Patched! ‘I’m scared changing fashion will mean massive job losses’
Patched discusses the threat of job losses in garment factories and what an alternative could look like
Hello! A lot of new people have signed up since I published my newsletter on the impact of Sheikh Hasina's rule and resignation on garment workers. Welcome, and a big thank you, to each and every one of you. Each month I send out two newsletters - one is an analytical article or interview, the other is the Patched advice column.
What is Patched?
Patched is a members-only series where people can ask me a fashion (or fashion-adjacent) question that's bothering them, and I will reply with a short letter from an anti-capitalist perspective.
Got a question? Email me: DearPatched@proton.me
The title Patched is a reminder that at this critical time we need repair and regeneration as well as analysis. I will keep unpicking and unravelling the fashion industry but Patched makes space to explore mending - finding solutions to both personal and structural problems.
If you like Patched please forward this email, share it as a post or screenshot. Thanks!
Patched - What about the jobs?
Dear Tansy,
I read your article about Bangladesh and was so struck by the fact that 90% of everything Bangladesh exports are garments. That is such a vast amount of people and resources to be geared towards the fashion industry.
Taking into account that these workers are already badly affected by underpay, bad conditions, poor worker’s rights, it worries me what would happen if/when exports drop and things change.
As we (in the West) move towards the whole idea of being more sustainable, getting rid of fast fashion and buying less – this must surely have a huge social effect on places like Bangladesh?
How do we go about resolving these issues?
Thank you, Andy.
Dear Andy,
Thank you for your letter. I agree that Bangladesh is alarmingly overexposed to garment exports. Unfortunately we don’t even have to imagine what ‘could’ happen if things go wrong.
During the height of the pandemic, brands abandoned Bangladesh by cancelling orders and not paying any kind of compensation. As wages vanished and the ability to pay for food and rent was lost, Asia Floor Wage Alliance described the impact of the shutdown as workers coping by ‘mining their own bodies.’ The legacy of that terrible time rumbles on in the economic crisis that has dogged Bangladesh, and other countries in the region, ever since.
The history of the textile industry is one of movement and change. The industry, in its current form, will one day leave Bangladesh, driven possibly by automation, or political, economic and/or climate crisis. When this happens, there have to be solutions in place.
This is why we (trade unions and worker rights groups in Bangladesh, backed up by international solidarity groups) have to campaign now for key changes like trade union rights, and for regional Living Wages.
Currently no big fashion brand pays a Living Wage across its supply chain. Aside from the obvious benefits of being paid properly, here’s the significance of the Living Wage: Current poverty wages mean in a family of four, all four people have to work. If there was a Living Wage then just one person would be able to work in garments to support their family – immediately you have a solution to a large shrinkage of the garment industry. Plus you solve the problem of what Marx called the ‘reserve army of labour’ – millions of people who get no choice about where they work and who can be used to threaten and replace current workforces.
Prices are always political
It is, however, possible and important to imagine that seismic change could come about from something brilliant and exciting – a Just Transition away from this export based economy in which the Global South serves the Global North.
When looking at piles of cheaply priced t-shirts and jeans we must remember that the prices on the tags do not represent the true value of these items, either in terms of material or labour. I recommend checking out the Fashioning the Future report I worked on with War on Want in which economist Jason Hickel said: “There's nothing natural about cheap labour in Bangladesh – it's the effect of an imperialist economy over the span of several hundred years, which has worked specifically and actively to cheapen the price of Bangladeshi labour and resources.”
Mountains of cheaply priced clothes are possible because high income countries have virtually all of the bargaining power in the world economy which they use to maintain the status quo. This vast inequality in the global economic system is also the reason low-income countries get so overexposed - they are stuck servicing the North via exports and sweatshop labour.
Bangladesh is working so hard to make garments because it needs to earn foreign exchange to build infrastructure and import food and fuel. It’s particularly unfair because the fashion industry is racist and culturally devalues clothes made in the Global South - ‘cheap labour’ making ‘cheap clothes’ in ‘cheap countries’ as opposed to London/Paris/Milan/New York who make practically nothing but get all the money and glory.
When the Global South is producing all the raw materials and doing all the labour – why should it be European and American shareholders getting rich? Why should Global South countries remain subordinate partners within global supply chains?
That said, it’s not enough to just swap the people at the top and have Bangladeshi billionaires instead of Swedish ones. Radical change would see the discarding/degrowth of the fashion industry almost entirely.
If the Global South pursued a more sovereign use of their resources and people productive capacity, rather than just having people producing endless garments to make profits for corporations, people in Bangladesh could be asking:
What do we need?
What do we want to be producing?
What are we producing too much of?
What are we not producing enough of?
It is critical to remember that the low-income countries of the Global South are not poor because they lack in people to work, Land or natural resources, but because all their labour and resources are organised around the economic interests of the rich world who have the power to maintain this imbalance.
Every year 188 million person-years of labour and 822 million hectares of Land are extracted from the Global South to benefit the Global North. Let your imagination soar when you think about what could be achieved if the Global South stopped servicing the Global North and all those hours, Land, and resources went towards building a fair green society. Imagine all that time spent on agroecology, care work, building homes and flood defences, protecting and restoring habitats, education, health, community building and political engagement as well as leisure, music, literature and creativity.
In solidarity, Tansy.
If you like Patched please forward this email, share it as a post or screenshot. If you've been forwarded this and want to keep in touch please subscribe for free. You'll receive two emails a month - one will be Patched and the other my regular newsletter.
p.s. This online event is free to attend. Register here: https://thecorbynproject.com/bangladesh-at-crossroads-again-what-next/
