Long Read
No Sweat’s wholesale clothing project is creating a new model for the garment industry – sourcing from unionised factories, while using the profits to fund the fight against sweatshops. P&P speaks to Jay Kerr, campaigns and t shirts manager.
Some international retail brands have had negative headlines in terms of sweatshop labour during the past few years. Is this the still the case or have things improved? A. I think the problem is systemic. You’re right to say the media picks up on it when something big happens. For example, if a journalist manages to get access to a factory where they see the most horrifi c conditions, then it might become a bit of an expose. But day to day, there are many people grossly underpaid, forced into doing overtime just to make ends meet. These things are not particularly sexy for newspapers unless someone key grabs the message.
Many international brands are complicit. Despite the difference between their PR machine saying how ethical they’re doing this, that and the other, when you scratch the surface, you’ll soon fi nd their factories they’re sourcing from are not meeting the standards that we would expect. But things have got better after 30 years. In 2022 for example, two major UK brands, Primark and M&S announced that they plan to leave Myanmar because it is impossible to do the due diligence to protect workers under the new military dictatorship. But that’s not to say that the problems are over – a lot of the issues are from subcontracted sourcing. So where you have one factory that’s got a trade union, maybe has decent wages and decent conditions, a company can use that as a shining example. But then they’ll fi nd that they’re also subcontracting to other factories that are nowhere near up to that sort of standard. For instance, in 2020 we went to Bangladesh to meet our factory and made sure they didn’t subcontract
| 52 | July 2023
to other factories – they knew other factories in the area. So they sent us on a mission to pretend to be buyers and check out a factory. And it was literally everything you’d imagine about a sweatshop. It was a dank space, very dark, overcrowded, with about 30 people and children there working. There was no decent ventilation, just holes in the walls.
Money dictates in most areas of modern life, so are you fi ghting a
Making the industry sweat Q
Q
losing battle? A. I’d say it’s an uphill battle rather than a losing battle, but I totally accept your premise. I’ve been involved in this campaign for 20 years, and it’s not about a utopian vision, more about day-to-day struggles in terms of workers’ rights and fi ghting for better conditions for workers.
If we look at the UK 100 years ago, we had the conditions we now see in places like Bangladesh and India. The difference is it’s just been outsourced to essentially poorer countries because the workers here over generations have fought to improve their conditions. The same battle
is on for workers elsewhere in the world, so it’s more about encouraging workers to mobilise and fi ght for better conditions. This in turn creates a knock on effect for workers elsewhere. It’s less about benevolent capitalism, where we ask the brands to be nice, and it’s much more about the workers constantly struggling for better wages and conditions.
So it’s an uphill struggle that’ll never be fi nished because there’ll always be that pressure between demands for wages and cheaper products. But from our perspective, we need to constantly support the workers to improve their conditions. As one factory reaches better conditions, the next factory we fi nd is in the same condition. The more you build the premise that workers need living wage and decent conditions, then the more it becomes ingrained.
Q
So how did No Sweat come to exist and what is your mission statement?
A. No Sweat is a grassroots international solidarity campaign, run entirely by volunteers; dedicated activist that work to build connections of mutual aid and support with workers around the world. While sweatshop conditions exist in many industries, the majority of our campaign work focuses on the garment industry. Through stalls and protests outside shops, online actions, and activist gatherings, we build solidarity with sweatshop workers around the world, and call on brands to end the scourge of sweatshop labour. No Sweat is a grassroots campaign group that supports and promotes trade unions around the world. We have worked with trade unions at home and abroad to build collective action in solidarity with sweatshop workers facing the most severe exploitation. By affi liating with us at a branch, regional or national level, trade unions in the UK can build
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