung disease. On top of all this they work for over 12 hours and are paid £1.30 a day, when legally they should be getting £4.55 a day!

The reason why this stage of the supply chain is overlooked is because we (consumers) push brands to produce our clothes ethically and the brands only go as far as the suppliers (garment factories) to improve things. Take the example of a garment factory in Tarapur. They supply to many, European brands. The plant promotes good working practices, even providing medical services for the workers. This has led to them getting repeat orders as “customers are happy with the way we operate”. Activism has made sure that garment factories are on the radar of consumers, but labour violations are happening before garment workers have even started sewing our shirts.

We’ve done well to get factories to improve their working conditions, now we need to go one step further and improve the lives of those before the factory. By creating more awareness amongst our friends and families about how the actual material of their clothes is made should lead to brands pushing further than just the garment factories. Brands need to go further down the supply chain to really make a difference and become more ethical.