193“Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for
the protection of his interests.” - United Nations Universal
Declaration of Human Rights Article 23.4
Trade unions allow workers to stand together to defend
their rights and allow them to say things collectively that
they are too scared to say on their own. Through
collective bargaining^1 , workers can negotiate with their
employers on wages and working hours they believe
are decent. In contrast, efforts by fashion companies to
ensure that workers’ rights are respected are based on
a top-down model referred to as ‘compliance’, which
relies on a code of conduct and audits imposed on
suppliers. Respecting freedom of association – a core
labour convention – and permitting workers to form a
trade union is potentially a more sustainable approach to
ensuring workers’ rights are respected because workers
are given a real voice in the process.
Only a tiny percentage - probably somewhere between
5 and 10% - of garment workers are unionised, and
many of these are in ‘yellow’ unions established by factory
managements. Workers across the world are fighting to
gain their rights to organise. Managers often respond by
adopting ‘union-busting’ tactics to prevent workers from
forming unions. The International Confederation of Free
Trade Unions (ICFTU) estimates (across all industries) that
in 2005, 115 trade unionists were murdered for defending
workers’ rights, 9,000 arrested, and nearly 10,000 workers
sacked^2. These dramatic figures are the tip of an iceberg
of anti-union rhetoric and threats that are used to stop
workers from trying to organise.
A combination of the use of casual labour and short-term
contracts by suppliers, and tighter lead times, lower cost
and flexible production demanded by fashion companies
undermines freedom of association. An organised
workforce would protest at the long working hours and
low pay necessary to meet these orders and so, to keep
business, factories are likely to crack down on workers
who try to organise. Home-based workers face specific
difficulties. They may not enjoy the same legal protection
as on-site workers, and many trade unions are not in a
position to organise homeworkers at present.More and more production is taking place in parts of the
world where the rights to freedom of association are
either prohibited, as is the case in China, or simply not
implemented, as is the case in numerous export processing
zones. Not all garment workers who are aware of their
rights choose to take them up by joining a union, but the
fact remains that tens of millions have never been given
that choice.Based on Clean Up Fashion (2006) http://www.
cleanupfashion.co.uk/images/pdf/letscleanupfashion.pdftrade unions
(^1) In general this refers to the negotiations between the trade union and management,
although collective bargaining has a specific meaning in a legal context
(^2) ICFTU (2006) Annual Report on Violations of Trade Union Rights
http://www.icftu.org/survey2006.asp?language=EN
IntEractIVE actIVItIEs