Introduction

Since 2006, when our first Clean Up Fashion Report was produced, the world has changed. Then the consumer was king and the global economy was riding high. Now the credit crunch has taken the sparkle from the high street – and led to some household names disappearing from UK towns and cities (and this report).

Downlaod the 2009 update (54 pages, pdf 1Mb)

Download the 2008 update (50 pages, pdf 330Kb)

Download the 2007 update (20 pages, pdf 750Kb) and profiles (48 pages, pdf 850 Kb)

Download the 2006 report  (84 pages, pdf 1.7Mb)

Workers and consumers in the UK have been feeling the pinch and turning to the low cost retailers to help cut their monthly budgets. But it's not just in the UK that workers are suffering: in countries from Cambodia to Turkey, Bangladesh to Honduras factories are closing and workers are losing even the paltry salaries afforded to them by the garment industry. Those that have managed to keep their jobs are facing an increasingly insecure future as a result of economic and environmental crises.

The scandalous truth is that the majority of workers in the global fashion industry rarely earn more than two dollars a day, in an industry worth over 36 billion a year in the UK alone. Many have to work excessive hours just to get this meagre amount and have no possibility to earn wages needed to properly feed, clothe, house and educate their families. In the last four years many of the biggest brands and retailers on the UK high street have publicly accepted that garment workers wages need to increase and claim to have started work to eliminate poverty wages from their supply chains. However, few of the projects and plans developed in corporate offices in Europe or North America have had a tangible impact on the wages and lives of the women producing our clothes. Why? Because most projects have ignored the fundamental issues of freedom of association, price and distribution of profit, and have focused instead on making factories or workers more 'productive.'

Wages aren't low simply because of inefficient factories, poorly trained workers and bad production systems. Wages are low because they are kept that way through a global competition that engages workers, factories and whole countries in a race to the bottom. A race where the winners are those that can produce as quickly, cheaply and flexibly as possible. Workers who organise to oppose this system face dismissal, unemployment, arrest and harassment from employers and governments keen not to lose the fickle investment that the garment industry provides.

On October 7th 2009 a new and exciting initiative, the Asian Floor Wage, will be launched. This is an Asia-wide campaign with global resonance, which rejects the idea that governments, unions and workers in different countries should be forced to choose between unemployment or exploitation. Instead, trade unions, NGOs and activists from six garment producing countries have come together to negotiate and agree a sum to calculate a figure for a “floor wage” – a minimum amount below which no worker, regardless of nationality, gender or workplace, should be paid.

For ten years brands have been promising both workers and consumers that living wages will be paid, despite evidence to the contrary. Workers have been told to wait while brands work out what a living wage is and how to make sure they don't have to pay the cost. Consumers have been told not to worry – brands care and are doing the best they can. The problem is their best isn't good enough and workers can't wait any longer. The Asian Floor wage combats the argument that there is no consensus on a living wage level. It places workers right back at the centre of the debate and It lays down the gauntlet to brands and retailers, governments and employers to make sure that the garment industry finally provides not just any work, but decent work to the millions of women and men producing the clothes we wear.