Six Items for Six Weeks: Fashion Fasting

Our new ‘Six Items’ fundraising Challenge begins in 2 weeks time!! It’s the big one this time – Six Items for Six Weeks.

Our Challenge spans the length of Lent – a traditional time for fasting and taking stock of values and needs. If you’d like to sponsor our participants or find out more just click here. Our brave Challengers will be opting to raise funds and awareness for LBL’s vital work by wearing only 6 main items of clothing for the whole six weeks! To you and I that’s, say, 1 trouser, 1 top, 1 coat, 2 dresses and 1 cardi…. or 2 trousers, 2 tops, 1 jumper, 1 coat (undies, accessories, performance wear and pyjamas are not counted). So, it’s a big clothing fast for a great cause.

Our blog has some great tips on how to tackle the sartorial puzzle and if you’d like to take part just sign up here.

Our past Challengers have had such a positive experience:

“So, it’s the end, but really for me it’s the beginning of a new way of life. I have been able to look at myself and have realised I need to change. Change how I choose to spend my money. Change where I choose to shop. Change how I think about fashion. Change how I think about others. I have realised that my choices have an effect on other people’s lives, in a big way. This challenge has been eye opener for sure…”

“Realising your morals is so much more successful as part of a ‘challenge.’”

“Having only started to take the issue of ethical clothing seriously last summer it has been so good to participate in this challenge and feel like I have made a positive impact in raising some awareness and a bit of money for a really worthwhile cause.”

Another week, another adidas action!

On December 1st will you help us make adidas pay up?

Less than a month after our last mass international action against adidas we are gearing up for another one….

We need you to help make adidas pay PT Kizone workers, who are still owed US$ 1.8 million in severance pay a year after their factory closed down.

50,000 people have signed the petitions, 5000 people have targeted adidas’s Facebook page. But still they refuse to take responsibility.

Now it’s time to hit the streets.

In memory of Khorshed Alam: activist and friend

 

…”fighting against inequality is a hard path. Often people get frustrated as because they don’t see a significant change but changes are there. People can’t notice the difference because the process itself is very slow. I have taken the hard path, consciously, and will follow this path till the last day of my life.”

- Khorshed Alam

On Sunday 18th November Labour Behind the Label received the sad news that our friend and colleague, Khorshed Alam had died in Dhaka, Bangladesh. With his death we have lost a great ally and a brave activist whose work over the last decade has helped us, and others, to uncover and report on the terrible exploitation faced by the millions of women employed in the Bangladesh garment industry.

Khorshed Alam was the director of the Alternative Movement for Resources and Freedom, which carried out research and advocacy on a wide range of issues, including the rights of workers employed in Bangladesh’s growing garment industry.

Khorshed was always ready with his time and expertise to help anyone with an interest in pushing for change, from journalists to students, activists to academics. He worked tirelessly and fearlessly to make sure the voices of those women making our clothes could be heard over the endless noise of corporate public relations and industry excuses.

For the last decade Khorshed worked closely with the Clean Clothes Campaign to help us and our allies better understand the issues afflicting garment workers of Bangladesh. This included advising us on what issues our campaigns should focus on, providing information about the industry itself and clarifying the demands we make to brands and governments. He support in connecting with the numerous Bangladesh trade unions and labour rights groups was invaluable.

In the UK Khorshed was responsible for carrying out the research for almost every public report done on the Bangladesh garment industry in the last five years. This has included reports for Action Aid, War on Want, Labour Behind the Label and numerous newspaper exposes. In 2012 he helped us do the first ever investigation into the sandblasting of jeans in Bangladesh – uncovering information that we believed would be impossible to find.

On a personal level Khorshed became a trusted and much loved friend, whose humour, warmth and openess will be greatly missed by all of us at Labour Behind the Label. Our thoughts and best wishes go out to all his friends and family at this sad time.

Global Week of Action on adidas

…Get involved!!  This could be the push that ex-PT Kizone workers need to get their legal severance pay out of adidas.  $1.8 million is needed in payout – adidas have tried to get away with evasive moves like food vouchers for a commercial supermarket, but these do not pay health bills, or buy school uniforms and end in humiliation for workers begging to exchange them for money.  This has to stop! adidas must pay up!

Take action with us – ‘Like’ our facebook page and get a feed of daily actions to take. There will be messages to post on adidas’ wall; pictures to share; tweets to send… mounting the pressure on this brand to step up to their international responsibility.  For a full examination of the background of this long-running workers’ rights violation go to the Clean Clothes Campaign website here.

Bangladesh: Garment Workers Rally in Solidarity with the UK!

Amirul Haque Amin - President, National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF), Bangladesh said in a communication to Unite the Union that the rally held in Dhaka, Bangladesh was “Expressing support to [the] October 20, All England day-long protest demonstration of workers, trade unions and general masses.”

Labour Behind the Label was very impressed by the show of solidarity with UK workers from those in Bangladesh who live in a permanent state of ‘austerity’ but are always bravely fighting for an improvement in their pay and conditions: sometimes at great personal risk.  Tireless campaigner Aminul Islam was murdered earlier this year and countless union leaders have been arrested and badly treated.

Why H&M’s wage lobbying won’t come to much

I don’t know if you saw in the media a few weeks ago that H&M CEO Karl-Johan Persson has been labelled an ‘activist’ for approaching the Prime Minister of Bangladesh to call for the minimum wage to be raised. He received a fair amount of praise in the press for doing so. You can read one of the articles for yourself here. But here is why this is simply a ‘greenwash’ exercise.

Karl-Johan Persson went to that meeting knowing that he represents just one brand – a powerful buyer admittedly, but still only one brand in Bangladesh. When governments set the minimum wage in their country for the garment industry, they have to think about their international competitiveness, and are all too aware that multinational fashion buyers as a collective movement will move their production elsewhere if labour costs go up. These fashion buyers hold the power in the wage situation, not the country governments. Even if a few brands pledge to keep their production in country, there is a huge risk for country governments that they will loose the industry.

Welcome to the LBL blog…

Well, Labour Behind the Label is always pretty active and we’ve decided to make our exciting work more accessible to all our supporters by creating a blog!

We’ll be updating with all kinds of interesting developments and input: workers’ stories; visits to events; latest news and views… so follow us and keep up to the mintue on what we’re up to.

Cambodian garment worker riding through market, Phnom Penh. (Photo © Will Baxter)