Rana Plaza collapse, courtesy of the New York Times

Blog post by Timo Rissanen, Tishman Center Associate Director

April 24th marked the seventh anniversary of the Rana Plaza building collapse in Savar, Bangladesh. At least 1,134 people died in seconds when the building came down on them, while another 2,500 were injured. Most of the lost were garment workers, young women around the same age as the fashion students I teach at Parsons. Since then, each anniversary has been marked by Fashion Revolution, a grassroots campaign initiated by Orsola de Castro and Carry Somers. Numerous other initiatives were founded to support impacted workers and their families.

For several years the BFA Fashion Design program at Parsons collaborated with Remake on an initiative that took fashion students to garment factories in Cambodia, Sri Lanka and Mexico. Each trip was documented in a film available to view at the links. In addition, the full run of the Made in Sri Lanka event from 2018 is available here. Remake’s mission is to humanize the fashion supply chain and I know from conversations with the six students who made the trip that for them the experience of simply being with another human, a garment worker, normally invisible and dehumanized in a term like ‘supply chain’, was life changing.

For many of us in fashion, Rana Plaza was a ‘never again’ moment. The loss of over a thousand lives as a direct result of the race down to the cheapest price for clothing was shocking: not even a single life should be lost in garment manufacture. Yet the Covid-19 crisis is revealing that the plight of garment workers in the global south is as desperate as ever. In response to the crisis, brands in the global north began canceling orders in February and March. Until the manufactured goods are delivered, the factory carries the cost of the production, purchasing materials and paying the workers. Many of the canceled orders were already in production, meaning that the factories had purchased materials and manufacturing had begun.

The Worker Rights Consortium is tracking brands that have committed to paying for all of the orders and brands that have not. In conjunction, Remake has been running #PayUp, a campaign exerting pressure on brands. You can participate in the campaign on social media, and I encourage you to do so. For over a month Remake has been organizing weekly calls with diverse stakeholders to keep us informed on a highly dynamic situation. These calls have included factory owners and union organizers from Bangladesh for first-hand accounts of the impacts of cancelations and discount demands on the ground. Elizabeth Cline, author of Overdressed and The Conscious Closet, is active on the calls and behind the scenes, most recently focusing on the added complexity created by department store bankruptcies and their impacts on garment workers. Her Instagram is another excellent source for up to date reporting on this developing situation.

I have been able to join several of these calls. The good news is that some money has passed into workers’ hands; the pressure is working. There is, however, variation in the reporting. On a recent call it was noted that a payment by a brand does not always translate to payment to workers. The other good news is that each week there have been #PayUp victories: brands committing to paying for orders they had placed on a concrete timeline. Some weeks ago, Tesco, VF Corporation (owner of The North Face, among others) and Next committed to paying. Primark, a fast fashion giant, is a current focus for #PayUp. Primark has been active with public relations, and while the brand has been saying that it will pay for a substantial part of its orders, it has not put a time commitment on these payments. I invite all of you to join Remake in #PayUp to put pressure on Primark. Payments months down the line do not matter, especially if factories shutter and when the workers are already food insecure. Primark used a similar tactic after Rana Plaza, which resulted in many victims’ families not getting paid.

Several other well-known brands are still not paying up. Walmart’s brand George is asking for substantial discounts from manufacturers. George has also cancelled 20% of orders with no payment and will not take any cancelled goods. Remake reports that “suppliers have shared that other Walmart brands are honoring contracts but we need to zero in on George”. In April Gap sent out a press kit regarding an Earth Day collection, an entirely tone deaf move in light of their public silence on not paying up for cancelled orders. It is reported that Gap continues behind the scenes to ask for upward of 30% discounts from suppliers in Bangladesh and Pakistan. It is simply unacceptable for Gap to ask for new terms on old orders. In April Remake’s campaign had a victory with C&A agreeing to take orders that are already on ships, but overall C&A has not yet moved from the ‘bad list’ to the ‘good list’ on WRC’s tracker. JC Penney and Kohls have cancelled all of their orders, and need pressure to be put on. JC Penney’s recent bankruptcy announcement is making the situation for workers even more precarious. Finally, an infamous Danish brand, Bestseller, is asking for discounts and telling the Danish government that “suppliers are willing to do so.” Bestseller made headlines in 2017 for incinerating brand new clothes.

Remake have previously stated that more attention is needed on smaller, less known brands as much as the large known ones. The #PayUp petition, with more than 16,000 signatures, has thus far been focused on the big players based on BGMEA data. To date smaller brands who have cut and run have been flying under the radar and yet collectively, smaller brands make up a large amount of unpaid wages to makers in Bangladesh. This includes the recently bankrupt Forever 21. You can search for brand factory locations in Mapped.

Remake is doing more research on Levi’s. Pakistani suppliers have noted that they are taking orders post 60-day shipment without discounts, but to meet demand factories have opened and are producing. Nazma Akter, a trade unionist and the founder of Awah, shared on one of the April calls that Levi’s have similarly asked for a factory in Bangladesh to open. This raises questions about worker welfare amid a pandemic: What will happen when workers get sick? It once again reminds us that isolation and distancing are privileges; working from home is a privilege. In addition, even when orders are getting paid, many workers are getting less than one month of salary according to BCWS and Awaj. As Nazma has shared, some factories have taken workers ID cards and fired them, laid off workers are only paid half their salary, and workers that have been at a factory for less than a year are not being paid at all under the Section 12 and 16 of the labor code. Over 40% of the workers are young women who are single mothers. On one of the April calls Nazma stated: “Unlike Rana Plaza, we don’t have two years to wait for a compensation fund. Primark turned their backs on us during Rana Plaza and now again during this pandemic. I am dealing with women, many who are single mothers who haven’t been paid and are going hungry. If we don’t have urgent relief I am afraid some will commit suicide.”

I will not stand for these systems of injustice being rebuilt in a post-Covid-19 global fashion system. For Earth Day the board of the Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion published an open letter to the fashion industry; our aim was to make clear that this is the moment to reset. The concerns voiced by Nazma Akter should leave no doubt: fashion must take care of its most vulnerable in this moment and always moving forward. Look at what you’re wearing. See if the label says where it was made. Hold the cloth, and think of the mostly young women who held the pieces of cloth at a sewing machine to make the garment. Every garment connects us to the people who made it. Let’s have those connections be beautiful and just. Students and colleagues reading this post: please join me and Remake in the #PayUp campaign. Every revolution begins with one. Collectively we are strong. This is the time for a fashion revolution.

Seven years after Rana Plaza